ABSTRACT
This chapter suggests three fundamental aspects of house and home. First, there is the house of the body–the home of the inner realms of psyche and soul and their mysterious territories of memories, dreams, and self-definitions. Second, there is the house for living–the place of comfort, rest, and ease, of family meals, and intimacy, the setting for the dramas, passages, pains, and joys of life–which is called home. And last, there is the house of the world, the condition of interconnection with others and the built and natural environment–of being at home in the universe. The cultural valorization of house and home is contrasted by its deficiencies. Concepts of house and home, in all of their cultural and ontological diversity, reveal clear limits of understanding. Because it is a human construct, architecture will always be imperfect and inadequate. At best, architecture, and house and home, is a synecdoche, or a locus to apprehend the more complete.
