The terms house and home, while pointing to a place of shelter for human beings, suggest subtle differences in meaning. This project seeks to redefine the two terms within the areas they are inscribed, grounding this redefinition on their difference. A house responds to habitability, while a home to domesticity. While interior domestic spaces tend to be projected on the basis of their being habitable, domesticity really has little impact, in spite of the concept being derived from the people living there.
In defining domesticity I use theatrical fiction, and more specifically August Strindberg’s The Chamber Plays. Four narrative spaces described as domestic hells, which once analyzed using a scheme on a level of higher generalization, as drawn from Peter Sloterdijk, allow for the identification of a systematic relationship between Strindberg’s hells and the attributes of domesticity, as seen in the four cases. It is then when four ideal types of house can be defined, being simply four counter-examples of interior design that demonstrate the possibility of “living badly” in a house with no trace of home.
Using this analytical tool to identify deficits in domesticity, I detect four real cases at hand, which I might approach from a perspective not usually contemplated in the instruments of design analysis. I then test for the presence of domesticity quite beyond habitability, so as to revalorize the importance of symbolic relationships between space, objects and people inside a home, attributing them a shared role in the project processes of domestic interior design, along with a set of more technical considerations.
Judit Colomer Mascaró
Judit Colomer Mascaró
Judit Colomer Mascaró
Judit Colomer Mascaró