The modern apartment is the index of a process that constructed the nuclear family as the ‘natural’ unit of Western society. This talk traces the genealogy through which the dwelling was scripted into a diagram of asymmetric relationships, separating production from reproduction and crystallising power hierarchies. Intimacy and love have been forced into a rigid heteronormative pattern, but is ultimately architecture the real villain of this ongoing story?
Maria Shéhérazade Giudici is the founder of research platform Black Square; she leads the History and Theory course at the School of Architecture of the Royal College of art, and is the Head of the PhD Programme at the Architectural Association.
Part of the design studio “Inside Red Vienna”