Wrapping up with Rybczynski’s book Home: a Short History of an Idea, continues its concerns with the nature of comfort. “Comfort…has become a mass commodity.” (P. 220) The democratization of comfort has been achieved through the efficiencies of “…mass production and industrialization….” (P. 220) Manufactured goods become accessible to the average citizen through technology, with hand-crafted objects become rare, expensive, and luxurious, in an ironic inversion of the etymology of the term manufacture; to make by hand.
Rybczynski seems to take a turn in his final chapter. Where throughout most of the book he has remained somewhat objective, reporting on his research more than making judgments, he begins to make some big totalizing claims near the end. He directs us to a particular agenda: “what is needed is a reexamination not of bourgeois styles, but of bourgeois traditions.” (P. 221) Is it? Is this ‘needed’ for all of us or only some? It seems to me that reexamining bourgeois traditions may be fruitful for some but not for others.
He makes a critique of ‘open plan’ homes as not providing enough privacy and intimacy in the home. He points out that “…not since the Middle Ages have homes offered as little personal privacy to their inhabitants.” (P. 222) Interestingly, his tone in the earlier part of the book discussing the ‘big hall’ of the middle ages implied that we have lost the sense of family and community that the open, common living space provided when we made smaller homes to accommodate the needs of the developing nuclear family. So how then are we to nurture that ‘lost’ sense of family? His argument seems weak and homogenizing; he doesn’t seem to recognize that inhabitants of homes are a diverse group, not easily subject to such homogenizing agendas. He suggests that the needs of the modern home include multiple entertainment systems which the open plan doesn’t allow simultaneous use of. Isn’t this continuing the trend of individuation we’ve seen in society recently? It is apparently rare that families sit down to common meals anymore, and it seems the expectation is that each individual member of the household has the ability to pursue his/her own activities without regard for other family members. Wouldn’t an open plan work to establish a context for family cohesion? Family members would have to co-ordinate their activities so as not to interfere with each other, and perhaps give rise to more occasions for unified family activity.
It seems to me that the floor plan of a house and the nature of its traditions would be dependent on the inhabitants’ lifestyle, and should be designed accordingly. An open plan is well suited to entertaining. An open plan facilitates family interaction and gatherings. An open plan allows a parent to incorporate and observe toddlers while carrying out household activities. Perhaps Rybczynski needn’t be quite as exclusive about his agenda. Why can’t one have an open plan on one floor of their house and smaller rooms appropriate for intimacy and privacy on other floors? It seems that there are solutions that Rybczynski doesn’t consider.
His exclusive position continues in his comments about utility and aesthetics. He states that a chair should be comfortable and not make and artistic statement. Why could a chair not accomplish both? He says that we should return “…to the idea of furniture as practical rather than aesthetic…” (P. 222) Again, why not both? Why the valorization of use-value? Why the devaluation of the aesthetic? I would suggest that what we need is a more inclusive notion of what may be considered homely and comfortable and that there is no homogenous conception of these. The idea of home and of comfort are situated and contingent upon the cultural and historical context of the inhabitants. Let’s encourage people to develop their homes in ways that suite them best. Isn’t that really what we’ve always attempted to do anyway?