Domesticity beyond the home: collective architectures.

What is the domestic? Modernity closely bound this concept to the house, and especially to bourgeois housing. So-called private life emerged from a historical reconfiguration of the divisions between the public and the private, and the dwelling consequently became one of the principal sites of the domestic, associated both with affectivity and with particular norms of use. This process consolidated the emergence of comfort as a new sensibility in inhabited space and affirmed private property as an inherent condition of that separate realm, one that drew clear boundaries between what belonged to oneself and what belonged to others. Yet rather than a category tied exclusively to housing, domesticity may be understood as a historical construct through which forms of life and spatial configurations are articulated. As Michel Foucault observed, no space is innocent. Domesticity participates in the same mechanisms that structure hospitals, schools, and prisons: it is not merely a refuge, but also a means of organising space and time.

Josep Quetglas imagined, as an alternative and optimistic ending, a horizon in which the home, dissolved as an institution, would be ‘everywhere’: any space in which a free and equal subject might affirm themselves. As the boundaries between work and leisure, private and collective, become increasingly porous, the domestic can no longer be understood as an enclave separate from the social realm, but rather as a spatial quality that traverses different programmes. It concerns all spaces shaped in which care, intimacy, community or exposure are at stake. From this perspective, the work of Elke Krasny helps to specify this displacement by understanding care as a spatial and projective dimension made visible in decisions concerning layout, accessibility, patterns of use, or the maintenance of buildings.

This issue proposes to move domesticity beyond private housing in order to examine its presence—explicit or implicit—within spaces of collective use or social function, such as hospitals, care homes, educational spaces, libraries, cultural centres, public open spaces, student accommodation and housing for the elderly, care facilities, and administrative or judicial buildings, among other related programmes and typologies. This question may also be considered in relation to the ‘non-places’ produced by modernity, following Marc Augé’s formulation, where anonymity and the absence of social relations prevail. In transport hubs, airports or shopping centres, domesticity paradoxically emerges, whether through mechanisms of control, surveillance and bodily regulation, or through fragments of intimacy that persist at the margins. We are interested in examining how the domestic may operate as a critical analytical tool, capable of revealing—and in certain cases questioning—the spatial logics, hierarchies and behaviours embedded within programmes often presented as neutral, as well as a projective dimension intentionally incorporated into the design itself. The public or private character of the case study does not constitute a criterion for exclusion, but rather an analytical variable: what matters is the relationship between programme, space, and the forms of domesticity conveyed by the building.

Can a hospital incorporate logics of domesticity that challenge its healthcare dimension? What does it mean to ‘domesticate’ an administrative space? To what extent does the appeal to the domestic soften, conceal or reconfigure relations of power within spaces of collective use? We invite submissions that analyse works and projects in which domesticity appears as a spatial, narrative or material strategy. By placing domesticity at the centre of collective space, we propose to consider the extent to which the architectural project may redistribute—or reinforce—the boundaries between the common and the private, between the institution and everyday life.

Call for papers (issue #36)
Journal: Proyecto, Progreso, Arquitectura – Universidad de Sevilla
4000 - 5000 words (excluding notes and bibliography)
Spanish, Portuguese, Italian, French or English (author’s native language, where applicable)
Guidelines and instructions: https://revistascientificas.us.es/index.php/ppa/announcement/view/566
Sumissions: https://revistascientificas.us.es/index.php/ppa/about/submissions

Authors of the call for proposals:
Paula Lacomba Montes, dr. in Architecture, professor at the ETS of Architecture, Universitat Politècnica de València.
Clara Elena Mejía Vallejo, dr. in Architecture, professor at the ETS of Architecture, Universitat Politècnica de València.

Emails for inquiries regarding the call for applications :
p.lacombamontesupv.es / cemejiapra.upv.es