ABSTRACT
This collection of scholarly writings and source materials attempts to lay the basis for new kinds of discussion and research in the history of domestic architecture. For a long time, historians of architecture paid attention only to a few of the buildings where people lived. These were the great palaces and villas of the wealthy, together with the houses designed in the modern period by a few recognized “great architects”. Most writers were convinced by Nikolaus Pevsner’s famous dictum that while cathedrals (and other major public buildings) are “architecture”, the “bicycle shed” (and all other utilitarian structures) is merely “building”.1 In other words, to merit the attention of architectural historians, a structure had to be large, expensive, and beautiful.
