Xu, Ye
(2025)
Negotiating “privacy” in the digital age: a study on the new live/work home.
PhD thesis, University of Nottingham.
Abstract
In the digital age, working from home has become a widespread trend. As public and productive activities enter the home, our private and family lives, in turn, increasingly extend throughout the city. This trend challenges the concept of the "private home" and the idea of the "home as a sanctuary away from productive activities", which we have taken for granted since the 19th century. This study examines recent changes in living patterns and spatial experiences brought about by digital home-working in contemporary urban homes. Building on this, it reimagines new models of public and private realms in the digital age, as it revisits Robin Evans’ classic discussion of the "invention of the corridor."
To reconsider the concept of privacy in the digital age, the study begins with a detailed historical review of the evolving public-private relationship. It traces the spatial configuration of domestic architecture across various periods, revealing how the concept of privacy has materialized in space and how it interacts with the outside world. The study argues that the public-private relationship has continuously shifted but has never been entirely separate. Public and private realms have always intertwined and maintained a certain tension. One of the key mediators connecting these realms within the home, the study finds, is domestic objects. It conducts a literature review on the "meaning" of domestic objects, highlighting that something entirely "private" cannot, in itself, be considered meaningful. The meaning of an object depends on the context of publicly or collectively constructed definitions. Thus, domestic objects always embody a relationship between public and private spheres, thereby giving rise to various spatial, symbolic, personal, and familial meanings.
The hypotheses drawn from the historical literature are further tested through case studies of contemporary live/work homes. These case study focuses on the spatial experiences and living scenarios of creative industry professionals working from home in London, UK, and Beijing, China. This group was selected because the history of live/work homes is closely tied to the rise of the creative industries and freelancers, who have a long-standing tradition of working from home. Their remote working and organizational models also represent contemporary forms of knowledge-based home working.
The research is based on field work, interviews, photographs and drawings of the live/work homes. The case study does not just focus on the home spaces, or the inhabitation activities in isolation; rather, it examines them in conjunction. Using a layered drawing method, it constructs multiple connections between the housing/house, rooms, furniture, objects, and aesthetic forms, along with the active role of inhabitants in the homemaking activities, and their living trajectories, territories, and perceptions. As such, This study offers a contribution not only to the history of interior but also to the way we discuss interior spaces.
As a result of the case studies, the thesis identifies the living and spatial patterns of live/work homes in contemporary urban settings, which exhibit notable "ecological diversity." In all of these spatial patterns, domestic objects play an important spatial role. The study focuses on several typical new spatial patterns and their corresponding new "corridor" models, including: a) an intimate, intertwined, fluid, and continuous domestic landscape, b) a domestic pattern of leaping, small territories, c) an aggregated, shared, mixed, and multicultural experimental space, d) a "porous vessel," where pores function as new "corridors", e) a multi-centred network, with urban corridors connecting dispersed live/work territories, and f) the digital home, where interfaces function as "digital corridors".
The findings suggest that the spatial patterns of live/work homes in the UK and China are far more similar than different, with the aforementioned patterns coexisting in homes in both countries. This is primarily because the physical configuration of space is no longer the most crucial factor in shaping living patterns. Digital technologies now play a key role. While housing types in China and the UK differ significantly, housing layouts, including corridors and other architectural elements, are no longer the primary factors organizing domestic life or defining the boundaries between public and private realms. Instead, the more critical factor influencing and reshaping public-private relationships today is digital media. This study views the digital workspaces centred around screens and cameras in homes as a kind of (semi-)public "digital corridor" inserted into private homes, a phenomenon that is increasingly universal. These "digital corridors", contrary to Robin Evans' critique of the corridor as a device for social isolation, enhance interaction between different systems, groups, and spaces, thereby offering new distinctions between public and private spaces.
The thesis concludes by discussing the subtle tensions between private and public life that have been reshaped in the digital age. It highlights the coexistence of various configurations of the public-private relationship, including: a) no clear boundary, where the two realms are fluidly intertwined and flexibly coexist, b) controlled interactions, where the two realms invades or penetrates each other within defined boundaries, c) clearly divisions between public and private realms, and d) overlapping, reconfiguring, and evolving public and private realms across both virtual and physical dimensions. These different interpretations and configurations of the public-private relationship coexist in contemporary urban homes, arising from each inhabitant's unique living practices and ongoing experiments, eventually stabilizing into a personally comfortable arrangement. From this perspective, live/work homes can be seen as a site of cultural regeneration and creative responses to political and social issues.
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