Emma Brennan and Thomas Wells—The House of Atreus

The House of Atreus* is a collaborative project by Emma Brennan and Thomas Wells exploring how working class architecture reflects contemporary social and moral systems. This partnering of experiences intersects gendered labour practices, working-class identity and the entanglement of domestic and industrial spaces.

Drawing on their collective social histories such as migrations of Irish workers across UK industrial cities, the housing crisis, tax incentives for tech giants, the post pandemic cost of living crisis and post Celtic Tiger recession, the project positions labour in all its forms as both subject and material. It engages with hierarchies that continue to shape cultural value systems in Ireland and the UK, while situating the live body inside architectures of gender, class, and capital.