Lecture

Dwelling With Class – Building Structures of Classism in Architecture

Rosanna Umbach

Dwelling and class are interrelated and have been mutually dependent since (at least) the formation of a discourse about dwelling in modernity. The distinctions between ‘good’ and ‘bad’ forms of dwelling and ‘right’ and ‘wrong’ ways of living are part of a (modern) aesthetic tradition that is intertwined with both moral principles and a significant production of images in art and architecture. This can be critically questioned from a class-conscious perspective: to what extent are economic and social structures made in/visible here? How are class relations re/produced in images of dwelling, floor plans, interior design, architecture and urban planning? We encounter the imperative of a supposedly ‘correct’ way of living and dwelling in both, idealized images in art and architecture as well as in lifestyle magazines and home journals, TV series and on Instagram. Here, ideas of class relations are perpetuated. The models of bourgeois dwelling as an unmarked norm continues to shape the common notion of this ‘proper’ dwelling, which is usually identified as heteronormative, small-family and white. This talk aims to bring together various perspectives that critically examine dwelling in terms of class relations. Through examples from the history of art, architecture and design as well as (current) artistic and activist practices, it aims to put aesthetic, social and political interrelationships between dwelling and class into perspective. What role do art, architecture and (social) media play in conveying images of dwelling and class relations? How can gender differences, racism and class hierarchies be analytically intertwined, both historically and currently? What proletarian, revolutionary or emancipatory housing designs have existed and why are they rarely part of the discourse?

Bio:

Rosanna Umbach is an art historian and researches the relationship between dwelling and gender in art, architecture and society. Since 2023 she has been a research assistant (postdoc) at the University of Bremen in cooperation with the Mariann Steegmann Institut. Art & Gender and teaches at various international universities. Her research focuses on queer_feminist art/science, housing and urban space politics, classism and architecture, art and design of the 60s and 70s as well as sexuality, labour and body discourses in historical and contemporary images of visual culture. Together with Amelie Ochs, she works on the project Wohnen mit Klasse, which is dedicated to the aesthetic, social and political interrelationships of dwelling and class. She is a member of the research group wohnen+/-ausstellen, the international research network [wohn]zeitschriften and the AG Erste Generation Kunstgeschichte. She has been an editor at FKW // Zeitschrift für Geschlechterforschung und visuelle Kultur since 2022. Publications: Un/Gewohnte Beziehungsweisen. Visuelle Politiken des Familialen in der Zeitschrift »Schöner Wohnen«, 1960–1979, transcript: Bielefeld, forthcoming.

This Talk has been conceived by Daniela Ortiz dos Santos and Carsten Ruhl, in the scope of the Lecture Series HOUSING AND…  It invites a diverse group of guests to examine Housing in between architectural production, the historical, socio-political and territorial context, the heritage and cultural making processes, as well as the public space and the public debate.

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