The Reinvention of the Corridor

Spatial Boundaries in Digital Homeworking

Bibliographic Data

ID24217259
AuthorsYe Xu (0000-0002-9185-8330), Katharina Borsi (0000-0001-6745-3547), Jonathan Hale (0000-0002-4929-0497)
Year2026
Pages1-35
Publication date2026-09-27
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueHome Cultures (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 1740-6315 • E-ISSN: 1751-7427
PublisherInforma UK Limited (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1080/17406315.2026.2733158
OpenAlexW7204673943
LanguageEN
References cited28

The normalization of digital homeworking has fundamentally altered the spatial logic of the domestic interior. Video-conferencing and virtual meeting technologies have introduced a two-way exchange that simultaneously broadcasts the private home into professional public networks and inserts the public world into intimate domestic space. Drawing on Robin Evans’s classic essay Figures, Doors and Passages (1978) as its central theoretical framework, and combining qualitative case studies, semi-structured interviews, and original analytical drawings from fieldwork with creative professionals in London, this paper examines how digital homeworking reconfigures domestic space in both spatial practice and spatial conception. Empirical findings reveal that the modernist open plan proves inadequate for digital work, compelling inhabitants to generate provisional, reversible spatial differentiations. The authors claim that the shallow zone constituted by screen, camera, and curated backdrop operates as a “digital corridor”—a hybrid physical-virtual threshold that mediates between domestic intimacy and public visibility. Like the physical corridor before it, the digital corridor plays two conflicting roles: fostering interaction across groups, and spaces, while simultaneously contributing to increasingly atomized social relations in which interpersonal encounters grow more distant and mediated.

creative workers · domestic space · Open plan · public visibility · Robin Evans · social atomization · spatial boundaries · Videoconferencing · virtual meetings · Facilities and Workplace Management · Spatial and Cultural Studies · Work-Family Balance Challenges

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