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Why your home is not really yours
Domestic space viewed through the lens of Architectural discourse.
Whether in the form of mass housing or a single-family home, domestic architecture seems to have been a significant architectural challenge for architects and a crucial subject of architectural theoretical debate throughout time. It is an exceptional opportunity for architects to articulate their ideas and suggest formal innovations and, more often than not, abstract expressions about concepts such as function, social structures, and family. Domestic space is often described as a personal, private dwelling space that sits in opposition to a public urban realm charged with social and cultural concepts and definitions. In this sense, domestic space is perceived as a shelter from society and its political notions, which provides room for the individual to exist. However, is domestic architecture ever personal, or must it always inevitably be implicated in cultural politics? This essay takes a critical look into this matter, tracing the connections between architectural language, space, and social structures to see how cultural ideas and assumptions are translated into domestic space, expressed in the home, and reflected in its spatiality.
The public dimension in domestic space often remains abstract, making it harder to identify and grasp. The dwelling is a combination of individualistic objects and a set of norms dictated by culture and community that are depicted within the spatial elements and organization of the home. Architects wield considerable power in shaping the dwelling space and its composing elements according to inspiration sources or a particular societal, political, architectural vision that they hold to question or refine societal and architectural realities. Consequently, residential space is a cultural statement in multiple overlapping dimensions (Wright, 1987). The home, in its spatial configuration, is a physical translation of cultural, political claims. As stated in Wigley 1992:
“…, the passage is located within some pre-architectural domain of social order … the house enforces a pre-existing law. The law of the house precedes the house.”
One of the most evidently depicted topics within domestic space is sexuality and gender. There exist gendered distinctions in…
