Public Face and Private Space in the Design of Contemporary Houses

This essay examines the ways in which key twentieth- and twenty-first-century houses use boundaries, thresholds, and screens to protect private identities from public scrutiny. Focusing on a handful of case studies, it examines collaborative efforts by prominent contemporary architects and their clients to reshape conventional notions of domesticity and interior space. Focusing on the de-coupling of public and private representation and function, it offers a critical strategy for analyzing recent efforts by queer and unconventional clients to resist surveillance and public voyeurism, in opposition to fundamental Modernist notions of transparency and self-disclosure.