“The House as Symbol of the Self”

Clare Cooper discusses various ideas around houses and homes in this text. She starts by discussing a less constrained image of house and states that a house “encloses and excludes space.” Enclosing its interior and excluding the outside world.

She then goes on to talk about different types of housing, a home versus a apartment, versus a mobile home…

She writes that she believes the most acepted idea of a home is a “home” or single family house, because it is the only type of housing out of the three listed that actually owns a small piece of earth.

I feel that this idea has changed especially in cities like New York City. Most people in this city live in apartments, single family homes are extremely expensive, I look out my window and count more then ten different apartment buildings. I think that people living in these spaces feel like they have  a home, a space that encloses and excludes other space.

Respectable Housing

…home is a place that exists primarily in imagination or in memory, because it represents such a depth of emotional attachment or longing, we tend to accept its inherently personal or private nature” (108).

Again a complex reaction to a home, but actually not very different to what I believe we have been coming up with in class. We spoke about home being something that has to do more with feelings (love, comfort, care, safety) then an actual place/space. Elizabeth Blackmar seems to agree.

Blackmar then goes on to discuss the idea of “respectable housing” (from 1800-1840). I was surprised to read that what was respectable was to have a constant flow of people going through your house creating “circles of obligation and trust beyond the family” (109).

Stimmung

I really enjoyed the Rybczynski reading (although I have NO idea how to pronounce that name!) I enjoyed the comparisons from past to present, and the in depth descriptions of the mid-evil times.

A couple parts that really stuck out for me was the analyzation of the word comfort (on page 20) and the  journey chairs have made over time.

“One spoke of a bed of comfortable width, although not yet of a comfortable bed.” The idea perplexed me, a time when people didn’t really think about comfort?! That seems to be all we ever do today. Although like the reading said we do still use the saying “a comfortable income” which definitely doesn’t mean a luxurious/cozy/homely/laid-back or happy income (all synonyms for comfortable).

“Stimmung-the sense of intamacy that is created by a room and its furnishings.” (pg. 43)

-Jocelyn

New Thoughts on Home + Dwelling

“Mortals would never be capable of it if dwelling were merely a staying on earth under the sky, before the divinities, among mortals. Rather, dwelling itself is always a staying with things” (Heidegger). These readings really allowed me to think about home, house and dwelling in very different ways. Before I thought they could all be some what synonymous, but now I’m sure they aren’t.

Earlier this week when we were asked to write some words to describe home and dwelling I wrote:

Dwelling- closed, protected, space, standards

Home- family, safety, comfort

Both seem very different, these readings even furthered the difference. Dwelling becomes a space to hold things and home something even more special. In the Saegert writing she writes about the idea of a “real home,” about how usually in peoples lifetimes they have to places that actually fall into that category of “home,” their childhood house and the house they move into and raise their family (or their child’s childhood house).

So what is a house again?