Zeynep Gül BaĞan

Department of Architecture, Istanbul Technical University, Turkey
bagan24@itu.edu.tr

Mimesis as an Escape Route in Architecture: Hilde Heynen’s Perception of Mimesis and its Critique

Since antiquity, the relationship between ownership, gender, and spatial mobility has shaped social roles, particularly through the notion of privacy. In modernity, dichotomies such as privacy/ publicity, female/male, and interior/exterior have imposed rigid spatial boundaries. These oppositions can be critically reexamined through the concept of movement — also a product of modernity — in relation to gender. Hilde Heynen asserts that the concept of house is historically constructed through the domestication of women and that privacy has been transformed int o a spatial condition attached to femininity. The essence lies in the shell, in the architectural boundaries that define and confine. In this context, the house is not a static entity but a dynamic construct open to reinterpretation. This study proposes that mimesis’s dynamic, transformative nature may challenge the fixed oppositions within gendered architecture. The relationship between the house and mimesis — when viewed beyond binaries — reveals contradictions but also new potentials for spatial rethinking. Firstly, Adorno’s concept of subject-object transformation will be explored to understand how architects, as cultural mediators, contribute to the reproduction of modern housing dichotomies. These include distinctions such as feminine/masculine, public/private, and interior/exterior, which structure the built environment. Secondly, it will be argued that the house itself has acquired a mimetic character due to its historical and material contextualization, especially in the 19th and 20th centuries. This reading positions the house as a conceptual and physical space where gendered roles, spatial norms, and symbolic meanings are constantly produced, reproduced, and potentially subverted

Keywords: mimesis; domesticity; femininity; mobility; dwelling