ONCE THE WHOLE CITY WAS A WORKPLACE. ​

— Edward Heathcote ‘Can the city be redesigned for the new world of work?’

Financial Times, ‘Future of Work’, August 8, 2022. ​

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Work is located in the home. Work is still located in the city. But increasingly, work happens some- where between these two opposing locations. Architecture separating productive (paid) versus reproductive (domestic/care) labour are being rendered obsolete. Public and private realms are equally muddied.

 

Today, we are compelled to rethink labour in its multiple forms (hybrid, remote and flexible) and the need to design reciprocal spaces. The once immutable opposition between workspaces and restful homes needs to be shaken up. ​

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It is not business as usual.

 

Matters of care increasingly shape how we think about our workplaces and how we should live. Are our workplaces (office-based, hybrid or flexible) still working? How does work intersect with everyday routines? What do these changing intersections mean for our future cities? ​ The projects in this studio explore tensions and contradictions experienced in the crossovers between work and home, where modes of capitalist production encounter speculative care. Which lines have been crossed, or transgressed, rendering everyday work/living places and practices non-normative? What details might one speculate with, and can these open opportunities to re-narrate entire cities? Can an architecture of care fundamentally create a resilient citizenry? The projects that follow enact counter-situations which challenge the conceptions, forms, and experiences of work and life in our future cities.

 

This studio is part of Foundations of Home-Based Work: A Singapore Study, funded by the Social Science Research Thematic Grant.

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