In the home the intricate relations between architecture, gender and domesticity become visible. Negotiating Domesticity investigates the many and complex themes evoked by the interconnections between these terms.

Topics covered include famous as well as less well-known architectural examples and architects, which are explored from sociological, anthropological, philosophical and psychoanalytical approaches. The authors explore the relationships between modern domestic spaces and sexed subjectivities in a broad range of geographical locations of Western modernity.

This richly interdisiplinary work presents architects and postgraduate students with an in-depth exploration of domesticity in the modern era.

The home as part of material culture is the very place where the intricate relations between architecture, gender and domesticity become visible. This book investigates the multi-layered themes evoked by the interconnections between these terms. The contributions to this book address the gendered conceptions and the use of built spaces, the role of women as active agents of spatial production, and the mutual inscriptions of the materiality of architectural space and gendered subjectivities.
The focus of inquiry is modern architecture, also including the celebrated architecture of the Modern movement as its more common and widely spread derivatives that became the dominant mode of building in the twentieth century. The articles in the introductory section provide an overview of the existing discourse on modernity, domesticity and gender. The following three sections consist of essays on specific spatial scenarios from a broad range of geographical locations in the West, whereby the complicated relationship between gender and domestic space are revealed in architectural discourse and practice. The topics range from well-known architects and architectural examples such as Adolf Loos and the Maison de Verre to relatively unknown cases such as the polykatoikia apartments in Greece. In all cases, the authors' emphasis remains on how the concept of domesticity is produced by the gendered subjectivity of builders and users of domestic spaces and by architectural discourse.
The essays brought together in this book are based upon new interdisciplinary research which enriches architectural history with sociological, anthropological, philosophical and psychoanalytical approaches. Despitethe Modern movement's prominent emphasis on housing, the point is often made that modern art and architecture were about the suppression rather than the glorification of domesticity. This book contends that the modern era marks the rise of a new sense of domesticity that developed simultaneously with re-definitions of gender roles and which led to unprecedented articulations of sexuality with domestic space.

A major voice in the architectural culture of the mid-century, Sibyl Moholy-Nagy was uniquely engaged with modernism and modernity. As one of the very few female architectural critics of the time, she was an early voice articulating doubts about the path modernist architecture was taking, demystifying the myths of the masters, Mies, Le Corbusier and Gropius, and questioning their heroic, masculinist approach. Yet her writings and work are understudied, and have largely vanished from the canon of scholarly references on modernism. This book analyzes the significance of the life and work of Moholy-Nagy and explores the paradoxical aspects of the relationship between modernism and feminism. Published as part of the Bloomsbury Studies in Modern Architecture series, which brings to light the work of significant yet overlooked figures in modernism, it is both an examination of her work and legacy, and also a study on the roles of gender and of the changing nature of modernism in its trajectory from Europe to America. Drawing on personal papers, diaries, letters and lecture notes, as well as personal interviews with relatives, colleagues and students, this study is a key resource for scholars who would like to include the contributions of women in to their discussions of architecture and modernism.

Bridges the gap between the history and theory of twentieth-century architecture and cultural theories of modernity. In this exploration of the relationship between modernity, dwelling, and architecture, Hilde Heynen attempts to bridge the gap between the discourse of the modern movement and cultural theories of modernity. On one hand, she discusses architecture from the perspective of critical theory, and on the other, she modifies positions within critical theory by linking them with architecture. She assesses architecture as a cultural field that structures daily life and that embodies major contradictions inherent in modernity, arguing that architecture nonetheless has a certain capacity to adopt a critical stance vis-a-vis modernity. Besides presenting a theoretical discussion of the relation between architecture, modernity, and dwelling, the book provides architectural students with an introduction to the discourse of critical theory. The subchapters on Walter Benjamin, Ernst Bloch, Theodor Adorno, and the Venice School (Tafuri, Dal Co, Cacciari) can be studied independently for this purpose.

"Offers an intense scholarly experience in its comprehensiveness, its variety of voices and its formal organization... the editors took a risk, experimented and have delivered a much-needed resource that upends the status-quo." - Architectural Histories, journal of the European Architectural History Network "Architectural theory interweaves interdisciplinary understandings with different practices, intentions and ways of knowing. This handbook provides a lucid and comprehensive introduction to this challenging and shifting terrain, and will be of great interest to students, academics and practitioners alike." - Professor Iain Borden, UCL Bartlett School of Architecture "In this collection, architectural theory expands outward to interact with adjacent discourses such as sustainability, conservation, spatial practices, virtual technologies, and more. We have in The Handbook of Architectural Theory an example of the extreme generosity of architectural theory. It is a volume that designers and scholars of many stripes will welcome." - K. Michael Hays, Eliot Noyes Professor of Architectural Theory, Harvard University The SAGE Handbook of Architectural Theory documents and builds upon the most innovative developments in architectural theory over the last two decades. Bringing into dialogue a range of geographically, institutionally and historically competing positions, it examines and explores parallel debates in related fields. The book is divided into eight sections: Power/Difference/Embodiment Aesthetics/Pleasure/Excess Nation/World/Spectacle History/Memory/Tradition Design/Production/Practice Science/Technology/Virtuality Nature/Ecology/Sustainability City/Metropolis/Territory. Creating openings for future lines of inquiry and establishing the basis for new directions for education, research and practice, the book is organized around specific case studies to provide a critical, interpretive and speculative enquiry into the relevant debates in architectural theory.

"Offers an intense scholarly experience in its comprehensiveness, its variety of voices and its formal organization... the editors took a risk, experimented and have delivered a much-needed resource that upends the status-quo." - Architectural Histories, journal of the European Architectural History Network "Architectural theory interweaves interdisciplinary understandings with different practices, intentions and ways of knowing. This handbook provides a lucid and comprehensive introduction to this challenging and shifting terrain, and will be of great interest to students, academics and practitioners alike." - Professor Iain Borden, UCL Bartlett School of Architecture "In this collection, architectural theory expands outward to interact with adjacent discourses such as sustainability, conservation, spatial practices, virtual technologies, and more. We have in The Handbook of Architectural Theory an example of the extreme generosity of architectural theory. It is a volume that designers and scholars of many stripes will welcome." - K. Michael Hays, Eliot Noyes Professor of Architectural Theory, Harvard University The SAGE Handbook of Architectural Theory documents and builds upon the most innovative developments in architectural theory over the last two decades. Bringing into dialogue a range of geographically, institutionally and historically competing positions, it examines and explores parallel debates in related fields. The book is divided into eight sections: Power/Difference/Embodiment Aesthetics/Pleasure/Excess Nation/World/Spectacle History/Memory/Tradition Design/Production/Practice Science/Technology/Virtuality Nature/Ecology/Sustainability City/Metropolis/Territory. Creating openings for future lines of inquiry and establishing the basis for new directions for education, research and practice, the book is organized around specific case studies to provide a critical, interpretive and speculative enquiry into the relevant debates in architectural theory.