Philosophy of Your House

Are there writings about my house?

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House Experience and Memory

• Bachelard, Gaston. 1958. "The House. From Cellar to Garret. The Significance of the Hut." In The Poetics of Space, 3–37. Boston: Beacon Press.

  • Excerpt: "In our daydreams, the house is a large cradle. … A three-story house, which is the simplest as regards essential height, has a cellar, a ground floor, and an attic. … Then there are the stairways … all different. We always go down the one that leads to the cellar, and it is this going down that we remember … We always go up the attic stairs. … Up near the roof all our thoughts are clear. In the attic it is a pleasure to see the bare rafters … Here we participate in the carpenter's solid geometry. … As for the cellar, … it is first and foremost the dark entity of the house, the one that partakes of subterranean forces. … Such a house, constructed by a writer, illustrates the verticality of the human being."

 

Wood-Frame Construction

• Cavanagh, Ted. 1997. "Balloon Houses: The Original Aspects of Conventional Wood-Frame Construction Revisited." Journal of Architectural Education 51, no. 1: 5–15. [link]

  • Excerpt: "Most twentieth-century historians commenting on the origin of balloon-frame construction have included an anecdote about its incongruous name. For example, Sigfried Giedion wrote, 'The tag, "balloon frame," was a mere nickname, a jocular reference to the lightness of this new type of construction.' … [but] Balloon has many more potential meanings in French than in English. … ballon - slang for 'prison' (grillage of bars) … balette - tall sticks used to mark roads in the snow … balain - related to basket material and broomsticks … Perhaps it was an anglicized version of a term in use in the [earlier] French settlements along the Mississippi River."

 

Front Window

• Cieraad, Irene. 1999. "Dutch Windows: Female Virtue and Female Vice." In At Home: An Anthropology of Domestic Space, edited by Irene Cieraad, 31–52. Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press. [link]

  • Excerpt: "Foreigners visiting the Netherlands often wonder how to interpret the open coverings used in Dutch windows. Especially in the evenings, when curtains are not closed, these lighted showcases may appall visitors. … Windows can be interpreted as transparent borderlines between the inside and the outside, between the domestic interior and the outside world of the street and the neighbourhood."

 

Front Hall

• Rosselin, Céline. 1999. "The Ins and Outs of the Hall: A Parisian Example." In At Home: An Anthropology of Domestic Space, edited by Irene Cieraad, 53–9. Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press.

  • Excerpt: "The hall … is not only an entrance room to welcome visitors, but also a protective and neutralizing zone to prevent or ease transition from the public to the private world. … Not only does the spatial layout of the hall as a marginal zone contribute to its neutrality, but also its decoration and the performed rituals of reception …"

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Living Room/Family Room

• Glancy, Jonathan. 2017. "The Evolution of the Modern Living Room. BBC. 21 Dec. 2017. [link]

  • Excerpt: "From the Industrial Revolution onwards, the idea of domestic comfort grew, as did, for those with time on their hands, the concept of leisure. Together, leisure and luxury encouraged the emergence of the living room. Here, at last, was a domestic space - the generalist among rooms - serving no specific functional purpose."​

• Jacobs, James A. 2006. "Social and Spatial Change in the Postwar Family Room." Perspectives in Vernacular Architecture 13, no. 1: 70–85.

  • Excerpt: "The family room's meteoric, mid-century rise in popularity was part of the newly suburbanized, middle-income American embrace of values that stressed a relaxed home atmosphere and family togetherness. … 'It marks the first time a room for the whole family has appeared in the home since the days of the farmhouse kitchen'."

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Kitchen

• Corrodi, Michelle. 2006. "On the Kitchen and Vulgar Odors." In The Kitchen: Life World, Usage, Perspectives, ed. Klaus Spechtenhauser, 21–42. Basel: Birkhäuser.

  • Excerpt: "According to the nineteenth-century bourgeois ideal of femininity, the function of a housewife was nothing less than to be 'the soul of the household'. Due to her 'natural qualifications', it was up to her to create a 'happy home', a hearth of well-being geared entirely toward the husband's recuperation from work. The home, by contrast, was to be as free of work as possible, at least on the surface."

• Spechtenhauser, Klaus. 2006. "Refrigerators, Kitchen Islands, and Other Cult Objects." In The Kitchen: Life World, Usage, Perspectives, ed. Klaus Spechtenhauser, 45–72. Basel: Birkhäuser.

  • Excerpt: "The first appliance to conquer European kitchens was the refrigerator, followed by the washing machine and electric stove, and later the deep freezer and all the other household machines and appliances. Of course, the size of the kitchen 'machinery park' was dependent on personal preferences, prestige value, and not least, the available budget."

 

Bathroom

• Horan, Julie. 1997. The Porcelain God: A Social History of the Toilet. Secaucus, NJ: Citadel Press.

  • Excerpt: "Toilet-philes argue that civilization began not with the advent of written language but with the first toilet. Waste control allowed individuals to quit wandering the earth trying to escape their dung and finally settle down. … Who invented the first flush toilet? No, it was not Thomas Crapper. What did people use before the invention of the toilet? Why are toilets referred to as the throne?"

• Ward, Peter. 2019. "Bathrooms and Bathing." In The Clean Body: A Modern History, 158–73. Montreal: McGill-Queen's University Press.

  • Excerpt: "At the beginning of the twentieth century a separate room for bathing had found a permanent place in the homes of the affluent throughout the Western world. … By the end of the century it had become an indispensable part of the dwelling, the one room with a door that could always be closed in the name of privacy."

 

Bedroom

• Eden, Mary, and Richard Carrington. 1961. The Philosophy of the Bed. London: Spring Books.

  • Excerpt: "Beds are much more than material structures … They are the stage on which all the major biological activities of man are enacted. It is, of course, possible to be born in an aeroplane or to die in a car-smash, but these are hardly likely to be premeditated acts. … We may all reasonably hope that the bed will be the place of our conception, our birth, the best part of our physical relaxation, and our death."

 

Laundry

• Laermans, Rudi, and Carine Meulders. 1999. "The Domestication of Laundering." In At Home: An Anthropology of Domestic Space, edited by Irene Cieraad, 118–29. Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press.

  • Excerpt: "In the nineteenth century, laundry work was an object of commodification and professionalization contracted out to professional laundresses or commercial laundries. However, when the washing machine made its way into the home, laundry work was deprofessionalized. The introduction of automatic washers in the 1950s definitively domesticated the formerly out-of-doors practice of laundering."

• Ward, Peter. 2019. "The Laundry Revolution." In The Clean Body: A Modern History, 174–201. Montreal: McGill-Queen's University Press.

  • Excerpt: "No form of housework knew more remarkable change in the twentieth century than did laundry cleaning. Mechanization dramatically reduced the time and effort it demanded while new soaps and detergents improved the results it produced. The development of the automatic washing machine did more to transform the housewife’s lot than any other domestic appliance."

 

Porch

• Dolan, Michael. 2002. The American Porch: An Informal History of an Informal Place. Guilford, CT: Lyons Press.

  • Excerpt: "Americans at the middle of the twentieth century discarded the porch as old-fashioned, obsolete, and valueless - until a blend of conservatism and revival began to restore it to a place of honor and utility. … The porch will hold its place as a standard element of domestic American architecture, and we will all be the better for that. … I started to see the porch in historical terms when I acquired one of my own. You could say that my porch started to talk to me."

• Visser, Thomas Durant. 2012. Porches of North America. Hanover: University Press of New England.

  • Excerpt: "Speculations about the origins and evolution of the porch as a feature of domestic architecture in the United States and Canada have prompted some architectural historians and writers to point to Europe and elsewhere for evidence of design precedents. … Various names … suggest a range of exotic sources, such as portico, loggia, and piazza from the Mediterranean and veranda from the Indian subcontinent. Some … also include Spanish, French, English, Dutch, African, Native American, and Caribbean precedents …"

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Lawn

• Colomina, Beatriz. 1999. "The Lawn at War, 1941–1961." In The American Lawn, edited by Georges Teyssot, 135–53. New York: Princeton Architectural Press.

  • Excerpt: "A well-tended lawn is often referred to as a carpet, a soft, velvety surface offering protection to the house that rests on it, as if it were a security ring isolating the home from neighboring houses, dust, and other health hazards. The lawn is a clean, antiseptic surface on which the family's activities can be extended into the open air."

• Bormann, F. Herbert, Diana Balmori, and Gordon T. Geballe. 1993. Redesigning the American Lawn: A Search for Environmental Harmony. New Haven: Yale University Press.

  • Excerpt: "​We are beginning to see that human activities may be disrupting the very life systems on which we all depend. What place does the American lawn occupy in this scenario? … For the homeowner, the lawn is our piece of the biosphere, and through it we communicate our concern about the environment of the earth, our greater yard."