Domesticity in the Begijnhof

Abstract

The architectural ensembles known as beguinages can be considered medieval hybrid types that made possible other ways of inhabiting and transforming the existing domesticity. The beguines established their habitat on the basis of the inherited city so that the type of the traditional house is the support or structure on which the beguinage is formed, thus persisting the relationship of the traditional city between house and city. The capacity of the type and its ensemble to shape multiple developments by introducing topological considerations appears in them, hence their particular mutability and heterogeneity. Some of the mechanisms activated unveiled how women inhabited with greater autonomy: incorporate or return to the city houses that make up the houses according to the need; invest access to the type houses, organized around a large yard, transforming the conditions of use of it so that the space of the intimacy extends the home to the city. With all this, the Beguinates bring domesticity up to date and today reveal the past for what it is, an immense ocean of knowledge against the illusion of progress that ignores what preceded it.