Our society’s persistent efforts to confine and conceal femininity (the experience of sacrificing one’s personhood for the needs of others) creates gendered barriers in the built world, most pronounced in domestic spaces.  This causes the separation of paid work from unpaid care work, which almost exclusively takes place in the private dwelling, reinforcing the suppression of femininity.  This predicament is exacerbated in North American suburbs, where current approaches to caring for the community, self, elders, children, and environment are done on an individual basis, resulting in extreme alienation of women.  This thesis seeks to redesign the underutilized spaces of suburban neighbourhoods (the garage, front yard, and backyard) with a supportive communal care structure.   Centring communities around care work will bond neighbourhoods that have been severely atomized, resulting in a society that reconciles femininity.  

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This thesis is broken up into 3 parts:

Link for Part 1: The Garage as an Opportunity

Link for Part 2: The New Suburban Street

Link for Part 3: Collective Backyards

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Link to entire thesis document.