ABSTRACT
A dwelling is a confined space, and in that confinement we find some sense of our being. Insulation is important to us because it provides an order, where the dwelling acts as the confinement of sense. It provides a boundary that allows us to act freely and without this imposing on others. It is also in a way ontological, in that it allows us to develop the meaning we have with our surroundings. Confinement of sense means deliberately looking inwards, of locating meanings to those things close to us, and equally deliberately pushing other things further away. Once we have this base, once we have constructed and secured meanings, we can then look outwards with some sense of security. The house is a receptacle of complexity: it contains depth, but this comes from the use we make of the dwelling and not the dwelling itself. This is what it means to say that a dwelling is the confinement of sense.
