Elena Balzarini
About me
After graduating from TU Delft in 2016, I worked at Monadnock Architects in Rotterdam (2016-2017), Caruso St John Architects (2017-2020), and East Architecture, Landscape and Urban Design (2021) in London. During my time at Caruso St John Architect, I led a number of projects from preliminary stages to construction, including the Peterloo Memorial (with Jeremy Deller) and the British Pavilion at the 2018 Architecture Venice Biennale (with Marcus Taylor). From 2019 to 2023 I taught in the BArch at the University of Nottingham, and in 2022-2023 I was design unit head leading a studio on co-housing and care. In 2021, I began a PhD in architecture at Newcastle University researching the domestic thresholds in UK council estates. I was invited to be a visiting critic at several architecture schools, including London Met, the Welsh School of Architecture, Central St Martin, Anglia Ruskin, and Karlsruhe Institute of Technology. My research interests include: housing and domesticity, care ethics, commoning, ecologies, body politics, gender and sexuality, feminism, decoloniality, and disability.
Project Title
Inhabiting the domestic threshold in UK council housing: from defensible space to infrastructure of care.
Project Description
My research examines the threshold between the domestic and public realms, and its spatialisation through the construction of UK council housing in the 20th century. I ground my work in feminist, ecological, and posthuman theories, as well as discourses on the ethics of care. A lens of care allows me to problematise the rigid public-domestic dichotomy upon which many 20th century housing layouts were built, and which assumed every housing unit to be inhabited by self-sufficient nuclear families. Focusing on the ex-council Stamford Hill Estate in North-London, and adopting autoethnography as my methodology, I endeavour to map out the networks of care straddling the public-domestic boundary, which range from the residents’ everyday interactions and spatial appropriations of liminal spaces in council housing, to the commoning practices such as mutual aid and pooling of resources to ‘make do’ amidst the crumbling of the welfare state. I will structure my thesis around the investigation of three types of threshold spaces: spaces and elements that construct the border between the domestic and public realm; spaces that residents and passersby cross daily; and spaces that are used for a collective purpose and blur the traditional boundary between domestic and public, and which have the potential of becoming infrastructures of care.
Supervisors
Qualifications
PGCert Social Science and Humanities Research Methods, Newcastle University, UK (2022)
MSc Architecture, Delft University of Technology, Netherlands (2016)
BSc Architecture, University of Cagliari, Italy (2013)
Erasmus semester at the École Nationale supérieure d'Architecture in Grenoble, France (2011-2012)
Member of the Architects Board of Cagliari (Italy)
Conference Papers and Publications
Architecture 101: Questioning the Fundamentals. Newcastle University, November 2023. Title of paper: Inhabiting the domestic threshold. Using autoethnography to investigate care practices in UK housing’s ‘in-between spaces’.
AHRA International Conference: Ecologies of Care. Portsmouth University, October 2023. Title of paper: Domestic thresholds ‘as process’. Untangling assemblages of care in UK housing’s ‘in-between spaces’.
Research group memberships
ARC
Personal Interest
I volunteer with the charities Beyond Equality and Sexpression, facilitating workshops on gender stereotypes, sexual and relational education and wellbeing. In the past, I volunteered with the charity Literacy Pirates in East London, helping children to gain confidence with their literacy skills. I am passionate about music, writing, and ceramic sculpture.
Contact Details