Cocoons of Practice: Playful Homeworlds in Architecture

This paper examines contemporary Irish architectural practice as a ‘strategy’ in Michel de Certeau’s sense: a readable text of normative expectations that structures possibilities yet often renders the profession uninhabitable. Drawing on interviews and survey data, we identify the persistent dominance of the ‘architecture is life’ model, defined by greedy work and the myth of the lone genius, which disproportionately burdens women. Yet alongside these exclusions emerge tactics of survival—pre-emptive leaps, shared narratives, empathetic practices—that open ‘cocoons of practice’. Through Edmund Husserl’s homeworld/alien world distinction, we argue these tactics may potentially reconfigure architectural practice into a habitable, collaborative, and sustainable profession.