ABSTRACT
Before one can explore the history of domestic architecture, it is necessary to arrive at a definition of the home, house, or dwelling. Historians, philosophers, architects, social scientists and social critics have differed extravagantly in their approaches to this issue. Philosopher Martin Heidegger, mid-century definer of phenomenology and existentialism, has been influential in architectural thought since the 1960s. For Heidegger, “building” and “dwelling” are a single phenomenon, the creation by the individual consciousness out of its rootedness in culture, time, and place. Reyner Banham was closely affiliated with the visionary British Archigram group in the 1960s, and then took on the role of gadfly to modern architectural historians. Banham argues that the modern home is a set of modern appliances and services, not bound to any location and therefore essentially rootless. Sociologist and economist Mary Douglas suggests that home is a place where households organize themselves over time by practicing the planning of resources and by developing household rituals; for Douglas, home is thus an early form of social organization. English professor and social activist bell hooks reminds us that the home, for African-Americans, is a place of resistance to the norms of a hostile society.
