Independent Study - WK1

HOME: THE TERRITORIAL CORE

(J. DOUGLAS PORTEOUS)
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• both individuals and groups tend to assert exclusive jurisdiction over physical space
• at the level of personal space, the portable bubble of corporeality which surrounds each individual, spatial control is necessary for the maintenance of physical health.
• the exclusive control of territory confers three beliefs on its occupants; identity, security and stimulation.
• home provides a small primary group
• the control of physical space is controlled by two major means; the personalization of space - an assertion of identity and a means of ensuring stimulation, and the defense of space - by which stimulation is achieved and security assured.  ('security' includes both physical and psychic security)
• the approach of a stranger to an unfamiliar front door raises the anxiety levels off both the stranger and occupant
• seek security through creating and maintaining an idiosyncratic decor - 'keeping the same flower pots in the same place for four years'
• an occupant derives personal security and satisfaction from the unchanging arrangement of his chosen surroundings - the territorial space has taken on the personality of its occupant
• personalization promotes both security and identity
  individuals are most likely to find a space to be alone within the home
• the home itself becomes a vehicle for expressing identity through manipulation of its external appearance
• a house reflects how the individual sees himself, how he wishes to see himself, or how he wishes others to see him
• a house is a means of projecting an image both outwards and inwards
• stimulation is achieved by making, modifying and defending the home
• a garden provides maximum opportunity for personal expression
• boundary line are important to the home owner
• a home is a major fixed reference point for the structuring of reality
• a preoccupation with home decoration, external experience and comfort
• a home is ebuded with emotion
• the home may smother an individual who is unable to leave it for considerable periods
• home may in fact become a trap which first encapsulates and then submerges the ego
• home cannot be understood except in terms of journey
• travelers are temporarily homeless, they carry small articles from home along with them and perform certain rituals that confer the feeling of home upon any temporary abode
• emigrants try to reproduce home
• a home is simply a sure refuge between journeys
• the chronic traveler may indeed be seeking home
• during an absence both home and the individual may irrevocably change
• the transfer of an individual from "felt home" to "euphemistic home" is usually traumatic
• bereft of family, familiar space, of psychic connections, the removed person frequently suffers a drastic decline in health
• suffers of urban renewal grieve for their lost homes
• euphemistic homes lack warmth and privacy
• indeed for the severely institutionalized the trauma of release may be greater than the trauma of admission
• institutionalization may exacerbate or even initiate serious illness
• the euphemistic home is not a preferred living environment
• when asked to describe their ideal home, an individual will often refer to ownership of a rectangular, single-family structure standing in its own yard
• apartments, the opposite of the free standing ground occupying house tend to be rejected as structures suitable for family living
• apartment dwellers have discovered that they also tend to consider the private house as an ideal home setting
• an overwhelming majority would prefer to own a single-family detached homes
• individuals spend a greater part of their life in the home
• a considerable emotional investment made by the individual
• a preferred space which provides a fixed point of reference around which the individual may personally structure their spatial reality
• a home provides the territorial satisfactions of security, stimulation and identity.

UNDERSTANDING HOME: A CRITICAL REVIEW OF THE LITERATURE

(SHELLY MALLETT)
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• home is a multidimensional concept
• memories of home are often nostalgic and sentimental
• the home touches so centrally on our personal lives
• "the house of every man is to him as his castle and fortress, as well as his defense against injury and violence, as for his repose (Rykwert, 1991)
• home ownership is significant as a source of personal identity or status, and/or a source of personal and familiar security.  it can also provide a sense of space and belonging in an increasingly alienating world
• elucidate the relationship between house and home many researchers particularly architects and historians, have examined the ways design, spatial organisation, and furnishings of domestic dwellings influence and inflict concepts and/or ideologies of home
• peoples personal and familial experiences as well as significant social change, influenced by their perceived needs and desires in relation to house design
• the home is a multidimensional concept or multilateral phenomenon.  the physical dwelling or shelter is described as simply one aspect of home.
• home is conceived 'simultaneously and indivisibly a spatial and a social unit of interaction'
• the physical 'setting through which basic forms of social relations and social institutions are constituted and reproduced'
• home is a 'socio-spatial system' that represents the fusion of the physical unit or house and the social unit or household
• home brings together memory and longing, the idealization, the effective and the physical, the spatial and the temporal, the local and the global, the positively evaluated and the negatively