On House and Home Part 3
We begin this time with Rybczynski’s claim that privacy and domesticity are the two great discoveries of the Bourgeois Age, to which he adds a third discovery: the idea of comfort. (P. 77) He points out the the household had changed by the 18th century, in that it was no longer primarily a workplace, and that homes became smaller and less public in nature. This led to the rise of the modern family unit which was more isolated, and centered on family life and domesticity, which all set the stage for the development of the idea of comfort.
The changing conception and use of the chair from the middle ages onwards symbolizes in some ways the development of the home. In the middle ages the chair’s function was primarily ceremonial: the chair symbolized authority. Gradually the chair was used for more utilitarian purposes and eventually for relaxation which shadowed the development of interior design as a discipline distinct from architecture through the Rococo movement.
The “…domestication of comfort…”(Rybczynski, P. 106) is tied to the rise of the bougeoisie in England in the 19th century. Country homes were common and because they were located away from the amenities of the city (theatres,concerts etc.) people would spend increasing amounts of time visiting one another’s homes. The home became a major locus for social activity.
…the home acquired a position of social importance that it had never had before, or since. No longer a place of work as it had been in the Middle Ages, the home because a place of leisure.
The ongoing development of a sense of inner self and individuality led to increased need for privacy in the home of leisure. The internal segregation and individuation of the home continued with the development of private rooms for each individual member of the household. This indicated a newly forming distinction between the family and the individuals within it. (Rybczynski, P. 110). Along with the creation of private spaces within the home grew the ongoing increasing awareness of “…a growing personal inner life – and the need to express this individuality in physical ways.” (Rybczynski, P. 110-11) So the room “…began to be seen as a locus for human activity…(Rybczynski, P. 119) in a way the household was seen earlier. The idea of comfort became an ideal to be sought after, not just an agreeable arrangement of domestic interiors.
The McKay, Culhane and Wilson texts are all situated within more contemporary events of the 20th century but share the thread that the home is not only more than a house or form of shelter, but that ideological, social, and political factors have shaped, and continue to shape, the physical form of the domestic built environment while in a mutually constituting way, the physical form of the house proscribed particular social relations that were desired and valued by the dominant cultural institutions.
McKay investigates the post-war development of high-rise self-owned apartments in two very different neighbourhoods in Vancouver: the West End and Strathcona. The West End was a space of privilege with beaches and park spaces that were highly sought after and lent themselves to commodification, while Strathcona was adjacent to areas of industry. The economic and political development of these communities shaped the notions and forms of domesticity that developed in their neighbourhoods. Commerce, class, gender, ethnicity, and the moral values of the dominant culture all contributed to the development of domestic spaces in these communities. Both communities were born of processes of rationalization by the nature of the planned buildings and the types of residents.
Strathcona developed largely light industrial building whose residents were ethnically diverse and often considered families in need. The housing projects in this neighbourhood meant to accomodate that demographic but with a moral and didactic subtext. The high-rises developed here were “…an exposition on function, efficiency, and economy, [which functioned as a] pedagogical apparatus, a place of neighbourly scrutiny and tutelage.” (McKay, P. 27)
The West End developed from similar forces and interests, but with the opposite result of Strathcona. The parks and beaches of the area were see as “…places of elite representation…[which] rendered rational the historically developed spatial differentiations of the city.” (McKay, P. 19) This was promoted as a good area for investment, privileging local businesses and property investors, with profitable luxury high-rise apartments near business, parks and beaches intended for a largely white middle-class populace of office workers and artisans. (McKay, P. 20-21) The goals here were to maximize profit and investment and to “…establish and maintain social status via privileged domestic and aesthetic accoutrements.”(McKay, P. 29) The views of spectacular English Bay were commodified and the form of the high-rises reflected that strategy. The increasing isolation in high-rise apartments of its residents from the community of their neighbours “…allowed sequestered solitude and undisturbed participation in the spectacle of urban investment.” (McKay, P. 33) The isolation of all the senses other than vision contributed to the ongoing ocularcentrism of western culture since the Enlightenment which contributed to the increasing alienation of urban citizens from their own city. The spaces of the city become abstract and conceived as being outside of the contingencies of culture, community, and history.
Those who fit into the appropriate cultural and ideological categories, and who fully embraced the dominant political morality were rewarded with growing investments and the stability and sense of self that accompanies it. Those who didn’t were punished by colonial and didactic uses of the built environment. Culhane cites a compelling situation where the local aboriginal people were more or less forced to move from their traditional homes where extended family and forms of kinship thrived, into smaller ‘western’ home designed for the nuclear family. Housing in this case takes on the colonial role and needs of cultural assimilation rather than the more mundane needs for shelter. Housing becomes proscriptive of social relations.(Culhane, P. 99)
Wilson also highlights the coercive and didactic role of housing in his examination of the heterotopia of a half-way house in Vancouver. He uses Foucault’s notion of heterotopia as a space ‘in-between’ clear cultural forms where two opposing concepts occupy the same physical space. The half-way house (clearly in between!) is an peculiar hypbrid of medical institution and home. Wilson sees the modern home as a product of middle class ideology and is therefore “…associated with stability, support, protection growth, and the development of individual potential.”(Wilson, P. 127) So, while the residents of ‘Horizon House’ all live on-site and could certainly call it home, that relationship is complicated by the institutional nature of providing long-term care in such a setting. The staff and resident areas are clearly demarcated and establish an agenda of power and control. This isn’t even meant as a criticism so much as to point out the deep rooted difficulties inherent in such a project. The practical requirements of sequestering staff in privileged areas is a practical necessity, but contradicts and makes problematic in many way the overt mission of such an institution.
Domestic space can clearly be seen as mutually constitutive of social relations, culture, ideology, politics, and economics. The changing nature of our built environment embodies values and instructs us in acquiring them. While home is a place of freedom, safety, imagination, and personal growth it may also be place of coercive deployment of strongly naturalized and normative cultural agendas.
