ABSTRACT
This part introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters. The part explores the relationship between sex roles and the meaning and use of the home. It addresses the ambivalence of the home as “woman’s place” and the source of her oppression. The part presents an historical overview of the way in which women’s magazines have portrayed the conflicts in the definition of the home environment as embodied by designers and users since the 1830s. It demonstrates that collective domestic architecture has existed in workable and complex forms even though these experiments have been isolated and limited in scope to groups outside the cultural mainstream. The part illustrates the way in which a combination of psychological, social, and design factors interact to pose problems for women within the home environment. It reviews plans of improved domestic architecture proposed by the utopian socialists and cooperative housekeepers.
