Building as Domestic Labor, Ana-Maria Leon

Building as Domestic Labor

Ana María León

Left, brick baking equipment and tools. Concrete masonry units are one of the most ubiquitous building materials in the so-called global south. Cheap to make and easy to assemble, they allow for self-build housing solutions for much of the world’s population. At the same time, they are made of cement, a toxic and environmentally demanding material. The CMU block embodies two incommensurable problems: housing precarity and global environmental collapse. The vast scale and complexity of these issues is simultaneously daunting and urgent. And yet, while the housing question remains an unresolved global challenge, the construction of shelter constitutes the domestic realm, a space traditionally dismissed as apolitical. Hannah Arendt has contributed to this misconception

Right, a scene from the project documentation film, “How to Bake 30 Bricks,” depicts the architects demolding a batch of bricks.

by theorizing the domestic as the private sphere of the household. Understood as fulfilling basic necessities, the private realm allows for the development of a separate public sphere where politics take place. The domestic becomes the site of traditionally gendered labor dedicated to the sustenance of life: cooking, cleaning, and caring for the self and others. The processes mobilized by Office for Example point to the possibility of productively blending the politics of building with the processes of domestic labor. In doing so, I argue, they point towards the potential for careful, deliberate, and discrete acts to address global problems.

Right, scene stills from the film, “How to Bake an (Im)material Brick.” The film presents a step-bystep video, describing the architects recipe for wax preparation and casting processes.

The architects cook bricks. There is a careful and deliberate measuring of ingredients, adding and mixing, ladling and pouring. There’s baking and de-molding. In the end, we’re confronted with an aquamarine green brick with carefully graded gravel aggregate floating in its midst. In its solid state, the soy-wax emits a pleasant, yet faint smell, which reminds us of its promise: that it is ultimately able to melt, freeing both the scent and the aggregate it holds within. There are gendered cues carefully embedded in this narrative, and together they hint at an argument for an other architecture - an architecture of ephemerality, lightness, and care towards humans and non-humans. Discussions about gender and architecture too often fall under the banner of inclusion, carefully avoiding discussion of gendered traits. At the same time, we can’t

avoid the toxic masculinity attached to the model of the heroic architect, traits that have been eagerly cultivated and replicated by the culture of studio reviews, grueling late nights, and starchitect worship. Ideas of monumentality, solidity, and permanence are further embodied by the buildings that result from this culture. To what degree are these toxic traits also part of the building industry and the stresses it has created on the environment and the population of the planet?

Right, a scene from the project documentation film, “How to Bake 10 Bricks,” depicts the architects baking a series of 10 bricks.

Office for Example proposes an alternative by reframing the production of building materials within the realm of the domestic. By approximating brick fabrication to cooking, they endow building fabrication and construction with the traits of food preparation: the social space of the kitchen, the careful measuring and folding of ingredients, the multiple tasks and small pauses that are part of meal preparation. The bricks remind us that building can also be associated with care, protection, empathy, and shared actions. At a broader scale, they suggest the possibility of reclaiming building as domestic labor. The political implications of such reframing remain an open question, but one that may allow us to think alternatives to toxic modes of operating towards humans and non-humans.