The Past, Present, and Future of the Chinese Home: An Architectural Study of the Relationship Between Politics, Culture, and Domestic Space

This thesis analyzes the oscillating cause and effect between State, citizen, and architecture by studying the relationship between politics and domestic spaces in China. It explores the development of China from the beginning of the twentieth century through the present and into a speculative future to argue that wider sociopolitical changes are reflected in the detailed and intimate spaces of the home, and conversely, that the home can act as an agent of political resistance. The timeline in question represents a unique and tumultuous era in the development of modern China, one which dramatically changed the way people in China built their homes, and in turn, lived their lives. By imagining a speculative future condition in which China has undergone another major political and cultural shift, this thesis will consider the past in order to propose a speculative trajectory for the future of domestic Chinese architecture.