Twelfth International Conference on The Constructed Environment

Abstract

Architecture of living spaces has not been explored as much in the context of production and reproduction of classed identities. Sociology of architecture has been a rather neglected domain even though the wider understanding of importance of space to shaping identity has been acknowledged. This symbolic-analytical paper situates architecture as a cultural space in which identities, subjectivities, and cultural practices of social class are sedimented. Architecture therefore becomes a concrete signification of practices and subjectivities consolidating into performative class identity. This paper highlights how the floor plan of middle-class apartment flats in gated enclaves of New Gurugram helps consolidate, codify, and reproduce social identities of middle class on an everyday basis through structuring social encounters and interactions within the family and others. It is through these structured spaces that the middle-class’ notions of privacy, disclosure are also sedimented into forming the disposition, roles, and practices of Indian middle-class. The paper argues that classed subjectivities and practices sediment into architecture that then performatively shapes class identity, practices, and interactions. The paper focuses on real estate advertisements, floor plans and strategic significance of doors in the houses as a way of highlighting the classed subjectivities and practices that shape disclosure, discretion, and deference as critical elements of the middle classness in Neourban Gurugram.