Domestic Space Shared Readings
Danae
Blanka
Esmee
Brooklynn
Caitlyn
Fares
Isabel
Marco
Zsofi
Clara
Ibtissam
Blanka and Danae
Ksenija
Lune
Nika
Robert
,Rybczynski, W.,Home: a short history of an idea, Londen (Penguin Books)
1986. ‘Foreword’, p. Vii-viii, ‘Chapter One: Nostalgia’, p. 1-13, ‘Chapter Two:
Intimacy and privacy’, p. 14-49 - Isabel
Chapter 1
Introduction about an example: Ralph Lauren advertisement
Meant to show the relationship between clothing and interior decoration
Traditional homes were very valued and therefore shown in advertisements (sense of nostalgia)
advertisements were not an accurate reflection of reality but rather what society thought it
should be
Chapter 2
Intimacy and privacy
16th century
- Studies were open for everyone → no private rooms
- rooms did not have specialized functions
- no machines or mechanical devices → primitive heating
Not much privacy → 100 years later came the concept of ‘privacies’
Comfort as a concept
First meant adequate living → later a definition of physical well-being and enjoyment.
Domestic comfort
Bourgeois homes were mainly used for the analysis of comfort because
- Poor people lived in extreme conditions → no concept of home
- Clergy did not live in a house
House combined living and work: main floor was shop or work area
Living space was one big room, minimalistic furnished
Improvised seating: no chairs (were only used as decorative or authoritative symbols)
This is why the people in the Middle Ages were often portrayed as having bad posture
Portable and demountable furniture → no emotional attachment to possessions
Room functioned as meeting place → no privacy and no intimacy
Bathing was fashionable (hygiene important) → but much sickness due to being dumb
Comfort was little
Stricter rules
- clothing: represent status
- buy certain things at certain times
- table manners
Overall, objects lacked meaning
- no intention of improving them
- no distinction between function and purpose
,End of the Middle Ages
Change in domestic life
- Houses larger and sturdier (stone replaced wood)
- Changes in manners and attitudes
- Four or five stories → around internal courtyard
- Lowest floors: commercial space and stables as well as living quarters of the
proprietor
- Main room: salle
- Cooking in separate room
- Bedrooms: chambres garde-rodeo and cabinet
Privatization of the home
- Separation of the masters from their servants
- Houses were merely residences (work and life became separate)
- More sense of intimacy and the idea of family life
17th century
Furniture was seen as valuable possession and part of decoration of room
Chairs were more shaped to accommodate the body
Greater variety of furniture: but not yet assigned to specialized rooms
- Main room for daytime activities – very versatile (table, furniture along the walls to utilize,
used as party room)
Rich bourgeois lived in mansions
- Privacy ignored → no hallway (have to go through all rooms)
- No bathrooms (for plebs) → toilet was brought to you
Later: Growing awareness of intimacy → private rooms for writing
Altogether not a big rise in comfort in the practical definition, however, consciousness about
privacy and intimacy is a good sign. Both those things affect our consciousness, which does
indeed affect the idea of comfort.
, Maldonado, T., ‘The Idea of Comfort’. Design Issues, 8 (1991), 35-43; - Isabel
Comfort
- Suggest the quality of life → livability → depends on convenience, ease and habitability
- Comfort is a privilege of few → capitalist society
- Scheme for social control
- But also advantages to daily life
- Can be considered as contributing to the process of modernization
- Reaching comfort can mean new sources of hardship and sufferings
Domestic sphere
- Comfort (in home) seeks to restore the energies consumed in hostile external world of
work
- Comfort expresses the techniques of the body → attitudes and postures of the body in
relation to furniture
- Comfort also contributes to disciplining the family
- Comfort = pleasure of private life → home
- Home = central place for social activity and contributes to formation and consolidation of
the modern family
Traditional family → towards a nuclear/modern family
Block instability of the family → shelter from external intrusions
Privacy goes together with discipline → comfort and hygiene both responsible for privacy
→(order)
Domestic life is a control mechanism that aids in structuring and stabilizing daily life in capitalist
society
Victorian England: first phase of industrialism (alarming living conditions)
- Dominant class tried to improve and force a ideology of comfort toward the lower class
→ material domestic culture
- Hygiene and order → implemented in the city → city and house are of the same system
of hygiene
- Bathroom and kitchen separate (modesty/privacy + unwanted odors)
- Kitchen: mechanization, standardization and rationalization → functional specialization
Living spaces adapted to moments of sociability, relationship, relief and repose.
Domestic work: feminine competence,
Domestic rest: male character → Men had more comfortable furniture
(Conspicuous consumption)
Interior of house is part of material culture of society → show wealth
Danae
Blanka
Esmee
Brooklynn
Caitlyn
Fares
Isabel
Marco
Zsofi
Clara
Ibtissam
Blanka and Danae
Ksenija
Lune
Nika
Robert
,Rybczynski, W.,Home: a short history of an idea, Londen (Penguin Books)
1986. ‘Foreword’, p. Vii-viii, ‘Chapter One: Nostalgia’, p. 1-13, ‘Chapter Two:
Intimacy and privacy’, p. 14-49 - Isabel
Chapter 1
Introduction about an example: Ralph Lauren advertisement
Meant to show the relationship between clothing and interior decoration
Traditional homes were very valued and therefore shown in advertisements (sense of nostalgia)
advertisements were not an accurate reflection of reality but rather what society thought it
should be
Chapter 2
Intimacy and privacy
16th century
- Studies were open for everyone → no private rooms
- rooms did not have specialized functions
- no machines or mechanical devices → primitive heating
Not much privacy → 100 years later came the concept of ‘privacies’
Comfort as a concept
First meant adequate living → later a definition of physical well-being and enjoyment.
Domestic comfort
Bourgeois homes were mainly used for the analysis of comfort because
- Poor people lived in extreme conditions → no concept of home
- Clergy did not live in a house
House combined living and work: main floor was shop or work area
Living space was one big room, minimalistic furnished
Improvised seating: no chairs (were only used as decorative or authoritative symbols)
This is why the people in the Middle Ages were often portrayed as having bad posture
Portable and demountable furniture → no emotional attachment to possessions
Room functioned as meeting place → no privacy and no intimacy
Bathing was fashionable (hygiene important) → but much sickness due to being dumb
Comfort was little
Stricter rules
- clothing: represent status
- buy certain things at certain times
- table manners
Overall, objects lacked meaning
- no intention of improving them
- no distinction between function and purpose
,End of the Middle Ages
Change in domestic life
- Houses larger and sturdier (stone replaced wood)
- Changes in manners and attitudes
- Four or five stories → around internal courtyard
- Lowest floors: commercial space and stables as well as living quarters of the
proprietor
- Main room: salle
- Cooking in separate room
- Bedrooms: chambres garde-rodeo and cabinet
Privatization of the home
- Separation of the masters from their servants
- Houses were merely residences (work and life became separate)
- More sense of intimacy and the idea of family life
17th century
Furniture was seen as valuable possession and part of decoration of room
Chairs were more shaped to accommodate the body
Greater variety of furniture: but not yet assigned to specialized rooms
- Main room for daytime activities – very versatile (table, furniture along the walls to utilize,
used as party room)
Rich bourgeois lived in mansions
- Privacy ignored → no hallway (have to go through all rooms)
- No bathrooms (for plebs) → toilet was brought to you
Later: Growing awareness of intimacy → private rooms for writing
Altogether not a big rise in comfort in the practical definition, however, consciousness about
privacy and intimacy is a good sign. Both those things affect our consciousness, which does
indeed affect the idea of comfort.
, Maldonado, T., ‘The Idea of Comfort’. Design Issues, 8 (1991), 35-43; - Isabel
Comfort
- Suggest the quality of life → livability → depends on convenience, ease and habitability
- Comfort is a privilege of few → capitalist society
- Scheme for social control
- But also advantages to daily life
- Can be considered as contributing to the process of modernization
- Reaching comfort can mean new sources of hardship and sufferings
Domestic sphere
- Comfort (in home) seeks to restore the energies consumed in hostile external world of
work
- Comfort expresses the techniques of the body → attitudes and postures of the body in
relation to furniture
- Comfort also contributes to disciplining the family
- Comfort = pleasure of private life → home
- Home = central place for social activity and contributes to formation and consolidation of
the modern family
Traditional family → towards a nuclear/modern family
Block instability of the family → shelter from external intrusions
Privacy goes together with discipline → comfort and hygiene both responsible for privacy
→(order)
Domestic life is a control mechanism that aids in structuring and stabilizing daily life in capitalist
society
Victorian England: first phase of industrialism (alarming living conditions)
- Dominant class tried to improve and force a ideology of comfort toward the lower class
→ material domestic culture
- Hygiene and order → implemented in the city → city and house are of the same system
of hygiene
- Bathroom and kitchen separate (modesty/privacy + unwanted odors)
- Kitchen: mechanization, standardization and rationalization → functional specialization
Living spaces adapted to moments of sociability, relationship, relief and repose.
Domestic work: feminine competence,
Domestic rest: male character → Men had more comfortable furniture
(Conspicuous consumption)
Interior of house is part of material culture of society → show wealth
