VISUALISING HOME-BASED WORK
Organizing Committee
Lilian CHEE Associate Professor, NUS CDE
Jane M. JACOBS Professor, University of Melbourne
Natalie PANG Associate Professor, NUS CNM
Audrey YUE Professor, NUS CNM
Research Assistants
Ruella Che; Liyana Doneva; Rebecca Chong, James Lim
This conference and exhibition is jointly supported by the NUS Cultural Research Centre (A-0003757-01-00) and administered by the Ministry of Education, Singapore, under its Social Science Research Thematic Grant (MOE2020SSRTG-032).
ABOUT
Contact for enquiries: foundationsforhbw@nus.edu.sg
EXHIBITION
Cases | Data | Propositions | Speculations
This exhibition documents the variety of paid work conducted in the Singaporean home — from an electrical repair service operating out of a study table, to a burgeoning urban farm on an adjacent green corridor.
The drawings are complemented by a series of speculative models that reimagine a 4-room public housing (HDB) flat as the site for four different types of home-based workers: a homebaker, a teleworker, a craftsperson, and an aesthetician. The models offer new typologies for the public housing flat that might adequately accommodate paid labour activities.
Accompanying these home-based work case studies and design propositions are a selection of student projects from Domestic Capital, an Options M. Arch 1 design studio, led by A/P Dr Lilian Chee.
The series of social mixing diagrams illustrate the distributions of home-based workers’ interactions across multiple scales — house; neighbourhood; overseas — and purposes — home and family; work; and leisure. The diagrams and case drawings are developed from data collected in a Home Audit exercise under Professor Jane M. Jacobs for Foundations for Home-Based Work.
This conference and exhibition is jointly supported by the NUS Cultural Research Centre (A-0003757-01-00) and administered by the Ministry of Education, Singapore, under its Social Science Research Thematic Grant (MOE2020SSRTG-032).
Organizing Committee
Lilian CHEE
Associate Professor, NUS CDE
Jane M. JACOBS Professor, University of Melbourne
Natalie PANG Associate Professor, NUS CNM
Audrey YUE Professor, NUS CNM
ABOUT Research Assistants
Ruella Che; Liyana Doneva; Rebecca Chong, James Lim
Contact for enquiries: foundationsforhbw@nus.edu.sg
VISUALISING HOME-BASED
WORK
Volume: Aesthetician
4 VISUALISING HOME-BASED WORK: PROPOSITIONS 5
VISUALISING HOME-BASED WORK Propositions
Aesthetician
An aesthetician, who refuses to share a room with anyone else (most certainly not his younger sibling), lives and works in the bedroom next to the entrance corridor. He worked at Jean Yip for 5 years before making the decision to strike out on his own and set up a comprehensive beauty salon that offers both lash and nail services. He stays with his parents, who own the flat, as well as a younger sibling with whom he has a less-than-harmonious relationship. The fellow occupant with whom he is able to get along best with is his Ragdoll named Popi (cats are not allowed in HDB flats, but on so many levels, no one cares). Aside from the clinical requirements of a beauty salon (proper lighting, a sink for sanitary purposes), the aesthetician also wanted to market his business as therapeutic and nourishing for one's self-esteem.
Customers walk down a long corridor, along which he has displayed his numerous beauty competition accolades and diploma degrees, before arriving at the salon. The primary light source is the wallhung ring light, under which he and his customer will identify and discuss the work that needs to be done during their session. At the end of the transformative processes, he draws open the sliding windows, unveiling his windowsill garden (which Popi can often be found snoozing in), and giving his customers a chance to recompress before having to head out the door back into the hustle and bustle of the Singaporean public.
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12 VISUALISING HOME-BASED WORK: PROPOSITIONS 13 Volume: Teleworker VISUALISING HOME-BASED WORK Propositions
Teleworker
A work-from-home graphic designer of 2 years lives in this four-room flat, along with her husband, who works from home half the week, their 8-month-old baby, her parents (who own the flat), a helper, and a beagle named Snoop Dog (first name is Snoop, last name is Dog). After months of unsuccessfully trying to be in 3 places at once - her work table in her bedroom, the baby swing in the room closest to the entrance, her plant rack in the living room — there was the need for a radical reorganization of the flat. Where sorting objects, people, and uses into rooms had failed, the house was conceptualized as a single room to be subdivided (reminiscent of House In Plum Grove). The living room was discretized and collapsed into a shelf where the television set and the family’s books could all be placed. The grandmother often pulls up a seat and unfolds her ironing board to iron as she watches the news, but potters into the adjacent vestibule where her grandson’s baby swing is located when she hears him vocalize for attention, where she is often joined by the graphic designer who had just rounded the corner coming from her workspace.
The whole flat is now dedicated to work, childcare, and recreation, all at the same time, with everything, everywhere, all at once, for the existence of one is contingent on their coexistence with the other facets of domestic life.
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20 VISUALISING HOME-BASED WORK: PROPOSITIONS 21 Volume: Craftsperson VISUALISING HOME-BASED WORK Propositions
Craftsperson (Modelmaker)
A freelance modelmaker stays in one of the bedrooms in this flat. He is cotenants with a young couple, who stays in the master bedroom, and a university student from Myanmar, who stays in the bedroom next to the entrance corridor. The modelmaker lives and works entirely out of his bedroom, which has been divided more or less down the middle between rest and work. Towards the door are his closet and bed. Bathed in the full extent of light from his ribbon window are his heavy-duty workable, as well as his storage shelf and material racks. The space also doubles as a photo studio for his models, which he regularly posts about on social media (where his customer base is). He edits his photos, and curates his social media posts at the desk at the center of the room, which also doubles as a space for personal browsing and gaming. Given how much must take place in so little space, certain storage innovations allow for space and surfaces to be economically used. His material rack is a hacked IVAR shelf, which allows for large, flat pieces of materials (such as Bristol and Grevboard) to be stored upright (a position where they occupy the least amount of floor area. The raised platform on which his heavy-duty worktable is placed also doubles as a surface upon which he can cut and reduce large boards of material to a more manageable size to work with at his workable.
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28 VISUALISING HOME-BASED WORK: PROPOSITIONS 29 Volume: Home Baker VISUALISING HOME-BASED WORK Propositions
Home Baker
A home baker, who started in 2020 when the Covid-19 pandemic hit, lives and works out of this fourroom flat, purchased as a BTO. She lives here with her husband, an accountant who manages the baking business finances and also works a job outside. The couple have two children - a daughter in primary school, and a son in kindergarten. The family is relatively harmonious and good at compromise. This made the integration of the home baking business into the flat much easierher children were willing to share a room, so that her daughter’s former bedroom, located along the entrance corridor, could be converted into the front of house. To avoid overcrowding the corridors (and invoking the ire of her neighbours), the entrance corridor was also converted into a vestibule for receiving customers. The front of house also doubles as the family’s new dining room. Save for a bay of the IVAR shelf reserved for baked goods and other items for sale, the rest of the room looks notably domestic. While this might be part of the branding of a home baking business, this is more critically due to the need for the room to double as both a space for customers and the family, depending on the time of day, due to the space constraints. The dining table is large enough to accommodate customers, but put away the baked goods onto the tabletop pedestals, and meals, tuition, and stocktaking can all take place there.
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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
MOE Social Science Research Council
Singapore Research Nexus
Department of Communications and New Media, NUS
Department of Architecture, College of Design and Engineering, NUS
Cultural Research Centre, NUS
Central Library, NUS
Website: Lin Derong
James Lim
Layout:
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