Term 2 Essay Abstract: The Architecture of Domesticity

In his book, The Minimum Dwelling, Karel Teige makes the point that the bourgeois dwelling does not fit with the reality of formats of living, situations, and lifestyles.

Taking this argument as the starting point, I would like to examine the conceptions of individual and collective as a critique of societal norms through two buildings whose creators attempted to, for very different reasons, respond to the need for a different setting for different styles of living.

Teige questions the degree to which modernist homes are really radical in challenging the existing social and socio-political orders. In both the Socialist-led housing project Metzleinstaler-Hof in Vienna and Aldo Van Eyck’s Orphanage in Amsterdam, both represent an ideology and a conception of new ways of living. Implicit in both the design and in the ideological aims of their designers is a strong sense of the importance of collective life, (though again for very different reasons). As critically examining these ideas of living, how do the Metzleinstaler-Hof and the Orphanage address these formally, programmatically, spatially, contextually, and in their organization?

How can we read these spaces as representative of a social order and structure, and how do they critique the existing and provide alternatives?

How might we apply Teige’s critiques to these buildings? What can we glean from the attempts of these two projects and an understanding of Teige’s critique of the bourgeois household towards a redefinition and heightened understanding of the reality of domesticity and domestic life? How might we apply this to an understanding of collective living today, and to collective housing?

Proposed Bibliography

Blau, Eve. The Architecture of Red Vienna

Hayden, Dolores. The Grand Domestic Revolution

Strauven, Francis. Aldo Van Eyck: The Shape of Relativity.

Teige, Karel. The Minimum Dwelling.