Little 2. Little 4. Little 6. Little 11.

Abstract

Living alone as a female is appealing, but also difficult. Women have been fighting for “a room of one’s own” for a long time. From the Bororo village Kejara to the Spinster’s House gupouk in the South East Asia, narratives of female communes in the history used to be studied as a diagram in the matriarchal society, a refuge from the world of inequality, or an asylum for outcasts in the counterculture. The collective construction of these utopian residences has transcended both time and culture, piecing together a palimpsest of the untold feminine space.

Little 2/4/6/11 is designed as a diagram of flexible dwelling system, a female commune of soloing and caring in the post-marriage and aging society. Today, the increasing number of single women at all ages has indicated the alternation of social structures and gender identities in China. The creation of a home for single women is a response to the evolving gender identity of female in the Chinese patriarchal culture. This new housing system is established on the small-scale grouping of female alliance, which attempts to find a balance between individuality and collectivity in co-living. On the one hand, it respects the individual space of female and their independency; on the other hand, it explores the potential of female alliance and imagines a communal relationship between the caregivers and the vulnerable groups. The shared housing offers individuals a choice of living in united cohorts, instead of conforming to the social expectation of family building. It tells another story of the little women.