Homemaking and recreating: The domestication of institutional architecture

Abstract

This article explores how homemaking and programming operated as spatial tactics that reshaped institutional architecture in early 20th-century Latin America. Through a close reading of photographs from welfare, health, and educational facilities, it identifies domestic gestures not as ornamental excesses but as acts of architectural agency. These gestures softened the institutional rigidity and created spaces of care within structures originally designed for control. In parallel, programming joy or ‘recreating’—through gardens, music rooms, parlours, play areas, and beach outings—introduced activities that demanded new spatial forms. These additions complicated institutional planning, often driven by female workers and caregivers. Together, homemaking and recreating operated as a form of architectural domestication that both contested and nuanced Foucault’s concept of discipline. Rather than pure spaces of surveillance and control, these institutions reveal an undercurrent of affect, joy, and relational care, quietly rewriting the architectural script from within.