Any Mummers Allowed in the Pool? Queering Vernacular Typologies in Outport Newfoundland

Abstract

The province of Newfoundland and Labrador’s unique cultural mythology and traditional architecture is directly related to a heteronormative way of living, with relatively no evidence of queerness in representations of place or the built environment. This narrative creates a contradiction between queer identity and Newfoundland identity that leaves many rural queers to struggle finding individual and collective identity. This project creates a queer space in rural Newfoundland through understanding the traditional aspects of the cultural landscape and then developing an architectural language of queering. It is argued that the traditional practice of mummering is an inherently queer aspect of the province’s culture that blurs the lines between the real and the magical, creating queer space. The mummers’ costuming is studied, along with theories of queer space and post-modernism, developing working methods of exaggeration, collage and masking to design a queer camp and bathing pavilions in the rural town of New-Wes-Valley.