Geography of Home

by Akiko Busch

Geography of Home has been hailed as "an appealing, insightful collection of musings on the architecture, psychology, and history of house and home in America" (Kirkus). Now available in paperback, Geography of Home reminds us that the house is home to many things. Far more than four walls and a roof, it contains our private and public lives, our families, our memories and aspirations, and reflects our attitudes toward society, culture, the environment, and our neighbors.
In a literary tour of the spaces of our homes, noted design essayist Akiko Busch reflects on how we define such elusive qualities as privacy, security, and comfort. Part social history, part architectural history, part personal anecdote, this rich and delightful book uncovers the hidden meanings of the place we call home.

Genres: Nonfiction, Architecture, Essays, Art

164 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1999

About the author

Akiko Busch has written about design and culture since 1979. She is the author of Geography of Home: Writings on Where We Live and The Uncommon Life of Common Objects: Essays on Design an the Everyday. Her most recent book of essays, Nine Ways to Cross a River, a collection of essays about swimming across American Rivers, was published in 2007 by Bloomsbury/USA. She was a contributing editor at Metropolis magazine for 20 years. Her essays have appeared in numerous exhibition catalogues, and she has written articles for Architectural Record, Elle, Home, House & Garden, Metropolitan Home, London Financial Times, The New York Times, Traditional Home, Travel & Leisure and Wallpaper*, among other publications. In Fall, 2005 she served as a Richard Koopman Distinguished Chair for the Visual Arts at the Hartford Art School at the University of Hartford. She has lectured widely on architecture and design and has appeared on public radio in the U.S. and Canada. Currently, she is a regular contributor to The New York Times Sunday regional section.

Reviews

[Sophy H · Rating 1 out of 5]

Akiko Busch's best friends are surgeons, lawyers, poets, potters and friends of the stars. Their houses have views of the river/the city skyline. They convert loft apartments.

Akiko Busch's childhood family home had designer furniture and ample dressing rooms for her grandmother.

Akiko Busch's current family home is a sprawling home with so many rooms, she and her husband argue about what to use them for!

Do you see a theme emerging here? This book is a reach. It should have been an article in an aspirational home and lifestyle magazine for very rich and clueless housewives. There is literary padding to pretty much itemise each room of the house and discuss how rich people use them/want to use them/have used them/should use them.

I know this was written in 1999/2000, but anyone who talks about the culinary delights of "calves brains" needs hitting over the head with a really big frying pan!!!

Do one Busch!

[Kendra · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book was like a nice hug. It was so soothing and sentimental. Something about pondering our use of space, now and in the past, was so calming and I thoroughly enjoyed going on this little trip.

[Katie · Rating 3 out of 5]

A brief nonfiction book about the geography of the American home, what the different spaces mean, and how they've evolved throughout American history. There are chapters about the dining room, front porch, living room, bedroom, "dressing room" (which we no longer have), etc.

I probably found this more interesting than most would at this time in my life, having just purchased a house and moved within the last year, and having seen so many houses and evaluating them in terms of "can I feel at home here? Is this the one? Would I like to live here?" There's been much obsession in my world recently over how different spaces are laid out in different homes and why. I never thought much about the layout of houses growing up until I was in a position to buy one, and then it's really really really important that you feel comfortable with the layout of a home and then you start to examine why or why not.

[Emily · Rating 2 out of 5]

Not at all what I was looking for. Just an exaggeration on how the entire home is some how outdated and unused because we have vcrs and Windows XP. Dated and a very unhelpful read.

[Anne · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book is a confection—slight, not much food for thought. I was bothered by the author's assumption of "we-ness," especially in sections (many of them) that did not conform to my personal experience. She's trying to do too much: universalize something that is far from universal. There is also a distinct sense of privilege (e.g., her mention in the garage chapter of Ranger Rovers and Lexuses in the same breath as "the residents of many Third World countries"—but what about the residents of many American cities?) that I found offputting. The book felt like it was blithely typed out (in her home office, no doubt), one idea to the next, all from her personal experience—though she does try to enlarge the picture by quoting other writers and scholars, and Freud.

I read this book for a writing seminar I'm about to start. I am not especially surprised that the seminar leader liked this book—it has lots of specific detail, it occasionally leaps from topic to topic in a delightful way. I will be interested to hear what she has to say about it, and whether she has any critiques.

(The one thing I did get from this book is that in 1669 Louis XIV decreed that only knives with rounded tips would be used in the dining room. That same chapter also got me googling Victorian forks. Wow! What variety!)

[Emily · Rating 4 out of 5]

The intro pulled me in since it talked about the crumbling house on telegraph hill in San Francisco. However, the rest of the book primarily focuses on architecture commonly found on the east coast. Which was a bit disappointing. But all in all I appreciated Busch’s meditations on homes and some of the humor that came with it. I particularly enjoyed the sections on porches, laundry rooms, bedrooms and libraries.
Since this book was published in the 90s, when computers first started to become common place in the home, I’d be interested in an update to her libraries section. Id also liked to have had her talk more about the multi use of rooms, such as rooms in an apartment, as she touched on in the bedroom section.
A good little book, but some parts are a bit out dated, but as I think Busch would expect, as styles are always changing.

[Jo · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is another book of light interest and some interesting facets but no real depth. Reading it alongside Bell Hooks "Belonging" which offers such a contrast was perhaps a mistake as it seems so light and frivolous in comparison. As I said, some interesting snippets but not a book I would return to.

[Caitlyn Veenstra · Rating 3 out of 5]

Overall, an interesting take on the various rooms and aspects of an American home. I think the author put some of her own biases and preferences into the stories she shared, which made it lose some points for me. I don't understand the chapter progression.

[Willow · Rating 2 out of 5]

2.5

[Ellen Behrens · Rating 5 out of 5]

Akiko Busch specializes in writing about design and culture, and this collection gathers thirteen essays she wrote in the 1990s for Metropolis magazine, each focusing on a different room of the house (including a few rooms few of us have, like a dressing room or library).

Her examinations, for lack of a better descriptor, are personal and historical, specific and sweeping. That the bedroom was once the primary room where visitors was received was just one surprising insight I gained from reading this book. Busch's ability to make connections across trends and imbue them with meaning is impeccable: she recalls her grandmother primping in her dressing room: "The room was always filled with blue smoke. Those were the days in the fifties when women rarely attended to the details of their physical appearance without chain-smoking. Smoke and mirrors were the essential furnishings of the dressing room." Boom.

I was mesmerized by this book. It's tidy and compact and brilliant, and fill take a treasured spot in the bookshelf I covet as my own library in the four hundred square-foot space that is my home: a fifth-wheel RV my husband and I inhabit as full-time RVers. To keep a book when it means another must be donated or given away is a high compliment and clear evidence that I will return to this book again and again.

[Kristine · Rating 5 out of 5]

I might have liked this much better if I hadn’t loved Architecture of happiness so fully – this was published in 1999 and seemed impossibly dated, for one. Also the author was too fond of “we” – “we live our lives in X Y Z mode …” Well, you and your tapeworm, or who? And too many clichés. An excellent idea with some fine prose and worthwhile insights here and there – 33: “Isn’t there an enormous difference between something that is never used and something that is useless? And if something, like a front door, serves a basic human need for symbolic meanings, isn’t that also serving a function?” but no Alain de Botton. Ended strongly: 155-159, about living rooms and other social spaces inside the generally private space of home: “Even with TVs, VCRs, and CD players to entertain us at home, sitting around and talking remains a social activity humans have a natural aptitude for. That gathering space, whatever name it goes by, remains a place that is furnished as much by language as it is by any accommodating arrangement of furniture … (I)t is through conversation and human exchange that known boundaries can be transcended, and in ordinary talk that the unlikely so often transpires.” And in the epilog, after an intriguing story of a representative of the power company who came to help them figure out why their energy use was suddenly off the charts, and did so by walking around listening for a hum that shouldn’t be there: 163 Busch rejects the idea that houses have “personalities” but they do have “a language of (their) own … a network of social and cultural currents, those habits, beliefs and values that also make it function … (I)t is by being attuned to all these systems that we might arrive at some genuine understanding of what is it that gives power to the places we live.” Worth reading for those insights alone, excellent places to start understanding the culture of the built environment.

[Laura · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book indirectly highlights classism and the advantages of the wealthy in the home. It does not offer much other than highlighting rooms of the home and their intended purpose but with a very…privileged twist.

The writing was well worded and witty, but ultimately, this book ended up in the very back of a shelf of other books that I will never touch again or give away at the earliest convenience. It should be noted that the spine is not even revealed to inform others that I possess this book.

[Jean Grant · Rating 5 out of 5]

Ease and simplicity. No bright new revelations, more like a summer's afternoon in the porch swing. Such beautiful writing:

"The library is a rom that contains human wisdom. Call it a room that reflects our relationship iwth knowledge. Because knowledge is like anything else—when you love it, you want to do somthing for it. Sometimes you want to build it a beautiful room, which is exactly what the English did, with steadfast elegance, for centuries."

[Juli Anna · Rating 3 out of 5]

The hardest part of reading this book was the recognition that Busch is discussing something I care about so deeply--in such a way that doesn't make me care more. Although I enjoyed this book topically, I was couldn't figure out what point she was trying to make by writing about the home in such a way. It helped pass several subway rides pleasantly, but was not a revelation.

[Julia · Rating 3 out of 5]

Pleasant read; some insightful psychological connections to the American home and its evolution. The author's perspective is narrow, omitting a myriad of home arrangements and living quarters of Americans, which makes the book trite. Dated references to technology and appliances spoil the timeless topic of this book.

[Lilly Irani · Rating 4 out of 5]

Short, sweet well organized cultural history of different parts of the American home. For example, did you know the laundry used to be thought of as a den of sin or that the modern architects tried to do away with closets?

[Annett · Rating 4 out of 5]

A nice and light read, insightful for those not too familiar with "the American Home". Akiko Bush touches on every room in a (traditional) home and relates her ideas and thoughts in a conversational tone that makes it a fun and quick read.

[Liz VanDerwerken · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book essentially said everything I believe and feel about design, not only about what design is and what it is not, but how design relates to our lives and the ways we inhabit a space. Love love love.

[Ali Rowan · Rating 5 out of 5]

While it dates itself a little at times (did you know that the VCR has come to take on a central role in our domestic lives?), this book makes so many thoughtful and astute observations on our homes—things we never really think about because we're exposed to them to the point of neutrality.

[Bob Peterson · Rating 3 out of 5]

Interesting book idea, taking each room of the house and evoking thoughts and feelings about it. Made me think about houses I have lived in and the associations I have with various rooms. Good for reflection.

[Rachel · Rating 5 out of 5]

Sweet little book - love these musings/short essays on our experience with our homes.

[Lamis]

The read makes you re-think the meaning of home, a room at a time.

[Christy · Rating 3 out of 5]

Good, but nothing amazing. A shorter, less detailed version of "The Architecture of Happiness."

[Jeanmarie · Rating 3 out of 5]

Nice short essays - one on each room of the traditional American home. Not much rigor, the author too blinded by nostalgia, just some nice light semiotic readings.

[Bray · Rating 4 out of 5]

nice little series of essays collected from a regular column in Metropolis magazine about our homes and sense of place.

[Marjorie · Rating 2 out of 5]

her opinions are limited I think by her own geography.

[Marion Simmons · Rating 3 out of 5]

The was a very interesting book to read which talks about how the purposes of a house changed over time.

[Paul · Rating 4 out of 5]

Nice little collection of essays om the history and culture behind the different rooms in a typical American home circa 1995. Some of it is a little dated but overall it is a very nice read.

[Kristina Gibson · Rating 3 out of 5]

A nice little set of essays on the spaces of the home. I think I was hoping for something a little deeper though.

[Katie · Rating 3 out of 5]

a gentle, easy read that reflects on the history of various rooms we inhabit (in developed, Western countries)