Lizzie Osborne has become the first University of Huddersfield student to win a national award from the Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA) after writing a fanzine-style dissertation, titled Cesspits of Filth: Queer Vernaculars in West Yorkshire 1975-1985, on The Gemini Club; a well-known LGBTQ+ venue once described as the ‘Studio 54 of the North’.
It was shut down in 1983 after a series of police raids, and referred to as a ‘cesspit of sexual filth’; it was seeing the club described as such in a newspaper which inspired Osborne to consider what makes a place eligible to be described as such, after which she explored the queer history of the venue through architectual thought.The previous location of The GeminiIt reflects on the.