ABSTRACT
A single object, such as a home computer, needs such complex collaborations of other objects within the domestic space in order to function properly within the domestic pattern of life. However, the image of the domestic environment as a DIY bricolage of objects found at hand in the cultural environment is rather different from the one that the father of Modernist architecture envisaged in using this phrase. The home-building practices of contemporary western householders involve the translation of symbolic and material goods originating in i large-scale social processes, particularly those of mass consumption, into the concrete and particular contexts of everyday domestic life. The movement of small objects traces the locus of activity within the space of the household. Children’s toys, for example, at times appear to adults to move around the home without human intervention. Household ‘mess’, which must be actively managed as a distinct domestic activity, is a reflection of and necessary concomitant to this mobility.
