Home of the Free:
The Political Economies of Suburbia in the United States
Dr. Nagy Makhlouf
PhD diss., EPFL, 2024

“Although neoliberal discursive regimes have dominated computational approaches to optimization, these regimes, along with their tools and apparatuses, remain open to rupture and reappropriation, as our genealogy demonstrates. We explore redirecting computational tools, typically aligned with neoliberal narratives, to parametrize and rewrite the regulatory frameworks governing suburban planning. In doing so, we propose a dissident approach based on stealth and hacking, ultimately aiming to envision strategies for moving beyond “domestic realism” by transforming suburban apparatuses.”

Nagy Makhlouf, "Home of the Free: The Political Economies of Suburbia in the United States," PhD Diss., EPFL, 2024. 

With a focus on the single-family home model in the United States, from 1776 to the 2020s, this dissertation presents an architectural genealogy of political economies while also serving as a projective genealogy of domestic economies. Central to this investigation is how the codification of domestic apparatuses—organizations of spatial, legal, and economic norms—has been used to implement political economies aimed at optimizing specific interpretations, productions, and allocations of freedom. This genealogy traces the successive reappropriations of these apparatuses. The study is structured around three key historical moments: experiments in reorganizing the domestic economy to eliminate gendered and individual domestic work (material feminism); federal policies promoting the single-family home (“domestic realism”); and contemporary possibilities for reappropriating this model using computational tools.

[1] PhD Dissertation, 2024. PhD Candidate: Nagy Makhlouf Supervision: Prof. Charlotte Malterre-Barthes, Prof. Dieter Dietz. Units: RIOT and ALICE. 

[2] Jury: Prof. Pier Vittorio Aureli, EPFL, jury president
Prof. Dieter Dietz, EPFL, thesis supervisor
Prof. Charlotte Malterre-Barthes, EPFL, thesis co-supervisor 
Prof. Anna Puigjaner, ETHZ, internal examiner 
Dr. Nadja Gaudillère-Jami, Royal Danish Academy, external examiner 
Dr. Justinien Tribillon, École nationale supérieure des arts décoratifs, external examiner 

[3] Image Credits:
Nagy Makhlouf. “Home of the Free: The Political Economies of Suburbia in the United States,” PhD diss., (EPFL, 2024). ibid. Office for Emergency Management, Office of War Information, Domestic Operations Branch, Bureau of Special Services (03/09/1943 - 09/15/1945), National Archives. Profile: Nagy Makhlouf June 2023; Photo Credit: Selen Karakoc Final Jury, November 2024; Photo Credit: Kathlyn Kao

[4] Full project on Infoscience forthcoming.