ABSTRACT

Examining the relationships between architecture, home and community in the Claremont Court housing scheme in Edinburgh, Home and Community provides a novel perspective on the enabling potential of architecture that encompasses physical, spatial, relational and  temporal phenomena.

Based on the AHRC funded project "Place and Belonging", the chapters draw on innovative spatial  layouts amid Scottish policymakers' concerns of social change in the 1960s, to develop theoretical understandings  between architecture, home, and community. By approaching the discourse on home, and by  positioning the home at the confluence of a network of sociocultural identities bound by spatial awareness and design, the writers draw on sociological interpretations of cultural negotiation as well as theoretical underpinnings in architectural design. In so doing, they suggest a reinterpretation of the facilitating role of architecture as sensitive to physical and socio-cultural reconstruction.

Drawn from interviews with residents, architectural surveys, contextual mapping and other visual methods, Home and Community explores home as a construct that is enmeshed with the architectural affordances that the housing scheme represents, that is useful to both architecture and sociology students, as well as practitioners and urban planners.

part I|26 pages

chapter 1|10 pages

Home and community

Issues of public concern at the turn of the 1960s in Scotland

chapter 2|14 pages

Claremont Court housing scheme

Home and community design

part II|49 pages

chapter 3|18 pages

Spatial home-making in Claremont Court

Negotiating the ideal modern home

chapter 5|15 pages

Belonging at Claremont Court

The relational, material and temporal dimensions of “community”

part III|16 pages

chapter 6|14 pages

Home and community

Lessons from Claremont Court

part IV|15 pages

chapter 7|13 pages

Appendix

A new cross-disciplinary methodology to explore home-making