ABSTRACT
This chapter explores how Claremont Court residents shape their everyday spatial practices in order to make a home. Home is understood here as a political site where identities are socioculturally constructed, inescapably bounded – and displayed – by the architectural affordances that the dwelling allows. The discussion unfolds in 2 ways. As notions of home are not a natural attribute of dwellings, the first aspect that the chapter examines is how residents spatially make home, according to their sociocultural embedded imagery of home and the architectural affordances of their dwelling. The second aspect that the chapter explores is how, in making home, the residents’ spatial practices are critical in reproducing or contesting the ideas of home which were embedded in the design of the scheme. The architectural affordances allowed by Claremont Court materialise the ideal modern home that residents negotiate on a daily basis, mediated by their own values and ideas of what home means.
This chapter shows how home and architecture are intertwined in a relationship that is not causal but enabling: architecture enables home-making within the boundaries of the residents’ imagery, and their sociocultural values and aspirations. It also shows how residents have the agency to spatially reproduce or contest the ideal modern home.
