ABSTRACT
Housing is the field in which architects have had the most perceptible societal impact in the last century, and in which the discipline’s ambitions channel most visibly ideological and political programs. With housing, questions regarding function move to the fore, whereas symbolic relations, so central to public buildings, recede into the background. Housing, however, is not limited to practical concerns and is a means of social integration: housing reproduces society’s ideals and self-image at the scale of the home. In response to the current interest in forms of collective dwelling, this chapter provides a concise study of the emergence and dominance of the idea of privacy in housing. Privacy, whether the result of Puritan utilitarianism or perceptions of morality and respectability in modern society, has been spatially articulated via detached home typologies and terminal rooms. The current challenge to the idea of privacy in dwelling, this chapter argues, is driven not by an ideological shift, but by the interests of the free market, demonstrating how the economy can midwife a coping mechanism as well as a legitimizing ideology.
