Spatial agency of domestic objects: everyday appropriation and collective living in a Shanghai courtyard house

This article examines the dynamic reconfiguration of domestic space through the everyday appropriation of objects within a traditional courtyard house in central Shanghai, built in the late Qing dynasty and later subdivided into a dense multi-household dwelling. It foregrounds how ordinary domestic objects—furniture, partitions, storage devices, and improvised spatial elements—actively participate in the continuous negotiation of spatial boundaries, social relations, and modes of collective living. Drawing on an actor-network theory (ANT) perspective, the paper reconceptualizes domestic space as a relational assemblage in which human and non-human actors are mutually constitutive. Through archival research, participatory observation, drawing, and physical modeling, the study traces how residents appropriate inherited structures through incremental, object-based interventions, including improvised shower areas and courtyard adaptations. Acts of selecting, placing, and repurposing objects enable the continual reconfiguration of thresholds, functions, and degrees of privacy, transforming limited and exposed spaces into differentiated yet interdependent domestic environments. By focusing on the micro-politics of domestic appropriation, the paper argues that collective living emerges through the continual negotiation of people, material objects, and spatial arrangements rather than through architectural forms. In doing so, it brings the experience of a high-density, multi-household courtyard house in Shanghai into broader debates on collective living, housing adaptability, and the long-term transformation of residential buildings. It challenges predominantly European and Anglo-American accounts of domestic adaptability by showing how China’s distinctive history of subdivision, spatial scarcity, and resident-led appropriation offers a different understanding of interior space as a continually negotiated achievement shaped by material interactions and situated practices.