The other in the ‘home’  

Who designs the environments and spaces around us? Whom are they designed for? And in turn, if these spaces shape us and our society, how does it work?

What if architecture acknowledges our diverse society? Who is missing and absent here?

The other in the ‘home’, is about an interest of ‘the Other’; the interest of the ‘out-group’ citizens who are neglected in the grand narrative.

The three ‘homes’ projects are in Chinatown, Melbourne, and I will act as ‘the Other’ to provide three different shelters with additional public buildings to serve the specific client, Asian immigrant women who are facing family violence in different situations.

Taking the idea of ‘the Other’ as a tool of self-reflection and architecture as a critical practice, to blur the typology of spaces, from the private space of an individual to the public living space of a family, from the ‘home’ to the public building facility, from the unnamed alleys of Chinatown to Little Bourke St, to the whole community. This serves to reshape our society by redefining the public and private realms to make it more inclusive and reflective.

Here, everyone is the other and no one is the other.