The origins of modern domestic space

This year the course will be devoted to the origins of modern domestic space, from early middle-ages settlements to the rise of houses for the laboring classes in the 1800s.

The evolution of modern domesticity is profoundly intertwined with the history of the family, marriage, property, working relationships, and above all capitalism. A crucial aspect of modern domesticity is the splintering force that separates domestic function and gender roles. From the middle-ages to the beginning of the 20th century the house is progressively segregated from public space, and it subdivided into increasingly specialized sub-spaces: the kitchen, the parlor, the bedroom, spaces that we now take for granted but whose origin is relatively recent. Another important aspect is the role of the house in the division of society into classes. Since the 14th century, with the formation of both the urban proletariat and the bourgeoise, houses were built into specific types, whose goal was to accommodate and reinforce not only gender roles but also class identity.

In this process, the emergence of typological design played an important role. Starting from the 16th century, master builders and later architects focused not only on monumental structures such as churches and palaces, but also on the project of houses for all classes, from the poor peasant to the prince. Unlike the making of architecture with capital A, the design of houses implies uniformity and standardization: the house becomes housing. The course traces this history by linking the rise of specific domestic types such as the townhouse, the cottage, the palazzo, the terrace house--with the historical circumstances that have produced them. Theories and theoretical models produced by Leon Battista Alberti, Sebastiano Serlio, Pierre Le Muet, John Wood the Younger and Henry Roberts will be studied as both symptoms and catalysts of important passages in the evolution of domestic space as both specific architectural construct and managerial apparatus. Besides this, the course will also look to specific cases beyond Europe such as Persia and China and other places.

The goal of this history is to demonstrate how contemporary phenomena such as the commodification of housing, gentrification, and gendered division of labor cast back a long shadow on the very origins of modern domesticity. Indeed, it is possible to argue that the invention of modern domestic space was a contribution of what Karl Marx defined as 'primitive accumulation', the process through which the early accumulation of capital was possible by forcefully dispossessing peasants of their means of production. By separating public and private space, modern domesticity contributed to naturalize domestic labor as a natural duty of families and especially women whose unwaged reproductive work was segregated and privatized. Special attention will be paid to the rise of Monasticism in the East and West as both an attempt to find alternative to domesticity, and a generator of domestic tropes such as individuation and surveillance. The history of modern domestic space will be eventually confronted with examples of dwellings from non-western cultures to emphasize how in spite of its pretentions of universality, western domesticity is only one version of what habitable space can be.

-10/09/2026

Early medieval houses and settlements

-17/09/2026

The castle, the farmhouse and the townhouse

-24/09/2026

The courtyard house in Persia and China

-01/10/2026

No lecture

-08/10/2026

The architecture of the Longhouse

-15/10/2026

The invention of the Palazzo

-29/10/2026

The origins of housing and domestic space as an architectural project

-05/11/2026

The architecture of the villa

-12/11/2026

The Housewification of domestic space

-19/11/2026

Domestic space in France 1600-1800

-26/11/2026

Domestic Space in England 1600-1800

(+ tutorial on writing assignment I)

-03/12/2026

Houses for the laboring classes and the rise of social housing

(+ tutorial on writing assignment II)

Assistant of the course:

Marson Korbi