Fragments of Home: Domestic Businesswomen and Collective Motherhood

Abstract

One in three children in the United States live in a single parent household; yet, the most likely demographic to experience eviction in the U.S. is low-income single mothers. This thesis proposes a framework for thinking about communal family structures, housing security, and intimate domestic space, through the lens of designing for single mother households in New York City. The housing crisis in cities across the country specifically affects single mothers and children, yet these identities are rarely explicitly designed for; economically, systemically and architecturally.

Collections of oral histories— from single mothers in my life who have experienced housing insecurity— illustrate the fragments which make up the feeling of home, the ways that architectural detail can reflect motherhood, the need to inherently examine both domesticity and labor. These spatial fragments, in conjunction with research on existing zoning, planning, development, and affordable housing pathways, inform architectural possibilities for communal housing across three neighborhoods in New York City.

In order to advocate for these kinds of architectural opportunities to exist and planning initiatives to be community specific, family specific; we have to be able to imagine what these collective structures visually look like, how architecture can facilitate a stable relationship between working and living for single mother households.