Hybrid Furniture Revealing Hidden Labor in the Home
Andrew Xu
2025
DOMESTICITY OBJECTIFIED examines the historical and spatial construction of domestic labor through a feminist lens, arguing that the modern home has become a site of invisible, unpaid, and increasingly isolated work. Beginning with Catherine E. Beecher and Harriet Beecher Stowe's The American Woman's Home (1869), the research traces how ideals of womanhood and domestic responsibility became embedded within the architecture of the home and reinforced through technological "advancements" that promised convenience while intensifying privatized labor. Drawing on the work of Helen Hester, Patty Carroll, Edit Collective, and Tatiana Bilbao, the project explores how cleaning, cooking, and laundry shifted from communal practices to solitary rituals hidden within domestic space. These transformations reveal how architecture, design, and consumer culture have perpetuated gendered expectations by concealing the labor necessary to maintain the household. Rather than accepting efficiency and individualization as design goals, this research proposes reimagining domestic spaces and household objects to encourage shared use, social interaction, and collective care. By challenging the spatial organization of the contemporary home, the project advocates for hybrid domestic environments that acknowledge changing family structures, redistribute household responsibilities, and make invisible labor visible. Ultimately, it argues that redesigning the spaces of everyday life is essential to creating more equitable and collective futures of domestic work.