Ideas of Home
“There's no place like home”
According to one source, this phrase, popularized in the film The Wizard of Oz,[1] has been in use since before the 14th century, “when society, environment and family life all came into being, and also the realization that the person is truly at ease when at home.” [2]
But as a functional entity, homes had existed for a very long time. Before it occurred to anyone that there was no place like home, there was shelter, retreat and safety. It’s not hard to understand why, two million years ago,[3] our hominid ancestors sought the ready-made shelter of caves, where an entry fire created warmth and kept animals and enemies away. But it’s a matter of debate why their homo sapiens descendants, 1.99 million years later, abandoned their caves and moved outdoors, creating the need for human-made shelters. A few millennia later, we developed permanent camps, then settlements, villages, towns, cities, suburbs, neighbourhoods, communities, communes, residential resorts, and mixed-use complexes.
“Home, home on the range”[4]
Let’s consider how far we’ve come, from Palaeolithic savanna to modern suburban lawn. Way back then, according to historian Yuval Noah Harari, a hunter-gatherer’s, home consisted of an “entire territory, with its hills, streams, woods and open sky.”[5]
Harari tells us that after the transition to agriculture, beginning around 10,000 years ago, the idea of home as an expansive territory came to a close. The home was adapted to a more static living style, with much more modest dimensions.
"Peasants […] spent most of their days working a small field or orchard, and their domestic lives centred on a cramped structure of wood, stone or mud, measuring no more than a few dozen metres – the house. The typical peasant developed a very strong attachment to this structure. […] Henceforth, attachment to “my house” and separation from the neighbours became the psychological hallmark of a much more self-centred creature."[6]
And for the next 9,000 years, the idea of a house consisted of this: a humble dwelling place – where families could be born, raised and make way for the generations to come.
Home Design: Enter the Residential Architect[7]
The world’s very first architect is generally acknowledged to have been Imhotep, the conceiver and overseer of the Pyramid of Djoser at Saqqara (2630–2611 BCE). “Architect” is the easiest, if not the most accurate, way of describing those ancient building creators. Their projects were large and complicated, and someone had to take charge. For smaller buildings, such as storehouses, stables and homes, experience and tradition were enough. The existence of the domestic architect lay far in the future.
During the Greek Classical period, in the 4th and 5th centuries BCE[8], the growth of cities created an unprecedented density of urban dwellings. Such figures as Hippodamus of Miletus (498–408 BCE) were called on to manage the difficult organizational requirements of what would otherwise be planning chaos in cities such as Athens.[9]
Residential architects recognizable as such didn’t appear until the 16th century. The Italian architect and mason Andrea Palladio (1508–1580) was important not only for his exceptional villas in Vicenza but also for his influence on domestic architecture throughout Europe and the United States. Robert Smythson, designer/builder of Hardwick Hall in Derbyshire (1590–97) is cited Britain’s first acknowledged residential architect – a distinction attributed to the fact that before the end of the 16th century, “fame went to those who paid for the houses, not those who designed them.”[10] From this period onward, many famous architects erected extravagant homes, and continue to do so all over the world.
“A home is a machine for living in”[11]
By the 19th century, the idea of “comfort” had begun to include indoor plumbing, electric lighting and central heating. Where once a home had been a place of quiet refuge, in the 20th century, it became a showcase of emerging technology. Then, in the 1920s, the French architect Le Corbusier decreed “une maison est une machine-à-habiter”[12] and the stage was set for transformation from shelter to consumer commodity.
In the 21st century, with our “smart” systems, off-the-grid technologies and universal connectivity, our homes really are sophisticated machines. How far we’ve come from the functional simplicity of the “cramped structure of wood, stone or mud,” to the “machine for living in”!
Homing in[13]
Translating the words of Roman architect Vitruvius[14], 17th century writer and politician Sir Henry Wotton, declared that the important attributes of any work of architecture should be “firmness, commodity and delight,”[15] loosely interpreted as: how well is it structured, how well does it do its job, and how nice is it? In theory, these three essential qualities are considered to be equal in importance, but in practice, one of them is bound to prevail. In domestic architecture, I would argue that “commodity” is the most important. Certainly, a house has to be “firm,” and “delightful,” but shelter, retreat, safety, warmth and comfort are the main things that describe a home and without these intangibles, the concrete virtues of imposing structure and stylish facades don’t amount to much.
Yet, often, when people consider the value of an architect or designer’s services, they imagine that a building that looks really good and doesn’t fall down fills the bill. “Architecturally designed,” as a marketing statement, too often means that the exterior elevations will impress your neighbours and the open-plan interior will wow your friends. In this sense, the word “commodity” suggests a different, more contemporary, and possibly more sinister, meaning: an article of commerce, rather than Wotton’s now-obsolete definition as the ability to accommodate.
“A house is not a home”
This sentimental phrase, used as the name and theme of a popular song by Burt Bacharach and Hal David[16] reinforces the point that a home is where people feel comfortable and, perhaps, loved. Without human interaction, it’s just a house.
In his film Roma,[17] the filmmaker Alfonso Cuarón defines “home” in an exceptionally beautiful and emotionally affecting way. An urban residence in Mexico City reflects the “personality” of a home by revealing the activity that takes place there. As the film progresses, we learn more about the occupants of the house, empathise with them and understand their relationships. As the family dynamics change, so does the house as a reflection of these changes. Home and family evolve together, as a living organism.
Going home[18]
A home is a place that keeps you warm and safe; a place to relax, be yourself and do the things you like to do; a place for the things you love – your family, your friends, your pets and your stuff; a place where you can grow or stay as you are. It may be as large as an entire country or as small as where you’re sitting right now. It may or may not be an actual building.
For architects, designers, and other building professionals, a home might be another project, or it might be where we actually live. But either way, there is hardly anything in the world that is as complex – or as critically important.
NOTES
Dorothy Gale’s well-worn words in the 1939 movie The Wizard of Oz were taken from the source, L. Frank Baum’s 1900 book The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, but previously popularized in the song Home, Sweet Home, adapted from John Howard Payne’s 1823 opera Clari, or the maid of Milan, with music by Henry Bishop. For the whole fascinating story, go to: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Home!_Sweet_Home!
www.theidioms.com/theres-no-place-like-home.
University of Toronto. “Archaeological Discovery: Earliest Evidence Of Our Cave-dwelling Human Ancestors.” ScienceDaily, 21 December 2008. www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/12/081219172137.htm.
The title of a popular song extolling the contemporary virtues of life under the open sky, as exemplified by the idyllic cowboy/homesteader lifestyle. Written by Dr. Brewster M. Higley in a poem entitled “My Western Home” in 1872, with melody added by Daniel E. Kelly, it was named the state song of Kansas in 1947. (Wikipedia).
Yuval Noah Harari. Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind. Toronto: Signal, 2014, 98.
Harari, op. cit., 98–99.
According to Career Trend, “Residential architects are design professionals who specialize in the design and construction of residential buildings, such as individual homes and condominiums. […] Residential architects are concerned with the aesthetic of a residential building as well as its functionality.” https://careertrend.com/about-5438171-job-description-residential-architect.html.
Gardiner, The House: Its Origins and Evolution,p. Chicago: Ivan R. Dee, 2002, 73.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hippodamus_of_Miletus.
Bill Bryson. At Home: a Short History of Private Life. London: Doubleday, 2010.
From Le Corbusier. Vers Une Architecture. Paris: Les Éditions G. Crès et Cie., 1924, see www.mondotheque.be/wiki/images/d/d4/Corbusier_vers_une_architecture.pdf. Translated into English as Toward an Architecture, by John Goodman in 1928 and most recently published by the Getty Research Institute, Los Angeles, 2007.
The French word maison can mean either house or home.
“Homing in,” often misconstrued as “honing in,” meaning “to direct on a target. […] derives from the 19th-century use of homing pigeons, but […] also commonly used metaphorically, where to home in on something is to focus on and make progress toward it.
Marcus Vitruvius Pollio, Roman architect, author of De Architectura, d. 15 BCE.
Sir Henry Wotton, 1568–1639, diplomat, author of The Elements of Architecture, 1624.
Burt Bacharch and Hal David. A House is Not a Home, recorded by Dionne Warwick, Scepter Records, 1964
Roma. Alfonso Cuarón. Netflix, 2018.
A popular song describing the “final journey,” sung by Paul Robeson and Deanna Durbin, among others; melody by Antonin Dvorák, in From the New World (1893), lyrics by William Arms Fisher (1922).