Future domesticities
Polish architect and writer based in London, UK. I dream of future worlds with feminist design collective Edit and teach at the London School of Architecture, and University for the Creative Arts. My writing has been published in The Architectural Review, Disegno, New York Review of Architecture and on e-flux Architecture, among others. I have held residencies at the Design Museum in London and at the Canadian Centre for Architecture. My research interests include sites and infrastructures for reproductive labour, and their place in a low carbon future.
We have become too comfortable. Individual appliances furnish every home, despite remaining dormant for most of the week, the labour-saving credentials of domestic technology have long been discredited. The green transition will require not only the redesign of what buildings are made of but also of the way we live. Rethinking domestic labour and domestic energy regimes can offer communal luxury and an economy of scale.
My ongoing project about laundry has focused on washing line bans, unhealthy levels of moisture and internal air pollution, bad housing conditions and lack of access to outdoor space. An important side to this exploration traces the histories of communal laundry and drying rooms, which could be found on every public housing estate in London up to 1970s. Such arrangements are still commonplace in other European countries such as Sweden, Switzerland or Germany. Laundry provides a useful example through which to rethink how domestic labour is organised in a low-carbon future. Shared spaces for domestic work have the potential of reducing labour and energy consumption as well as providing a social place outside the nuclear family home. A shift from private to communal luxury is needed for a sustainable future - and domestic practices and housing design are ripe for reinvention.
This research project was presented in 2023 as part of the Design Researchers in Residence at the Design Museum in London. I am interested in further pursuing the histories of shared laundry rooms in the UK as well as in other European countries, to achieve a fuller image and inform the future way of living and designing homes.