Domesti-City
This project examined potential new typologies for multi-unit housing inspired by current trends in co-living and the sharing economy, as well as the historic legacy of communal living experiments in Northern California. Focussing in particular on the elderly population, this studio asks: How can architecture structure new ways for us to live collectively and thereby be a political tool?
Constituency & Site
This project focuses on the elderly population in San Francisco. Currently, the city houses 161,777 residents age 60 and over—approximately twenty percent of the city’s population. While several issues impact the elderly population, some of the primary difficulties are economic in nature.
If San Francisco is undergoing a housing crisis the Mission District is not an exception. This project addresses single, Latinx elderly women as a subgroup of constituents.
Because of the history behind the Mission District and despite the rising housing prices, more Latinx live in the district than other races and ethnicities, which differs form the overall demographics of San Francisco. The distribution of ages in the Mission District currently accommodate a higher percentage of 25 to 40 year old population, pushing out and away the elderly, ages 60 to 85 years old, and as this constituency ages, females outnumber males.
Shared Interfaces
Single, Latinx elderly woman live in the Mission alone (single or widowed), co-living with the family or relatives, or in a senior or nursing home facility. The amenities mostly used by them are those related to domestic labor, since its a skill they have performed their whole lives. These spaces are kitchens and dining areas, laundry and cleaning rooms, and spaces to care for their children and grandchildren.
This project takes the domestic labor outside of the housing units. We often think of domestic labor to be in the private realm, an the area typically female engendered, and of the public realm as the area where we activate ourselves socially. Latina elderly women are caregivers that dedicate their lives to generously help others unconditionally and uncompensated within the confines of the private/domestic realm because of previously limited opportunities to education or formally recognized professions.
In my proposal, collectivity happens at different times of the day when clusters of four units share a semi-private courtyard by opening or closing segmented bifold panels, blurring the indoor and outdoor. In the threshold created between the public and the private is where the collective domestic labor is placed, were Mujeres create community. Courtyards are programmed for shared activities and defined by shapes; the square holds cooking space, circle holds eating, triangle holds cleaning, and pentagon holds childcare as part of additional program supporting the adjacent neighborhoods. On the 3rd level units, the shared activities happen in between the the lower shaped courtyards. Most units also share internal stairs and bathrooms enclosed within mirrored rows of quadrants.
