air your dirty laundry in public
Solène Hoffmann
Mira Kind
Saskja Odermatt
Lea Prati
Giulia Scotto
Miriam Stierle
Viviane Zibung
indiana is a collective of architects and urban researchers exploring the relationship between gender and space. Founded in 2021 in Zurich, the collective has initiated and contributed to various self-education projects, such as readings, meetings, and architectural tours, installations, and workshops. Current members are Marie Grob, Mira Kind, Saskja Odermatt, Lea Prati, Giulia Scotto, Miriam Stierle and Viviane Zibung.
By observing the built space around us through a feminist lens, we can understand many of the dynamics that have given rise to our society, based on accumulation at any cost and at the expense of the planet and excluded social groups (women included).
Care work, until recently strictly organized along gender lines, is one of the aspects in which the dynamics of patriarchal society emerge most clearly. Therefore, the reconsideration of the spatial relationship between productive and reproductive (care-) work is one of the key points of a feminist transformation of our society, a dream the collective shares.
To make a contribution to the visibility of care work and to activate built spaces linked to it, indiana began to hold its monthly meetings of the reading group in different laundry rooms of housing blocks in Zurich. This was the starting point of an in-depth research on the historical and contemporary meanings of these spaces and their potential to become “third spaces” where inhabitants can meet and interact.
Waschküchen or collective laundries are a long-standing Swiss tradition and often the only shared space in public housing. In recent years, as newer and larger apartments include private washing machines, laundry is becoming a more private activity, reducing possibilities for tenant interaction and making care work invisible. With this increasingly individualistic way of living, we miss the opportunity to offer collective spaces to the inhabitants and fail to encourage a sustainable consumption model based on sharing appliances and spaces. By documenting exemplary collective laundries in Zurich, we aim to reevaluate and rethink these disappearing spaces by emphasizing their importance of collectivity and care work, as well as their potential to become “third spaces” if designed properly.
In 2021, when we founded indiana collective in Zurich, we started the reading group "Women and/or in the city". The aim of this ongoing reading group was to explore the relationship between gender and space at different scales. In the beginning we met outdoors, using this as an opportunity to confront our reading with the built environment. When autumn came, we had to find a warmer place freely accessible. We soon realized that these spaces were extremely difficult to find and came up with the idea of meeting in semi-private laundry rooms. Every month we would choose a different location and began a recurring theoretical and embodied investigation of this space. Not only did we learn the symbolic and functional importance of this fundamental space of care, but we also realized the extent of its social potential, allowing for various informal encounters and activities.