What is a home?

home is where the heart is….period. so that would make the answer totally subjective.

What does it mean for the heart to “be somewhere?”

You can’t build one building that will appeal to every person. What makes a house a home to people are the attributes that the person finds appealing. Some people like high ceilings and large rooms, some do not enjoy such “cavernous” rooms. Everyone prefers a different color as well.

There are some attributes which would be generally agreed on, such as the house being enclosed via walls or a fence to discourage bugs/animals/theft, an adequate amount of lighting, and the ability to allow fresh air to flow through. But beyond that I’d find it very unlikely we can point to any feature and definitively determine what is the “best” (windows: the quantity, the style and size).

A broad definition of what a “home” is, is that a home is a place where a family feels comfortable and secure in order for them to have their security need fulfilled, thus allowing the people to continue to achieve higher needs such as socialization and self development (according to Maslow’s hierarchy of needs).

A home is a house full of memories, love, good times and happiness.

A place where you “do your living,” and enjoy it. Home could be a classroom if that is where you feel safe and cherished, and at ease.

If I drop acid, my relationship with light, space, color, and texture becomes extraordinarily special in a truly pyschedelic kind of way. It’s kind of like turning my home into the Twilight Zone or something. It’s very surreal actually and that is certainly something I can care about. As far as the architecture is concerned, it’s kind of like a cross between the Fortress of Solitude and a House of Cards. Strange yet comforting.

A place where you feel cozy, completely relaxed, and happy!

@dynamicduo. Your response seems to deny that architecture is a legitimate art and technology for achieving human happiness. We spend our entire lives in places, and I think it worthwhile to think about what makes them good or bad places. Please note the architecture tag. I am looking for a discussion of an architectural character. Feel free to get imaginative.

Place yourself in a place that means something to you, and describe it. Or describe a realistic fantasy home. How do the architectural qualities of the place make doing whatever you do there that much more natural and immanent? For instance, take this passage from Proust’s A la Recherche du Temps Perdu, in which he describes the room of his house that served as his greatest refuge of solitude:

”...in my cowardice I became at once a man, and did what all we grown men do when face to face with suffering and injustice; I preferred not to see them; I ran up to the top of the house to cry alone in a little room beside the schoolroom under the eaves, which smelt of orris-root, and was scented also by a wild currant-bush which had climbed up between the stones of the outer wall and thrust a flowering branch in through the half-opened window. Intended for a baser and more specific use, this room, from which, in the daytime, I could see as far as the keep of Roussainville-le-Pin, was for a long time my place of refuge, doubtless because it was the only room whose door Ï was allowed to lock, whenever my occupation was such as required an inviolable solitude; reading or dreaming, secret tears or paroxysms of desire.”

(Yes, he mentions that he can lock the door, but there are other details as well.) Let’s try to figure out what makes our enjoyment of home tick. An answer doesn’t have to be THE final answer, and in a way it is rather naive to think that is would be. I look forward to a great discussion!

@aeschylus – I have to disagree with your conclusion about my response. Nowhere did I claim that architecture is not a legitimate art. I have merely claimed that as with most art, there will never be one piece that satisfies everyone’s definition and desires of art. What one family may find desirable in a house varies from culture to culture and family to family.

I will address your second paragraph. My realistic fantasy home is not defined by its physical parameters but is described by the things it allows me to do. My ideal home will be on a farm with a lot of property to allow myself to farm the lands and raise animals. It will have enough rooms that allow me to pursue my hobbies. While I do have some ideas of how I’d like my house to be, if in the case where I can’t get my house to look like my ideal vision, it will still be my home.

I am not trying to dismiss your desire for a discussion, nor am I telling you that architecture plays no part for all people. I am simply informing you that for some subset of the population, myself included, home is not defined by the way it looks or the architectural features, but by what the home facilitates. I will leave you to having your desired discussion, or I will respond to any direct comment you make in my direction. :)

to answer your question, aeschylus, the heart to be somewhere….I think no matter the structure, if you are not at home in your heart, it matters not where you are in time and space for you are never really home…
I realize that is way too esoteric an answer for what you are looking for. Just waxing poetic for a moment. Will get on that architectual answer after tea time…

Home is a place of peace and quiet, where my family is, and where my animals are. It is a refuge from the worries and stress of the world. It is a place where I can light a fire in the fireplace and where I can make chicken soup or a good stew. It is a place where I can read, or quietly work on my laptop, or listen to music.

Nothing makes me happier after a long day than to come home and have my cats greet me. (My dog, of course, comes to work with me every day.)

Urban Dictionary Says:

Home:
What a house becomes after the person owning it has had sex in every room.

@chelseababyy
Amen!

A home is a people-nest. It can take just about any form, any materials, any location.
A house, on the other hand, is an architectural creation. But, house does not equal home.

Many architects have attempted to develop a formulaic structure, a system of spaces, places, connections, light, form, color, etc. that would initiate the “home” feeling in residents. The success and failures of these experiments (mainly in mass housing) have been debated in many a conference, office and publication. But out of all these experiments, no one has developed a universal vernacular of home.

@steelmarket. I emphatically agree with the sentiment of your answer. No system can encompass the needs of all individuals.

However, I wonder what kind of things would go into a person’s thought if they were to build their own house. I mean things beyond the immediately practical (does it have enough sleeping places, storage space, is the kitchen sufficient for the needs of the inhabitants, etc.). Where would people want their windows? What textures would they want around them? It seems that anyone thinking very deeply about building their house would tend to dwell on a set of similar questions, whatever those may be. For instance, an essential, non-pragmatic aspect of the house that seems universal to the comfort of human beings in built spaces is the reflection of the intended intimacy of a room or area in the height of the ceiling. This is why bedrooms almost always have the lowest ceilings, and why even within bedrooms many beds have canopies, and why entrance rooms and dining rooms almost always have much higher ceilings. Then breakfast nooks have much lower ceilings. So on.

What are some other things like these that would be important in psychologically supporting the various human relationships to “homes?”

Why is a home more like a home when you’ve had sex in every room?