ABSTRACT
This chapter examines some social and architectural aspects of feminist agitation for domestic reform in the United States and Europe between 1800 and 1915. The designs and buildings are aimed at restructuring domestic work. A rosy glow suffuses the portrayal of domestic life in much American and European visionary architecture of the past century. Economic and technological developments have subjected offices, factories, and transportation systems to cycles of design and redesign while the plans of dwelling units have remained much the same. The earliest campaigns against private domestic work in the United States and Europe were launched by utopian socialists committed to building model communities as a strategy for achieving social reform. Utopian socialist communities organized as large families often wished to abolish the nuclear family in order to promote greater attachment to a shared communal ideology. The major achievement of both utopian socialist communities and cooperative housekeeping societies was ending the isolation of the housewife.
