Home + Household: Architectures of Social Reproduction with Elke Krasny

Photo: Cajetan Perwein, 2025

‘Home’ and ‘household’ both signify where people live, but from distinct perspectives: ‘home’ evokes physical and emotional belonging, whereas ‘household’ frames social and economic relations, highlighting how domestic life is structured and experienced differently. From the technologies of rationalized domesticity to the rent-seeking dynamics of financialized housing, the places people inhabit are material and spatial articulations of economies, ideologies, and politics. From a feminist perspective, this lecture examines the multiple dimensions of architectures of social reproduction: the frictions and tensions between household and home as they appear in canonical modernist architecture, and in the ways women are currently engaging in collective organizing, self-building, and self-rebuilding during economic crises, disasters, and war.

This public lecture is organised by senior lecturer Rebecca Ahlstedt, at Interior Architecture and furniture design, and Sofia Wiberg, research leader at Transplace, KTH and senior lecturer at Konstfack for the course Gestaltade Livsmiljöer, in collaboration between Konstfack and Södertörn.

Elke Krasny, PhD, Professor for Art and Education and Head of the Art and Education Program at the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna. She is a feminist cultural theorist, urban researcher, curator, and author. Her scholarship and her international lectures address ecological and social justice at the global present with a focus on caring practices in architecture, urbanism, curatorial work, and contemporary art.

Elke Krasny also lectures on Ways of Seeing care 10 March at 6 pm, at Hägerstensåsen Medborgarhus.