The Servant’s Tale

The modern domestic worker is an invisible agent. This is an architectural urgency. The gig economy, through its very spatial construct, is to blame. Food couriers are everywhere, yet the necessary infrastructure is nowhere. The toilet for personal relief, the lunch table for dining, or the electrical socket for charging is nowhere to be found. As it stands now, the food courier is working a job that they can’t afford to live on, but at the same time can’t afford to say no to. As an architect, the urgency starts with making visible the invisible domestic worker.

This project provides an architectural prototype that seeks to address this urgency. It aims to set the standard for a new radical domestic servant: the visible domestic servant as opposed to the invisible one. The prototype is tested on-site in Umeå, where the design takes a bold stance with a high-rise, multi-purpose dwelling. This is a radical domesticity, where contemporary hierarchies between people of labour and people of leisure are challenged and ignored. The programme provides a mix of an open office built for a food courier and family apartments designed for the standard body of a domestic worker. The new acknowledged standard of gig workers guides the design, allowing a bike or similar modes of transport to travel from the ground floor to the top level and within the apartments. The bike is as important as the people in the building, a hierarchy similar to the car in suburbia.