ABSTRACT
In every culture and historical epoch, domestic architecture is uniquely revealing about prevailing social relations and norms of household organization. The design of houses is imbued with values and ideas that both reflect and exert tremendous influence over the patterns and quality of our lives. In this chapter I want to broaden the discussion of household technology to include the house as a technological construct, and the built environment more generally. The built environment is taken to mean ‘…our created surroundings, including homes, their arrangement in relation to one another, to public spaces, transport routes, workplaces and the layout of cities.’ (Matrix, 1984, p. 1) In what follows, I will be arguing that the built environment reflects and reinforces a domestic ideal which emphasizes the importance of the home as a woman’s place and a man’s haven. Sexual divisions are literally built into houses and indeed the whole structure of the urban system. Architecture and urban planning have orchestrated the separation between women and men, private and public, home and paid employment, consumption and production, reproduction and production, suburb and city. While people do not actually live according to these dichotomies, the widespread belief in them does influence decisions and have an impact on women’s lives.
