Produktion, Reproduktion, Kooperation: Die Villa von der ‚negativen Utopie‘ zum Gemeinschaftshaus

Abstract

Today more than ever, production transcends the boundaries that, since modernity, separated the domestic space from the workplace. New forms of production imply the overlap between work and life, to the point that they become indistinguishable.

This condition clashes with the very purpose of the domestic interior, which, since its invention in the eighteenth century, supposedly existed in compensatory opposition to the work sphere. Commenting on the emergence of the domestic interior, Walter Benjamin wrote that “For the private individual, the place of dwelling is for the first time opposed to the place of work. The former constitutes itself as interior. Its complement is the office. The private individual, who in the office has to deal with reality, needs the domestic interior to sustain him in his illusions.”

Source: Dogma, Realism Working Group: „Production, Reproduction, Co-Operation: The Villa from “Negative Utopia” to Communal House“, in: The Property Issue – Ground Control and the Commons, Aachen 2018, Page 154–173, hier S. 154