A Dissolution of the Domestic

The story of migration is one of departure. “[…] only the future revisits the past”. Forced emigration from one’s home puts pressure on the respective families: their point of departure – war in both our cases – sets a radically different start for their new lives.

To sustain their families, mothers work long hours, in low-status businesses with comparably low salaries. This influences the upbringing of their children. The reproductive (non-productive) spaces often overlap with conventionally productive or recreationally read spaces: the nail salon, kebab shop or shopping mall become equally important or even more important than conventional domestic environments.

There are many shops around Schwamendingerplatz, all next to each other, framing and defining the street with their shopfronts. There are nail salons, döner kebab shops, wash salons, fabric stores, and second hand shops. Many of them lack the space needed for care. While the shops appear along the street in a line, they also form clusters within their respective buildings.

In between these clusters, we want to introduce care centres for the children of the people who work in the shops. It is a space where children and adults can hang around and is a further extension of the diluted domestic. In order for the working parents to still hear their children, an enfilade is introduced as an architectural element. It physically connects the spaces between the centres for children (and parents, if wanted) and enables the working parents to actually hear their children – similar to them being in the back room. These enfilades act as a subversive and playful intervention into the existing.

Project by: Ida Zakaryan, Martina Hügli, Pierre Eichmeyer

Teaching team: Anna Puigjaner, Jo Baan, Lisa Maillard, Luis Úrculo, Pol Esteve Castelló, He Shen

Design Studio: Autumn 2023