[Exhibition graphics by Adam Thibodeaux]Exhibition + Symposium
Private Containers in Public Spaces is an exhibition and series of associated events that examine architecture as a system of containers for bodies. The project interrogates the standardized spatial “containers” encountered in everyday public life—such as lockers, restroom stalls, and changing rooms—and reveals how these spaces can come into conflict with the lived realities of individualized and diverse bodies.
Through the repurposing of familiar architectural elements, the exhibition creates environments that invite reflection, commiseration, and shared experience. These reconfigured containers act as sites for storytelling, foregrounding personal narratives that expose how depersonalized and standardized spaces are navigated, resisted, and reimagined by their users. By centering embodied experience, the exhibition gives voice to stories often rendered invisible within normative spatial design.
Private Containers in Public Spaces juxtaposes the hyper-standardization of the built environment with the hyper-specific experiences of those who occupy it. In doing so, the project positions storytelling as a tool for building empathy—encouraging visitors to consider how architecture mediates issues of gender, identity, accessibility, and belonging.
Restrooms and changing rooms are among the most highly gendered public spaces encountered in daily life. As architectural containers, they reflect deeply rooted historical and cultural norms around gender that are increasingly being challenged by transgender and gender-diverse individuals and their allies. The exhibition situates these challenges alongside broader shifts in design practice related to the changing role of women, multicultural use of space, and the social participation of people with disabilities.
Credits:
The exhibit is one project conducted by the incLOOsion Project: Randy Fernando, Andrew Gunther, Maya Kirch, Edward Steinfeld, Beth Tauke, and Adam Thibodeaux.
