Today, inbuilt furniture remains in a very precarious state, only really being applied to housing projects at the scale of the studio. Both its social and environmental potentials have therefore not fully seen light. This is because, at a larger scale, it has principally been deployed within a sequence of separated rooms as a tool to script the way one is to occupy space. Therefore, implementing norms of specific class, gender and time, rather than a means to liberate the flat from its subdivisions.
This was especially the case of La Cité Ouvrière, in Paris— the site of my project— a housing scheme developed by private philanthropic foundations in the 1890s to house the working class family. Hundreds of Cité Ouvrières were built around Paris, deploying the rationally planned kitchens of the Home Economics Mouvement, introducing the heteronormative architecture to the working class. The flat acted as a sort of taxonomy for the nuclear family, giving every member a room, a position to fill. Today the sequence of purpose built rooms acts as a rigid barrier for this type of housing, hindering all forms of cohabitation within the building.
As architects, we have been so reluctant to challenge cohabitation within the home, that the purpose-built room continues to dictate domestic architecture. La Salle Commune challenges privacy within the home, offering the inhabitant the chance to gather, welcome and share in a generous central space. Something which is, at present, in most dense cities like Paris, exclusive to luxury housing.
The project was developed at the Architectural Association School of Architecture.
KOOZ What prompted the project?
EB The project was prompted by an interest in the in-built typology. This type of furniture appeared as a solution to maximise efficiency in the home, as a by-product of functionalism in domestic architecture. To understand the role and effect of this typology I began to study the origins of domestic functionalism. Although most commonly attributed to notorious, often white, male architects, my thesis argued that domestic functionalism originated from a completely different set of ideological concerns: the experience of the housewife. As modern architects implemented (and subsequently appropriated) the designs of the home economics movement, the norms of the middle class housewife were deployed in the minimal dwelling, and transferred to the working class, where women were often wage workers and the principal caretakers of the home.
KOOZ What questions does the project raise and which does it address?
EB The project questions the architecture of the room and therefore the notion of privacy within the home. As less and less households represent the traditional nuclear family, the project exposes the inadequacy of the traditional bourgeois dwelling plan. This inadequacy is often addressed by offering cohabitation and cooperation between inhabitants at large, often seeking solutions for this outside the home. Meaning that the room, a western, and somewhat recent invention, has continued to dictate domestic architecture, sacrificing the flat’s social capacity and suppleness. I chose to address this by offering cohabitation within the household, challenging the flat’s attributes of private space, welcoming cohabitation and cooperation within the home.
KOOZ How does the project challenge our contemporary perceptions and paradigms on the "home"? How do you see your project informing a different approach and experience of domesticity?
EB By exposing domestic life to the flat’s periphery, removing all subdivisions, then concealed by a system of continuous doors, domestic space can be momentarily neutralised, rejecting inherited norms and prescriptions. Within this neutral unspecific space— La Salle Commune— unexpected and traditionally non-domestic activities can take place.
KOOZ What are the opportunities which you imagine arising from this kind of cohabitation?
EB As cities densify, I see the project becoming a structural system, one that liberates us from the small, redundant purpose-built rooms. Where a small modest household can host professional and social activities.
KOOZ What is for you the power of the architectural imaginary?
EB The image offers the architect the ability to persuade. For example in my project: challenging privacy in the home is very disorienting and provocative, the image serves as a tool to reassure, to see cosiness and comfort in such radical plan.
