Casimir played the total immersion game. It was from his “niniche”, as he calls it, that the 52-year-old computer scientist told us about his room. A 4-square-meter den, designed to be a dressing room, at the very end of a corridor. “Having my own space at home is essential to me. In my previous apartment, I had taken over a corner in the living room. I ended up suffocating from the lack of calm and freedom of mind.”says the father who lives in Charente-Maritime with his 12-year-old daughter and his partner. “It’s like a mini cabin on a boat, I cram my many hobbies in there – computers, graphic design, video games and music. By spreading my arms, I touch all the walls, but it’s my regeneration space where only the cat sometimes invites itself.”
“Niniche”, “office”, “cabin”, “kingdom”, “sanctuary”… These places of one’s own, where one closes the hatches, to work, indulge in one’s passions or simply isolate oneself from others, question the boundaries of domestic space. Today, each member of the family claims their need for privacy. The ideal home must reconcile the sweetness of living together with the quest for individual freedom.
The lockdown and the sudden arrival of teleworking in the middle of the three-room kitchen has further accentuated this need, but also brought to light an elephant in the room: the rules for distributing the available square meters. “All of a sudden, all the members of the household found themselves together and, at the same time, in a constrained spaceobserves Benjamin Pradel, sociologist, urban planner and co-founder of Intermède, a cooperative of activities linked to the transition of places, territories and lifestyles. What was livable, on a daily basis, in a desynchronized rhythm, has exploded in the faces of many. Mothers in particular have been the first losers in this struggle for space. A recent report from the French National Institute for Demographic Studies showed that, during the pandemic, 42% of them worked from home in shared rooms compared to 26% of men.
Locked in the bathroom
In her Parisian apartment, Marion, a pharmaceutical executive, married with three children, began to lock herself in her bathroom during the health crisis to give herself a break after a day of teleworking in the living room. She has kept this habit. “Outside of peak toilet hours, the bathroom is a fairly quiet place. I managed to fit a small wicker chair in there. I sit there to read, listen to a podcast, or simply let my mind wander. And, miraculously, no one dares to disturb me.” His dream “unaffordable” : buy a maid’s room, above the family apartment, to make it « [s]a piece of all trades ».
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