Feminist Housing

The stand-alone home has long been the prominent housing typology within New Zealand, catering to the ‘nuclear’ family and reinforcing outdated gender roles while isolating and excluding those who fail to conform. This gendering of spaces within the home persists to this day, allowing the argument that the built environment continues to reinforce the values of the nuclear family, consistently confining women to the home and separating the private home from the public workplace. This boundary between public and private maintains a strict separation of productive and reproductive labour, reinforcing the exploitation and dismissal of domestic labour. The standalone home maintains the relationship between public and private and the separation of productive and reproductive, which actively upholds historical gender roles. Historically, gendered spaces within the home, such as the kitchen and laundry, have been placed furthest from public space, confined to the back of the house and hidden from public view. In response to the existing relationship between public and private within the home, this research aims to investigate and challenge this relationship within the home, centring around the question, “how can the relationship between public and private be challenged within residential architecture through a feminist lens?” The three design chapters within the research explore and challenge the relationship between public and private within residential architecture at increasing scales. Each design chapter uses feminist theory and methodologies to question the existing dynamics and gender biases within residential architecture, investigating this through an installation, residential alteration and co-housing brief. This thesis uses a “researchthrough- design approach”, applying feminist theory and a speculative design approach to challenge the relationship between public and private within residential architecture. An iterative and reflective approach to design has been used throughout the design chapters, using methods including scaling, collage and superimposition to challenge the relationship between public and private at varying levels of complexity. The conclusion of this thesis will outline the methods and architectural interventions employed within each design chapter, summarising how the relationship between public and private was challenged within each design chapter.