Housekeeping Time 

Domestic Architecture and the Chronopolitics of Late Capitalism

Housing, today, is subject to major temporal conflicts. Besides an increasing acceleration of everyday life, significant shifts in the organisation of living and working have challenged our daily temporalities and patterns of inhabitation. Against the backdrop of an ongoing socio-economic crisis and even more since the Covid-19 pandemic, domestic space has become a major place of conflict between hegemonic time-regimes (public time) and individual temporal resources (private time). The proliferation of remote work and flexible schedules have partially relocated labour into the domestic sphere, whereas the dependency on self-organised care is rising in many European countries due to economic burden, ageing populations and retreating states. The temporal pressures on households and their social capacities are consequently growing with decisive and unprecedented requirements for domestic arrangements.

Based on selected texts, theory inputs, and design exercises, we will discuss housing in relation to times of production and wage labour, housework, leisure and recreation, consumption, social reproduction and care. Specific domestic arrangements, considered as an important material support for daily actions and routines, will be examined on their temporal agency. What role do these spatial settings play in the politics of time of late capitalism? What does it mean to housekeep time today and can we think of a timekeeping house?

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