top of page

 

-----------

CHAPTER CITATION

Chee, Lilian, and Melany Sun-Min Park. "Domesticity + Home". In Home+Bound: Narratives of Domesticity in Singapore and Beyond. Singapore: NUS Press, 2021.

 

-----------

 

-----------

 

-----------

2013:

Domesticity + Home:

Reframing Narratives, Reforming Boundaries

Though they are used sometimes interchangeably, the proximate relationship between 'home' and 'domesticity' is, at the same time, obvious and problematic. These difficulties have to do with the narrowing of both terms with a sense of security, predictability and hence, fixity, a consequence of the incessant repetition of spaces and routines connected with the act of dwelling. Yet, how are these terms manifested discursively and materially in architecture?

Home is the locus of domesticity. Home is where the ideologies (concepts), practices (rituals/habits) and material (objects) manifestations of domesticity are realised. In fact, home is an intensely political site. Contrary to common perception, home is not a fixed and stable location. It is shaped by inclusions, exclusions and contestations, that is to say, it is formed by specific biases towards peoples, objects, and practices.

While home may be considered a 'symbolic container expressing the identities of its inhabitants as well as conveying more general cultural assumptions and beliefs about the world', 1 it is equally also 'a site of agency and a site of mobility, rather than simply a symbolic system that acts as the

backdrop or blueprint for practice and agency'. 2 This means that inhabitation of any space with the intent of domesticating it as 'home' involves a two-way process: the house or space is being changed by the individual, as much as the individual is mutually transformed by his/her space of dwelling...

Web Design & Curation: Lin Derong | Lilian Chee © Singapore, 2026
bottom of page