Arquitectura da vida privada como interesse público (recensão)

Abstract

Monique Eleb is one of the exponents of the study of habitation who has played a major role in the important reflection on its transformation from the 17th century down to today. In her analysis of the bourgeois house she reveals the importance of the space as a mechanism. In other words, it is thought of and produced as a specific mechanism with a view to creating an effect with respect to behaviours and practices, be it in an explicit or implicit form. In the longue durée from the 19th century up to the be- ginning of World War II, the individual bourgeois house was the focus of activity by different specialists who found in the private sphere privileged territory for normalisation of the space and moralisation of behaviours in the defence of a collective and public ideal. By shaping the house and the private life that unfolds within it, i.e. the family life, ideologists, hygienists, politicians, physicians and legal experts and others redefined the idea of the private as a public interest, theorising an ideal form of habitation for all and thus laying the foundations for the definition of a new architecture.