OUT OF SIGHT
Peyton McGarry & Eva Michaels
2026
This proposal investigates the historical relationship between
domestic architecture and invisible labor, questioning how the modern home has
been designed to conceal the care, maintenance, and reproductive work that
sustains everyday life. Tracing the evolution from enfilade spatial
organization to the corridor’s emergence in the sixteenth century, the project
examines how architecture reinforced privacy, hierarchy, and the separation of
residents from domestic workers. Through precedents such as the Frankfurt
Kitchen and Koolhaas Houselife, the research reveals how domestic labor
has been both spatially confined and systematically hidden, despite being
essential to the operation of the home.
In response, OUT OF SIGHT proposes an alternative
domestic architecture that refuses concealment and instead positions labor as
central, collective, and visible. The project reimagines the home as a vertical
system composed of alternating maintenance and private floors, where acts of
caring, cleaning, cooking, and washing are amplified and placed on display.
Expanded maintenance floors operate as public stages for domestic labor, while
compressed private floors provide spaces for retreat and rest. Circulation is
embedded within vertical cores that connect all levels through stairs and
escalators, dismantling the separations that traditionally obscure labor within
the home.
By eliminating corridors, exposing maintenance systems, and
transforming domestic work into a shared social performance, OUT OF SIGHT challenges the historical architecture of concealment. The project proposes a
new spatial order in which labor is no longer marginalized or hidden, but
recognized as the fundamental structure that produces and sustains domestic
life.