Domesticity, the caring device follows María Ángeles Duran’s sociology research work about the caring paradigm within a demographic shift context of lower birth rate and extended life expectancy.
Continuum care promoting independent living addresses the problem of caring through sets of domestic objects based in a design program for life caring functions: protecting, adapting, extending, sharing, healing and activating.
In a scenario where most individuals require assisted living, domesticity becomes a device for life resilience, transforming into a continuum care/living space across generations and functionally diverse individuals with physical or cognitive impairment.
Redefining domesticity through caring implies working with sets of objects/devices specifically designed and ecologically related in a caring context, following Jean Baudrillard’s system of objects theory and Graham Harman’s object oriented ontology, where sets of objects are able to configure specific environments.
A domestic environment system based on Javier Echeverría’s theory of the three environments: nature/body, design/build and digital/ technology becomes and environment of caring, an entangled continuum habitat: the fourth environment.
ETSAM // UPM
