This work entitled House or Home? focuses on abandoned dwellings around New Zealand, that are waiting for a potential owner.

 

The focus from my previous project was around the notion of the ‘non-place’. Non-places which are temporary spaces of passage, communication and consumption. These places are designed to be passed through and have a universal blandness about them. This investigation into the language of architecture, especially sociologists of space such as Juhani Pallasmaa and Gaston Bachelard. The non-place and these theorists lead me into the concept of ‘the uncanny’ for this current work.

 

The uncanny, is the sense where you feel something is familiar, yet foreign at the same time, causing you to feel comfortably strange or uncomfortably familiar, similar to déjà vu. This state was written about by Sigmund Freud through the use of the word heimlich, that translates to homely, which means belonging to the house, familiar, intimate and friendly. Conversely this word also means concealed; withheld and kept from sight. Its opposite, unheimlich or unhomely means eerie or weird, arousing unsettling fears, similar to the uncanny, which relates to what is frightening and to what awakens dread and horror but leads back to what is known and familiar[1]. Freud details many things, people, impressions, events and situations which are able to arouse feelings of the uncanny.

 

The difference between the words house and home is a personal one. Some people believe that the building, the bricks and timber comprise the house, and the furniture and people occupying it make it a home. However, people who do not have a great number of sentimental objects may consider that the house is their home. J Macgregor Wise says that home is a territory, an expression. Home can be a collection of objects and furniture, that one carries from place to place. It can also be the feeling that comes when the final objects are unpacked so the space feels complete[2].

 

I think it is not the space we live in but the way we inhabit it that makes it a home, it is also the way we design the space; the wallpaper, the carpet or lino, the paint and the layout of the rooms. Rachel Whiteread cast the inside of a house and then demolished the house around the cast. Each remnant of human presence became significant, generating speculations and memories. She called the project House not home, which challenged the sentimentalised notion of the domestic[3]. Home is a concept; we use this word to satisfy our need for sanctuary and privacy. It is a link between our personal identity and society, our narrative of self-worth and (be)longing.

 

 

 

 

1 Freud, Sigmund. ‘The Uncanny’. The Uncanny. London: Imago, 2003

[2] Macgregor Wise, J. ‘Home: Territory and Identity’. Intmus: Interior Design Theory Reader. Chichester: John Wilery, 2006

 

[3] Vidler, Anthony. ‘House’. Rachel Whiteread. London: Phaidon, 1995