Title: The Political Potency of the Home – a study of feminist perspectives, ideologies, and approaches.

Author: Ellie Hardie

Year: 2022

The practices and realisations of architecture ‘reproduce material and spatial relations of power in designed environments.’ Therefore, architecture becomes a critical lens in the analysis of social inequalities. The political nature of the built environment means that spatial analysis parallels with critical feminist anthropologies.

‘While acknowledging feminism as a plural, dynamic, and multiple movement, rather than one coherent ism,’ this essay seeks to connect varied feminist research to social change. Here an intersectional approach is taken – perceiving ‘feminism’ as the overarching pursuit against oppression and injustice in all forms.

‘In a short essay, one cannot hope to survey the variety of epistemic approaches that label themselves as feminist.’ Instead, the focus will be a critical discussion of three feminist approaches to transforming western domestic life: flexibility, collectivism and, holistic practice. The writing will apply these technologies and parallel theoretical ideas in a graphical ficto-critical analysis of a Sheffield case study.

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