Burning Down the House

The current hypercommodification of housing casts a long shadow back in the history of domestic space. In this lecture I will attempt a critical and deep history of domestic space from its origins to the present condition. I will show how whtin Western civilization domesticity was understood not as human necessity, but as project centered on the idea of private property and whose goal was to produce a specific subject with clearly defined class and gender connotations. Architecture has played a main role in the 'domestic project' and although the decommodifcation of housing requires policies that goes far beyond architecture, the latter's reform is one of the most urgent tasks for our discipline.