Home

Grampa’s Farm for a New Generation

Drawing: David Gillett

With this, our seventh issue, we are delighted to report that The Right Angle Journal has been chosen as a member benefit of the Royal Architectural Institute of Canada. For Canadian architects, this means online access to a quarterly (available also in print) that is unique among architectural magazines in fostering an open dialogue between the profession and the public that it serves. Just as important, it also presents an opportunity for contributors across the country – architects and others – to reach a national and international audience, to share ideas and opinions that may not find a platform elsewhere. Going forward, we look forward to both a broader readership and a broader authorship.

We have already begun to plan our third year of publication, with issues that, we hope, will plumb the width and depth of important contemporary concerns, from the perspective of those who are personally involved in those issues as creators and appreciators of the built environment.

In this issue, we explore the meaning of home.

“Home is a name, a word, it is a strong one; stronger than magician ever spoke, or spirit ever answered to, in the strongest conjuration.”

– Charles Dickens, Life and Adventures of Martin Chuzzlewit

Home is a powerful word, but one with a surprisingly pliable meaning. Originally denoting a place of comfort and safety (Old English h m – village, town, collection of dwellings; dwelling-place, house, abode), it has found renewed life as a marketing catchword, a sector of the design and building industry, a lucrative (or otherwise) architectural specialty, a section in the magazine rack, and a TV network. To a builder or designer, a home is a building. To a homeowner, it represents an investment. To a real estate agent, it’s a commodity. To a construction worker, it’s a steady job. But what does the word mean to everybody else: to the people who occupy those homes?

Our contributors to this issue, architects and home designers, share their thoughts about what the word means to them. So please kick back, turn the page and make yourself at home.