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Home: A Short History of an Idea
This immensely popular, witty, and highly provocative book is changing people's attitudes about convenience, decor, and technology in home design and furnishing. 10 black-and-white illustrations.
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First published January 1, 1986
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3907 people want to read
About the author
Witold Rybczynski
57 books179 followersWitold Rybczynski was born in Edinburgh, of Polish parentage, raised in London, and attended Jesuit schools in England and Canada. He studied architecture at McGill University in Montreal, where he also taught for twenty years. He is currently the Martin and Margy Meyerson Professor of Urbanism at the University of Pennsylvania, where he also co-edits the Wharton Real Estate Review. Rybczynski has designed and built houses as a registered architect, as well as doing practical experiments in low-cost housing, which took him to Mexico, Nigeria, India, the Philippines, and China.
(From www.witoldrybczynski.com)
(From www.witoldrybczynski.com)
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 186 reviews
December 17, 2011
Examines the European-American evolution of the cultural concepts of privacy, comfort, and the intersection of form and function. I'd group this book as informative to ecopsychology, although the author, writing in the mid-1980s, didn't use the term.
The author admits that comfort "is an invention--a cultural artifice. Like all cultural ideas--childhood, family, gender--it has a past, and it cannot be understood without reference to its specific history. One-dimensional, technical definitions of comfort, which ignore history, are bound to be unsatisfactory." (p. 230) Where people struggle for mere survival, comfort is beside the point. Where there is something that might be called a standard of living, people do tend to make themselves what we know as "comfortable," but not everyone has thought about comfort the way we think of it today, informed as we are by advertisements and so forth. "People in the Middle Ages did not altogether lack comfort, as I have tried to show. Their homes were neither rustic nor crude, nor should we imagine that the persons inhabiting them did so without pleasure. But what comfort there was was never explicit. What our medieval ancestors did lack was the awareness of comfort as an objective idea." (pp. 31-32)
He believes that today we have not integrated our domestic technology with our sense of comfort. It is a subtle point: technology is useful, but not necessarily calming and pleasing in a way that appeals artistically or gels with our sense of self. Quote: "With the introduction of devices such as the gasolier and the vent duct a rift appeared between the mainly visual approach of decorators and the primarily mechanical approach of the engineers. As we shall see, with time this rift widened and contributed to a schizophrenic attitude toward domestic comfort that still troubles us." (pp. 147-148) And again: "One might have expected the various inventions that contributed to human comfort at the turn of the century to have had a profound impact on the appearance of the home. Surprisingly, this was not the case." (p. 173)
This is much closer to what I'd hoped Bill Bryson's At Home: A Short History of Private Life would be about. Bryson's book focused more on the architecture and technology of houses, whereas Rybczynski weaves these subjects into his reflections on privacy and comfort that make up the core of the book.
The author admits that comfort "is an invention--a cultural artifice. Like all cultural ideas--childhood, family, gender--it has a past, and it cannot be understood without reference to its specific history. One-dimensional, technical definitions of comfort, which ignore history, are bound to be unsatisfactory." (p. 230) Where people struggle for mere survival, comfort is beside the point. Where there is something that might be called a standard of living, people do tend to make themselves what we know as "comfortable," but not everyone has thought about comfort the way we think of it today, informed as we are by advertisements and so forth. "People in the Middle Ages did not altogether lack comfort, as I have tried to show. Their homes were neither rustic nor crude, nor should we imagine that the persons inhabiting them did so without pleasure. But what comfort there was was never explicit. What our medieval ancestors did lack was the awareness of comfort as an objective idea." (pp. 31-32)
He believes that today we have not integrated our domestic technology with our sense of comfort. It is a subtle point: technology is useful, but not necessarily calming and pleasing in a way that appeals artistically or gels with our sense of self. Quote: "With the introduction of devices such as the gasolier and the vent duct a rift appeared between the mainly visual approach of decorators and the primarily mechanical approach of the engineers. As we shall see, with time this rift widened and contributed to a schizophrenic attitude toward domestic comfort that still troubles us." (pp. 147-148) And again: "One might have expected the various inventions that contributed to human comfort at the turn of the century to have had a profound impact on the appearance of the home. Surprisingly, this was not the case." (p. 173)
This is much closer to what I'd hoped Bill Bryson's At Home: A Short History of Private Life would be about. Bryson's book focused more on the architecture and technology of houses, whereas Rybczynski weaves these subjects into his reflections on privacy and comfort that make up the core of the book.
May 13, 2013
This book examines how the ideas of "home" and "comfort" and "domesticity" came into being and changed over the years and the relation of these ideas to technology in the home. For the most part, the book covers the period from the middle ages to the present. It is the author's claim that during this period, the home as an idea (rather than a shelter) came into being.
During the middle ages, homes contained many people who were only tenuously connected. A person's livelihood was based out of the same building that was used for sleeping and eating, so the buildings housed servants, employees, and apprentices in addition to the family. The family itself was abbreviated because children were sent off as apprentices when they became old enough. The large household (sometimes up to 25 people), the lack of privacy due to being a place of business, and the less coherent family led to the medieval idea of home being quite different from the modern idea of home.
Over time, the ideas of home, comfort, domesticity, privacy, and intimacy started to become more common. These ideas had several sources. Eventually, where people work became more separated from where people lived; it became a distinctly different part of the same building or another building completely. Aristocrats started valuing furniture for its ability to provide comfort as well as the status or appearance it provided; these ideas eventually became more wide spread. Children stopped leaving the family to become apprentices. As industrial jobs became more common, servants were harder to find; this led to the development of technology that could allow a family to maintain a home without servants, and increased privacy. It was interesting to see how these ideas have changed over time. Like so many (more or less) historical works that focus on home life, it shows how our modern idea of the "traditional" family is actually a idea that has changed over time.
At times, Rybczynski focuses on the design home when other social factors should also be considered. He seems to think that nostalgia for past decorative and architectural styles expresses a longing for a sense of homeyness no longer present (I am with him so far) and that this lack of homeyness can be blamed on the fact that modern design (modern in the Le Corbusier sense) is not comfortable and intimate. He does not consider that the modern lack of homeyness may have less to do with any architectural style and more to do with how society has changed. Today, families tend to be more spread out geographically, people are part of many disjoint communities and have to balance them, houses are built in a cookie cutter manner that focuses on maximizing profits rather than comfort. I think lack of homeyness has less to do with the fact that there is a line of sight from the living room through the dining room to the kitchen and more to do with the fact that people plop in front of the TV when they get home from a work place where they are expected to be friends with everyone but not too close to anyone.
Overall, I really really liked this book until I got to the last two chapters. The second to last chapter was the author ranting against modern architecture in a book where it is not relevant proportional to the space devoted to it. The last chapter was a rant against "science" and definitions. Because science (behavioral psychology) has only been able to experimentally determine what comfort is not, science is of no use in defining what comfort is; we cannot hope to have any sort of general definition at all. The best we can do is define comfort as being like an onion [no please, not the onion analogy]; comfort is a complex and many layered thing, but you cannot examine it by cutting it up because then it loses its oniony nature. Instead, comfort can only be defined with vague descriptions of particular comfortable situations (comfort is a good book, a pot of tea in just the right place, and lots of comfy pillows). The author claims that this is the best we can do to define comfort, but then goes on to say that these descriptions define comfort because they address convenience, efficiency, domesticity, physical ease, privacy, and intimacy. Which is it, can we generalize or not? (Okay, that rant felt good. =)
During the middle ages, homes contained many people who were only tenuously connected. A person's livelihood was based out of the same building that was used for sleeping and eating, so the buildings housed servants, employees, and apprentices in addition to the family. The family itself was abbreviated because children were sent off as apprentices when they became old enough. The large household (sometimes up to 25 people), the lack of privacy due to being a place of business, and the less coherent family led to the medieval idea of home being quite different from the modern idea of home.
Over time, the ideas of home, comfort, domesticity, privacy, and intimacy started to become more common. These ideas had several sources. Eventually, where people work became more separated from where people lived; it became a distinctly different part of the same building or another building completely. Aristocrats started valuing furniture for its ability to provide comfort as well as the status or appearance it provided; these ideas eventually became more wide spread. Children stopped leaving the family to become apprentices. As industrial jobs became more common, servants were harder to find; this led to the development of technology that could allow a family to maintain a home without servants, and increased privacy. It was interesting to see how these ideas have changed over time. Like so many (more or less) historical works that focus on home life, it shows how our modern idea of the "traditional" family is actually a idea that has changed over time.
At times, Rybczynski focuses on the design home when other social factors should also be considered. He seems to think that nostalgia for past decorative and architectural styles expresses a longing for a sense of homeyness no longer present (I am with him so far) and that this lack of homeyness can be blamed on the fact that modern design (modern in the Le Corbusier sense) is not comfortable and intimate. He does not consider that the modern lack of homeyness may have less to do with any architectural style and more to do with how society has changed. Today, families tend to be more spread out geographically, people are part of many disjoint communities and have to balance them, houses are built in a cookie cutter manner that focuses on maximizing profits rather than comfort. I think lack of homeyness has less to do with the fact that there is a line of sight from the living room through the dining room to the kitchen and more to do with the fact that people plop in front of the TV when they get home from a work place where they are expected to be friends with everyone but not too close to anyone.
Overall, I really really liked this book until I got to the last two chapters. The second to last chapter was the author ranting against modern architecture in a book where it is not relevant proportional to the space devoted to it. The last chapter was a rant against "science" and definitions. Because science (behavioral psychology) has only been able to experimentally determine what comfort is not, science is of no use in defining what comfort is; we cannot hope to have any sort of general definition at all. The best we can do is define comfort as being like an onion [no please, not the onion analogy]; comfort is a complex and many layered thing, but you cannot examine it by cutting it up because then it loses its oniony nature. Instead, comfort can only be defined with vague descriptions of particular comfortable situations (comfort is a good book, a pot of tea in just the right place, and lots of comfy pillows). The author claims that this is the best we can do to define comfort, but then goes on to say that these descriptions define comfort because they address convenience, efficiency, domesticity, physical ease, privacy, and intimacy. Which is it, can we generalize or not? (Okay, that rant felt good. =)
April 9, 2020
Początek jest świetny i faktycznie ukazuje fascynującą zmianę idei domu, która dokonała się na przełomie średniowiecza i nowożytności. Jedna z ciekawszych rzeczy, jakie ostatnio czytałam. Potem już książka jest raczej historią architektury wnętrz, co oczywiście też jest bardzo ciekawe. Byłoby jeszcze lepiej, gdyby kiedyś wydać wersję z ilustracjami wszystkiego, o czym pisze Rybczyński. Końcówka jest trochę zrzędzeniem starszego pana, któremu się nie podobają najnowsze trendy. No i nie sposób uniknąć wrażenia, że postulowane przez niego połączenie przemysłowej dostępnej produkcji i domowej przytulności dokonało się w międzyczasie po naszej stronie Atlantyku za sprawą Ikei ;)
December 26, 2021
Interesante libro sobre un tema poco tratado y, sin embargo, tan cotidiano. Fue escrito hace bastantes años, por lo que se queda un poco obsoleto en algunos aspectos y he echado de menos algunas ilustraciones más para comprender mejor conceptos arquitectónicos y de diseño que se me escapan. Pero diría que es un básico para cualquier arquitecto, estudiante o simple aficionado.
March 19, 2021
An entertaining rundown of the development of the home from the Middle Ages to the mid-1980s, when this book was written. Not that much, other than technology, has actually changed since the mid-1980s. Mostly, this deals with the Western world. (Europe and North America)
This is not just about how the home has changed physically across the centuries, but also how our view of home life has changed as seen through the concepts of domesticity, privacy, and comfort, ideas that didn’t even exist 500 years ago.
This book is filled with all kinds of fun facts about how different life at home is today from the way it was in past eras. I love books like this because there’s always something new to learn about things and ideas we take for granted today.
Some might find this a little dry in places, but I enjoyed it thoroughly.
This is not just about how the home has changed physically across the centuries, but also how our view of home life has changed as seen through the concepts of domesticity, privacy, and comfort, ideas that didn’t even exist 500 years ago.
This book is filled with all kinds of fun facts about how different life at home is today from the way it was in past eras. I love books like this because there’s always something new to learn about things and ideas we take for granted today.
Some might find this a little dry in places, but I enjoyed it thoroughly.
October 13, 2014
1) "The Middle Ages not only produced illuminated books, but also eyeglasses, not only the cathedral, but also the coal mine. Revolutionary changes occurred in both primary industry and manufacturing. The first recorded instance of mass production---of horseshoes---occurred during the Middle Ages. Between the tenth and the thirteenth century, a technological boom produced the mechanical clock, the suction pump, the horizontal loom, the waterwheel, the windmill, and even, on both shores of the English Channel, the tidal mill. Agricultural innovations formed the economic foundation for all this technical activity. The deep plow and the idea of crop rotation increased productivity as much as fourfold, so that agricultural yields in the thirteenth century would not be surpassed for another five hundred years. Far from being a technological Black Hole, the Middle Ages marked the authentic beginning of industrialization in Europe. The period's influence was felt until at least the eighteenth century in all aspects of everyday life, including attitudes towards the home."
2) "There was little differentiation between utility and ceremony. Simple functions, like washing the hands, acquired ceremonial forms, and ceremonies like breaking bread were performed unself-consciously as a natural part of life. The emphasis that the Middle Ages placed on ceremony underlines what John Lukacs has called the external character of medieval civilization. What mattered then was the external world, and one's place in it. Life was a public affair, and just as one did not have a strongly developed self-consciousness, one did not have a room of one's own. It was the medieval mind, not the absence of comfortable chairs or central heating, that explains the austerity of the medieval home. It is not so much that in the Middle Ages comfort was unknown, as Walter Scott would have it, but rather that it was not needed."
3) "I have called the modern interior 'a rupture in the evolution of domestic comfort.' It represents an attempt not so much to introduce a new style---that is the least of it---as to change social habits, and even to alter the underlying cultural meaning of domestic comfort. Its denial of bourgeois traditions has caused it to question, and reject, not only luxury but also ease, not only clutter but also intimacy. Its emphasis on space has caused it to ignore privacy, just as its interest in industrial-looking materials and objects has led it away from domesticity. Austerity, both visual and tactile, has replaced delight. What started as an endeavor to rationalize and simplify has become a wrong-headed crusade; not, as is often claimed, a response to a changing world, but an attempt to change the way we live. It is a rupture not because it does away with period styles, not because it eliminates ornament, and not because it stresses technology, but because it attacks the very idea of comfort itself. That is why people look to the past. Their nostalgia is not the result of an interest in archaeology, like some Victorian revivals, nor of a sympathy for a particular period, like Jeffersonian classicism. Nor is it a rejection of technology. People appreciate the benefits of central heating and electric lighting, but the rooms of a Colonial country home or of a Georgian mansion---which had neither---continue to attract them, for they provide a measure of something that is absent from the modern interior. People turn to the past because they are looking for something that they do not find in the present---comfort and well-being."
4) "Can we really have coziness and robots?"
2) "There was little differentiation between utility and ceremony. Simple functions, like washing the hands, acquired ceremonial forms, and ceremonies like breaking bread were performed unself-consciously as a natural part of life. The emphasis that the Middle Ages placed on ceremony underlines what John Lukacs has called the external character of medieval civilization. What mattered then was the external world, and one's place in it. Life was a public affair, and just as one did not have a strongly developed self-consciousness, one did not have a room of one's own. It was the medieval mind, not the absence of comfortable chairs or central heating, that explains the austerity of the medieval home. It is not so much that in the Middle Ages comfort was unknown, as Walter Scott would have it, but rather that it was not needed."
3) "I have called the modern interior 'a rupture in the evolution of domestic comfort.' It represents an attempt not so much to introduce a new style---that is the least of it---as to change social habits, and even to alter the underlying cultural meaning of domestic comfort. Its denial of bourgeois traditions has caused it to question, and reject, not only luxury but also ease, not only clutter but also intimacy. Its emphasis on space has caused it to ignore privacy, just as its interest in industrial-looking materials and objects has led it away from domesticity. Austerity, both visual and tactile, has replaced delight. What started as an endeavor to rationalize and simplify has become a wrong-headed crusade; not, as is often claimed, a response to a changing world, but an attempt to change the way we live. It is a rupture not because it does away with period styles, not because it eliminates ornament, and not because it stresses technology, but because it attacks the very idea of comfort itself. That is why people look to the past. Their nostalgia is not the result of an interest in archaeology, like some Victorian revivals, nor of a sympathy for a particular period, like Jeffersonian classicism. Nor is it a rejection of technology. People appreciate the benefits of central heating and electric lighting, but the rooms of a Colonial country home or of a Georgian mansion---which had neither---continue to attract them, for they provide a measure of something that is absent from the modern interior. People turn to the past because they are looking for something that they do not find in the present---comfort and well-being."
4) "Can we really have coziness and robots?"
June 1, 2012
My dad recommended this book to me. It was written a while ago, but it's a fascinating look at how the concept of "home" emerged throughout architectural history. It has a Eurocentric bias, but it's a really astounding amount of information and it's written extremely well. Rybcyznski makes you really care about furniture and why it changed and when. He does a great job illustrating how homes transformed as the people living in them changed. So, for instance, chairs began to be designed for comfort rather than simple to illustrate status not only because comfortable chairs are wonderful, but because the people sitting in later chairs were qualitatively different sitters, demanding different experiences from the chair of their predecessors. A lot of fun. I'm going to read all his work.
SIDE NOTE: If you do get interested, he has a wonderful essay in the Atlantic Monthly on the emergence of the "weekend" that is a wonderful treatment of the social construction of time.
SIDE NOTE: If you do get interested, he has a wonderful essay in the Atlantic Monthly on the emergence of the "weekend" that is a wonderful treatment of the social construction of time.
October 15, 2013
I'm finding it to be a page turner. I see the paintings, the antiques, the design magazines. I never really thought of how these things came to be. You mean we didn't always have nice chairs? Really?
March 3, 2023
Wowzers
October 2, 2022
Very enlightening!
July 15, 2020
No he finalzado este libro porque me ha aburrido un tanto. He llegado a la mitad y ya no he seguido. Quizás guste a algunos, pues habla de la hstoria de cómo se ha ido confugurando el hogar en diferentes países, pero no me ha acabado de gustar la forma.
Si lo vias a comprar, os recomendo antes leer unas 10 paginitas para ver el estilo y si os va a gustar.
Si lo vias a comprar, os recomendo antes leer unas 10 paginitas para ver el estilo y si os va a gustar.
October 5, 2008
As usual, Rybczynski manages to give an intelligent overview of a scholarly subject without oversimplifying. Includes a good, reasoned riposte against modern furniture that is aesthetically pleasing but uncomfortable, though it’s a bit dated; I would like to see an updated version that considers household technology scholarship that came after this book's initial publication, like Susan Strasser’s works and Ruth Schwartz Cowan’s "More Work for Mother." It would also be interesting to see him include more recent trends like Martha Stewart, Ikea in America, industrial/professional stainless steel in home kitchens, etc.
November 9, 2018
was good - informative - a bit dry at parts but maybe thats just me - some parts were really interesting like the part where it explained why a chair is designed a certain way and how the home came to be because of the children staying longer for school and things like that - I liked the history of something I never though much about
July 2, 2016
Excellent look at what appear to be very basic concepts: home, domesticity, and comfort. This author never disappoints.
June 18, 2020
3.5 stars - Can be dry, but overall an interesting and informed look at the topic.
August 12, 2018
Rybczynski, Witold. Home : A Short history of an Idea. 1986
I’ve been troubling over the notion of home since our Center for Public Humanities’ excellent Humanities Symposium on the topic this past February, partially out of the interest to punch up the substance of my own presentation on the idea of Home and the Pratice of the Humanities. Partly because I’ve troubled by the contradictions between the ethic of welcoming the stranger and alien that is so central to Christian (and Jewish, and Islamic) codes of ethics, and the fact that Christians proved to be among the most enthusiastic supporters of our country’s recent draconian policies against immigrants and refugees. A people who takes pride in family values has found it relatively easy nevertheless to support the destruction of the children and families of other people (even their fellow Christians’), and to support as well as a dramatic reduction in aid to identifiable refugees, to say nothing of the aggressive expulsion of wayfarers among us who are tagged as “illegal” because they were born somewhere else. Less painfully, I’ve been mulling over what it means for an institution of higher education to talk about itself as a family, for us to use language about our “home institution,” for us to think of our disciplines as “homes”, to have departmental homes, or indeed what it means for us in the humanities when we say we no longer feel “at home” in higher ed as it is currently practiced. I plunged into Rybczynski with these questions in mind. He did not answer my specific questions, since they are my questions and not his; he did, however, help me think a little harder about the idea of home and where it comes from.
Rybczynski’s book is, as the title of the book suggests, a history of the idea of home. At least it is partially that. In the first half of the book, Rybczynski makes clear that our current conceptions of home and all that it entails are cultural and historical constructs that tell us something about our period and not about a timeless entity. This kind of thing is obviously a given of cultural history for the past fifty or so years, but it was still good to think through this given our current obsessions of home, as well as with the dramatic transformations of home as a lived practice given changes in economy, entertainments, religion, and the like. Rybczynski approaches this topic as an architectural historian, and so much of his attention is given to space and how it is constructed, decorated (or not), and used. Among other things, he points out that the notion of the house as a private and intimate space for the nuclear family is a modern development, really almost unknown in the late middle ages, and only gradually developing through the early modern to Victorian period. Among other things, according to Rybczynski, there were no private spaces in medieval houses, even among the propertied classes—the space of the merchants or other clerics home itself being shared by servants and family alike, usually in one or at most two rooms that served as kitchen, dining room, office, and bedroom depending on the time of day.
For Rybczynski, this collective feature of the home reflected a certain cast of the late medieval or early modern mind, one that was not oriented toward intimate self-consciousness or toward private relations but towards one’s assigned place in the public world.
For Rybczynski, then, there is not real need for our modern conception of the home, or for our modern development of homes and neighborhoods with elaborate private spaces, precisely because our houses (and later homes) reflect the nature of the culture in which we are living. It was only later, as the consciousness of the modern European turned toward individuation that we began to conceive of the need for smaller, intimate, and more private spaces. Rybczynski put a great deal of emphasis on the development of the idea of “home” to cultural and architectural developments among the Dutch that gradually—given the relative power the Dutch exercised economically and culturally in the modern period—influenced much of the rest of northern Europe and England. For Rybczynski, the Dutch and those they influenced gave us the dominant idea of home that continues to influence how we think of it today. As he puts it, “[‘Home’] brought together the meanings of house and of household, of dwelling and of refuge, of ownership and of affection. ‘Home’ meant the house, but also everything that was in it and around it, as well as the people, and the sense of satisfaction and contentment that all these conveyed. You could walk out of the house, but you always returned home” (62). Moreover, this transformation accompanied a new sense that the home was exclusively for the nuclear family unit, and that unit was housed in a separate private space separate from and independent of the rest of society in some crucial respects. "[In the Bourgeois period] the house was no longer only a shelter against the elements, a protection against the intruder—although these remained important functions—it had become the setting for a new compact social unit: the family. With the family came isolation, but also family life and domesticity" (77).
To some degree, after establishing the new power of the idea of “home in the 17th through 19th centuries, Rybczynski’s book becomes it’s second half a more straightforward analysis of the changes to houses themselves. That it, it becomes less a cultural history of the idea of the home and more an architectural history of the houses that provide the material ground out of which homes are imagined. He provides extended discussions of the development of the idea of comfort in the Victorian period, and on the notion that houses should be efficient in the industrial period of the late 19th and early 20th century, and he reflects extensively on the potential meanings of various kinds of décor and architectural transformations in the latter part of the 20th century, most of which he seems to see as negative developments. But in these later chapters there is very little discussion of the ways in which different kinds of home/houses reflect different dimensions of being human in the modern and late modern periods of the 20th century. To the degree that they do not, I found them less compelling, as if the thread of the narrative had been dropped and Rybczynski was not sure of what to make about 20th century and the kinds of people who made the homes that they did. This is a flaw in the book’s conception and execution as a whole, it seems to me. And I have read other books, using or building on or disputing with Rybczynski that do a better job of thinking through the cultural formations of houses and homes in the late 20th century. Nevertheless, people interested in the ways that the structure and design of houses has changed over time and reflect the times in which they are built will find the entire book a worthwhile read.
I’ve been troubling over the notion of home since our Center for Public Humanities’ excellent Humanities Symposium on the topic this past February, partially out of the interest to punch up the substance of my own presentation on the idea of Home and the Pratice of the Humanities. Partly because I’ve troubled by the contradictions between the ethic of welcoming the stranger and alien that is so central to Christian (and Jewish, and Islamic) codes of ethics, and the fact that Christians proved to be among the most enthusiastic supporters of our country’s recent draconian policies against immigrants and refugees. A people who takes pride in family values has found it relatively easy nevertheless to support the destruction of the children and families of other people (even their fellow Christians’), and to support as well as a dramatic reduction in aid to identifiable refugees, to say nothing of the aggressive expulsion of wayfarers among us who are tagged as “illegal” because they were born somewhere else. Less painfully, I’ve been mulling over what it means for an institution of higher education to talk about itself as a family, for us to use language about our “home institution,” for us to think of our disciplines as “homes”, to have departmental homes, or indeed what it means for us in the humanities when we say we no longer feel “at home” in higher ed as it is currently practiced. I plunged into Rybczynski with these questions in mind. He did not answer my specific questions, since they are my questions and not his; he did, however, help me think a little harder about the idea of home and where it comes from.
Rybczynski’s book is, as the title of the book suggests, a history of the idea of home. At least it is partially that. In the first half of the book, Rybczynski makes clear that our current conceptions of home and all that it entails are cultural and historical constructs that tell us something about our period and not about a timeless entity. This kind of thing is obviously a given of cultural history for the past fifty or so years, but it was still good to think through this given our current obsessions of home, as well as with the dramatic transformations of home as a lived practice given changes in economy, entertainments, religion, and the like. Rybczynski approaches this topic as an architectural historian, and so much of his attention is given to space and how it is constructed, decorated (or not), and used. Among other things, he points out that the notion of the house as a private and intimate space for the nuclear family is a modern development, really almost unknown in the late middle ages, and only gradually developing through the early modern to Victorian period. Among other things, according to Rybczynski, there were no private spaces in medieval houses, even among the propertied classes—the space of the merchants or other clerics home itself being shared by servants and family alike, usually in one or at most two rooms that served as kitchen, dining room, office, and bedroom depending on the time of day.
For Rybczynski, this collective feature of the home reflected a certain cast of the late medieval or early modern mind, one that was not oriented toward intimate self-consciousness or toward private relations but towards one’s assigned place in the public world.
What mattered then was the external world, and one’s place in it. Life was a public affair, and just as one did not have a strongly developed self-consciousness, one did not have a room of one’s own. It was the medieval mind, not the absence of comfortable chairs or central heating, that explains the austerity of the medieval home. (35)
For Rybczynski, then, there is not real need for our modern conception of the home, or for our modern development of homes and neighborhoods with elaborate private spaces, precisely because our houses (and later homes) reflect the nature of the culture in which we are living. It was only later, as the consciousness of the modern European turned toward individuation that we began to conceive of the need for smaller, intimate, and more private spaces. Rybczynski put a great deal of emphasis on the development of the idea of “home” to cultural and architectural developments among the Dutch that gradually—given the relative power the Dutch exercised economically and culturally in the modern period—influenced much of the rest of northern Europe and England. For Rybczynski, the Dutch and those they influenced gave us the dominant idea of home that continues to influence how we think of it today. As he puts it, “[‘Home’] brought together the meanings of house and of household, of dwelling and of refuge, of ownership and of affection. ‘Home’ meant the house, but also everything that was in it and around it, as well as the people, and the sense of satisfaction and contentment that all these conveyed. You could walk out of the house, but you always returned home” (62). Moreover, this transformation accompanied a new sense that the home was exclusively for the nuclear family unit, and that unit was housed in a separate private space separate from and independent of the rest of society in some crucial respects. "[In the Bourgeois period] the house was no longer only a shelter against the elements, a protection against the intruder—although these remained important functions—it had become the setting for a new compact social unit: the family. With the family came isolation, but also family life and domesticity" (77).
To some degree, after establishing the new power of the idea of “home in the 17th through 19th centuries, Rybczynski’s book becomes it’s second half a more straightforward analysis of the changes to houses themselves. That it, it becomes less a cultural history of the idea of the home and more an architectural history of the houses that provide the material ground out of which homes are imagined. He provides extended discussions of the development of the idea of comfort in the Victorian period, and on the notion that houses should be efficient in the industrial period of the late 19th and early 20th century, and he reflects extensively on the potential meanings of various kinds of décor and architectural transformations in the latter part of the 20th century, most of which he seems to see as negative developments. But in these later chapters there is very little discussion of the ways in which different kinds of home/houses reflect different dimensions of being human in the modern and late modern periods of the 20th century. To the degree that they do not, I found them less compelling, as if the thread of the narrative had been dropped and Rybczynski was not sure of what to make about 20th century and the kinds of people who made the homes that they did. This is a flaw in the book’s conception and execution as a whole, it seems to me. And I have read other books, using or building on or disputing with Rybczynski that do a better job of thinking through the cultural formations of houses and homes in the late 20th century. Nevertheless, people interested in the ways that the structure and design of houses has changed over time and reflect the times in which they are built will find the entire book a worthwhile read.
January 7, 2016
This is a book about the development of the "home" on a historical level. More than this, it examines the nature of a home from outside of simply an industrialized form by looking at it from the perspective of "comfort", the definition of which forms Rybczynski's essential thesis. If home is primarily about "comfort", then how do we define comfort in light of history and its present function and understanding (which the author would insist hasn't changed much).
What Rybczynski ultimately hopes to show in this journey of the home from the Medieval ages to present, is that while the understanding of comfort has changed in time, the fundamental idea and pursuit of comfort has essentially stayed the same. So while we might look back on foreign cultures and see something archaic and unsettled from modern Western eyes, this is in fact not necessarily the case. As the final pages argue, comfort and home have a layered understanding and definition that do not allow us to simply transfer one idea of comfort to another. Instead, comfort (and thus the idea of home) is formative, adaptive, cultural, functional, traditional, and symbolic according to place and time. It is through understanding the nature of how our own place and time has gained its influence that we can thus gain perspective on what guides our own unique understanding of comfort and home.
The history is fascinating, and within it we do find something of a forward trajectory, even if this trajectory occurs in differing degrees and in different directions (sometimes at the same time). One such trajectory is the shift from public to private, and as well from free formed public places to the privately domesticated. The book gives a lot of attention to the public/private evolution, primarily in the idea of the Bourgeois (free governed towns/cities that stood within a larger feudal and rural territory), which in Europe represents for us the closest concept of an actual home. Alongside this is the history of the chair, which was handed down from the earlier Greeks and essentially disappears in Medieval England (Rybczynski attempts to suggest that this was because of the sheer complexity and challenge of turning a chair in to a form of comfort, something that likely deterred competent societies from abandoning their floor sitting ways). Equally parallel is a side trip to Holland and the Netherlands to examine the Dutch as likely some of the first to truly influence the development of the modern home towards the private sphere (specifically in how it adjusted to the idea of the "family"). Beyond this, the home had essentially been a public unit in which the role of the family was less than defined in areas that were shared by workers, relatives, servants and friends (given that beds were shared by all, baths were shared by all, and that there was little to no separation between living and working quarters, the development of relationships between parent and child and even husband and wife, was somewhat limited in comparison to what we know today. The village raised a family, and your family was your village in many ways).
Comfort in the Medieval period (and post-medieval) was also layered around the more complicated nature of symbolism (religious and cultural) and form rather than pure function. A chair, for example, became the symbol of the elite, and in this period abandoned the Greek notions of comfort for a largely erect and stiff form. If one belonged in a chair then they must sit up straight. It would not be until the ideas of domestication and privacy emerged (or re-emerged in the developing world) that the understanding of comfort with shift once again. The religious monastaries were the cleanest living quarters (as they were also the ones that drove societies general progress in this day and age), and in general, the more developed the notion of a home was, the more likely the home was to become a place of sanitation and domestication. As one follows this development on a historical level, it was usually the home that would be cleaned and prioritized before the people (with, as the book suggests, kitchens becoming temples, and paintings and furniture becoming symbolic accessories). As families became more distinct (something that the growing idea of the private home allowed for), so did the comforts that came with cleanliness of that person as well (which coincided with the growing idea of separated rooms and functional houses, the bath which was likely one of the last rooms to be developed).
Rybczynski also has some interesting things to say about how we develop our traditions, specifically surrounding the idea of the home. In the opening pages he helps us to understand our own Colonial history by recognizing the the comfort and romanticism of Colonial design (to our eyes) was birthed out of an invented tradition to separate those who came from a celebrated past and the growing number of immigrants that began to settle around them. The designs that we find tend to romanticize a past in a way that does not necessarily reflect the actual history. They simply breathe comfort from an invented tradition that provided a form of "comfort" in a changing environment. And according to Rybczynski, we do this all the time (indeed, many of the ways that we develop the nature of a "home", and the ways that we understand "comfort" are interconnected with a confusion of history and constructed tradition.
And yet home is what we make it. The book notes a crossroads in the invention of gas lamps (and eventually heating systems) as a moment where the tension between the production of a home on an industrialized level, and the making of a home on a human level came to the forefront. This tension remains, and in truth, technology does not always (or rarely ever) makes a home meaningful. And meaning is often what breeds comfort above all else. We don't always understand or know what makes us comfortable, we simply know that we are, and in those moments we often know we are "at" home where we are.
What Rybczynski ultimately hopes to show in this journey of the home from the Medieval ages to present, is that while the understanding of comfort has changed in time, the fundamental idea and pursuit of comfort has essentially stayed the same. So while we might look back on foreign cultures and see something archaic and unsettled from modern Western eyes, this is in fact not necessarily the case. As the final pages argue, comfort and home have a layered understanding and definition that do not allow us to simply transfer one idea of comfort to another. Instead, comfort (and thus the idea of home) is formative, adaptive, cultural, functional, traditional, and symbolic according to place and time. It is through understanding the nature of how our own place and time has gained its influence that we can thus gain perspective on what guides our own unique understanding of comfort and home.
The history is fascinating, and within it we do find something of a forward trajectory, even if this trajectory occurs in differing degrees and in different directions (sometimes at the same time). One such trajectory is the shift from public to private, and as well from free formed public places to the privately domesticated. The book gives a lot of attention to the public/private evolution, primarily in the idea of the Bourgeois (free governed towns/cities that stood within a larger feudal and rural territory), which in Europe represents for us the closest concept of an actual home. Alongside this is the history of the chair, which was handed down from the earlier Greeks and essentially disappears in Medieval England (Rybczynski attempts to suggest that this was because of the sheer complexity and challenge of turning a chair in to a form of comfort, something that likely deterred competent societies from abandoning their floor sitting ways). Equally parallel is a side trip to Holland and the Netherlands to examine the Dutch as likely some of the first to truly influence the development of the modern home towards the private sphere (specifically in how it adjusted to the idea of the "family"). Beyond this, the home had essentially been a public unit in which the role of the family was less than defined in areas that were shared by workers, relatives, servants and friends (given that beds were shared by all, baths were shared by all, and that there was little to no separation between living and working quarters, the development of relationships between parent and child and even husband and wife, was somewhat limited in comparison to what we know today. The village raised a family, and your family was your village in many ways).
Comfort in the Medieval period (and post-medieval) was also layered around the more complicated nature of symbolism (religious and cultural) and form rather than pure function. A chair, for example, became the symbol of the elite, and in this period abandoned the Greek notions of comfort for a largely erect and stiff form. If one belonged in a chair then they must sit up straight. It would not be until the ideas of domestication and privacy emerged (or re-emerged in the developing world) that the understanding of comfort with shift once again. The religious monastaries were the cleanest living quarters (as they were also the ones that drove societies general progress in this day and age), and in general, the more developed the notion of a home was, the more likely the home was to become a place of sanitation and domestication. As one follows this development on a historical level, it was usually the home that would be cleaned and prioritized before the people (with, as the book suggests, kitchens becoming temples, and paintings and furniture becoming symbolic accessories). As families became more distinct (something that the growing idea of the private home allowed for), so did the comforts that came with cleanliness of that person as well (which coincided with the growing idea of separated rooms and functional houses, the bath which was likely one of the last rooms to be developed).
Rybczynski also has some interesting things to say about how we develop our traditions, specifically surrounding the idea of the home. In the opening pages he helps us to understand our own Colonial history by recognizing the the comfort and romanticism of Colonial design (to our eyes) was birthed out of an invented tradition to separate those who came from a celebrated past and the growing number of immigrants that began to settle around them. The designs that we find tend to romanticize a past in a way that does not necessarily reflect the actual history. They simply breathe comfort from an invented tradition that provided a form of "comfort" in a changing environment. And according to Rybczynski, we do this all the time (indeed, many of the ways that we develop the nature of a "home", and the ways that we understand "comfort" are interconnected with a confusion of history and constructed tradition.
And yet home is what we make it. The book notes a crossroads in the invention of gas lamps (and eventually heating systems) as a moment where the tension between the production of a home on an industrialized level, and the making of a home on a human level came to the forefront. This tension remains, and in truth, technology does not always (or rarely ever) makes a home meaningful. And meaning is often what breeds comfort above all else. We don't always understand or know what makes us comfortable, we simply know that we are, and in those moments we often know we are "at" home where we are.
October 13, 2022
Absolutely fascinating. A marvelous book for anyone interested in the idea of home, comfort, domestic architecture or history. So well done; he draws you through ideas and time to build a multi-faceted picture of what comfort is and how it matters to the concept of home. You're drawn through what may sound dry - architectural history - by his simple, easy writing style and the fascinating stories of information he shares. I already have a stack of his more technical books to delve into because of how much I enjoyed learning from this book.
May 3, 2025
Lovely read, though a bit outdated at this point. Definitely worth it if you’re a fan of the first Sims game, as this is the first book on its recommended reading list.
August 31, 2025
Surprisingly timely given that it was written in the 80s. A must-read for anyone hoping to live in a truly comfortable home.
May 10, 2024
Soporífero cuanto menos
December 9, 2017
Read for #NonfictionNovember2017 Home Challenge
This was an ok read. Parts of the books seemed to be disjointed and jumped around to different subjects. It was also focused a bit more on architecture than I usually enjoy reading about. I did learn a few interesting things from it however.
This was an ok read. Parts of the books seemed to be disjointed and jumped around to different subjects. It was also focused a bit more on architecture than I usually enjoy reading about. I did learn a few interesting things from it however.
April 24, 2020
Review title: Oh to be home again
Home in the time of Covid-19 has a different meaning than it did just six months ago. Home is now the place where we do all of our working, sleeping, eating, playing, relaxing, and socializing distantly and virtually. We are discovering how well or poorly our homes enable us to do all these very different tasks, do them well, and enjoy them while we do them.
When Witold Rybczynski wrote this small study 35 years ago, he captured a significant yet overlooked aspect of life. As an architect, he notes in his forward, his training focused on building spaces but only once and very briefly addressed the "comfort" of the people who occupy them. It was an omission he found puzzling; "one would have thought comfort was a crucial issue to preparing for the architectural profession, like justice in law, or health in medicine." (p. vii) How do you properly design spaces without understanding how they will be used and why they will (or won't) satisfy the requirements of their users?
Home, Rybczynski concluded as you can see by the subtitle, is an idea, not an architectural object, and it is an idea whose meaning has changed through history. He begins by examining closely the 16th century painting by Albrecht Durer Saint Jerome in His Study, which shows the 5th century saint working in a room with fittings and furnishings typical of Durer's day, not the saint's. This examination is a simple and effective entry into the medieval and Middle Age definitions of home and of the origins of the new definition and concept of "comfort." As he progresses through history, it is in the typical 17th century Dutch house that Rybczynski finds that the word
Home as an idea and the writing of a history of it are both simple yet profound, and this is a fun and accessible book that should appeal to anyone who lives in a space they call "home." In fact as Rybczynski advances his history through French Rococo, English Georgian, and various Louis styles he is able to trace the transition of the idea of home from a "beautiful space" to a "place" (p. 119), and the transition of the idea of comfort from "a simple idea . . . [to] an ideal." (p. 120)
From this transition of ideas Rybczynski brings his history up to date (as of its 1986 publication) through the technical advances in lighting, heating, efficiency, and appliances of the late 19th century, and the 20th century stylistic progressions from art deco to modernist austerity. While the styles change the look of the home (and have continued to progress in the decades since publication), Rybczynski makes the point that those technical advances mark an abiding historical divide: "though the home of 1930 would be familiar to us, it would have been unrecognizable to the citizen of 1885." (p. 220).
So, as you live in your home in the time of Covid-19, can you sing with The Band "Oh to be home again"? A new understanding of home and comfort are small and appreciated gifts from Rybczynski at a time like this.
Home in the time of Covid-19 has a different meaning than it did just six months ago. Home is now the place where we do all of our working, sleeping, eating, playing, relaxing, and socializing distantly and virtually. We are discovering how well or poorly our homes enable us to do all these very different tasks, do them well, and enjoy them while we do them.
When Witold Rybczynski wrote this small study 35 years ago, he captured a significant yet overlooked aspect of life. As an architect, he notes in his forward, his training focused on building spaces but only once and very briefly addressed the "comfort" of the people who occupy them. It was an omission he found puzzling; "one would have thought comfort was a crucial issue to preparing for the architectural profession, like justice in law, or health in medicine." (p. vii) How do you properly design spaces without understanding how they will be used and why they will (or won't) satisfy the requirements of their users?
Home, Rybczynski concluded as you can see by the subtitle, is an idea, not an architectural object, and it is an idea whose meaning has changed through history. He begins by examining closely the 16th century painting by Albrecht Durer Saint Jerome in His Study, which shows the 5th century saint working in a room with fittings and furnishings typical of Durer's day, not the saint's. This examination is a simple and effective entry into the medieval and Middle Age definitions of home and of the origins of the new definition and concept of "comfort." As he progresses through history, it is in the typical 17th century Dutch house that Rybczynski finds that the word
“Home” brought together the meanings of house and of household, of dwelling and of refuge, of ownership and of affection. “Home” meant the house, but also everything that was in it and around it, as well as the people, and the sense of satisfaction and contentment that all these conveyed. You could walk out of the house, but you always returned home. (p. 62)
Home as an idea and the writing of a history of it are both simple yet profound, and this is a fun and accessible book that should appeal to anyone who lives in a space they call "home." In fact as Rybczynski advances his history through French Rococo, English Georgian, and various Louis styles he is able to trace the transition of the idea of home from a "beautiful space" to a "place" (p. 119), and the transition of the idea of comfort from "a simple idea . . . [to] an ideal." (p. 120)
From this transition of ideas Rybczynski brings his history up to date (as of its 1986 publication) through the technical advances in lighting, heating, efficiency, and appliances of the late 19th century, and the 20th century stylistic progressions from art deco to modernist austerity. While the styles change the look of the home (and have continued to progress in the decades since publication), Rybczynski makes the point that those technical advances mark an abiding historical divide: "though the home of 1930 would be familiar to us, it would have been unrecognizable to the citizen of 1885." (p. 220).
So, as you live in your home in the time of Covid-19, can you sing with The Band "Oh to be home again"? A new understanding of home and comfort are small and appreciated gifts from Rybczynski at a time like this.
May 29, 2011
This is a short book, written in a style as comfortable as its subject matter. I'm sure that Rybczynski is not the first person to have written on this subject; nonetheless, it's good to have a work for a popular audience that covers the deceptively simple-seeming idea : what is "hominess"? Although I knew in the abstract that the ways people use their living spaces has changed, still, I was surprised by having the development of privacy, intimacy, and domesticity pointed out. Rybczynski's treatment of the historical developments largely rejects sweeping theoretical explanations (based on universalizations of psychology or economy for example) -- although he clearly has read some of the theorists -- and instead favors discussion of contingent local circumstances. I found this congenial to my own way of thinking about historiography; still, I suspect that something like this might make a basis for reading more theoretically-oriented works.
One way that the author's own background (he's an architect) contributed to the book is in his understanding of the institutional forces involved in the building and furnishing of houses. His discussion of why innovations like running water and central heating took so long to be adopted in 19th-century houses even after they were available centers on the division of labor between architects and interior decorators: neither considered themselves responsible for the mechanical aspects of the house, and so those fell into the cracks. The author also points out (importantly) that it was only when the people using the house the most -- the women -- insisted on being involved in planning and designing that improvements were made, starting with Catherine Beecher's pioneering books in the 1840s and continuing with the huge contributions of the "domestic engineers" such as Christine Frederick and Lillian Gilbreth in the early 20th century.
The last two chapters concern the twentieth century, and what went wrong when home design began to be ruled by Modernism, which created spaces that were fashionable and unmistakably new, but which no-one liked to live in. He pointed out that there was an explicit moral crusade among Modernist architects that people were not supposed to be comfortable in modern spaces -- luxury and ease were anti-modern values. Yet these theorists did not succeed in changing the culture. In the middle ages, people accepted uncomfortable houses without privacy because that was the nature of the culture of the time; but the new concepts became widespread 300 years ago, and have not gone away yet. In other words, architecture cannot by itself shape culture.
One thing that Rybczynski does not mention, but I wonder about -- could it be that Modernist architecture and home design were a rejection, not just of "bourgeois" values, but of all things associated with "femininity"? That occurred to me in the discussion of Art Deco -- the way writers of the time described it was as highly feminine; and it was also the last major style that was comfortable (though not "cozy" in its more luxurious manifestations). By the 1920s, men in many professions were feeling threatened by encroachment of women; perhaps architects felt the need to assert control over the domestic environment and erase traces of "femininity".
Though this book is just a small overview, it provides good food for thought.
One way that the author's own background (he's an architect) contributed to the book is in his understanding of the institutional forces involved in the building and furnishing of houses. His discussion of why innovations like running water and central heating took so long to be adopted in 19th-century houses even after they were available centers on the division of labor between architects and interior decorators: neither considered themselves responsible for the mechanical aspects of the house, and so those fell into the cracks. The author also points out (importantly) that it was only when the people using the house the most -- the women -- insisted on being involved in planning and designing that improvements were made, starting with Catherine Beecher's pioneering books in the 1840s and continuing with the huge contributions of the "domestic engineers" such as Christine Frederick and Lillian Gilbreth in the early 20th century.
The last two chapters concern the twentieth century, and what went wrong when home design began to be ruled by Modernism, which created spaces that were fashionable and unmistakably new, but which no-one liked to live in. He pointed out that there was an explicit moral crusade among Modernist architects that people were not supposed to be comfortable in modern spaces -- luxury and ease were anti-modern values. Yet these theorists did not succeed in changing the culture. In the middle ages, people accepted uncomfortable houses without privacy because that was the nature of the culture of the time; but the new concepts became widespread 300 years ago, and have not gone away yet. In other words, architecture cannot by itself shape culture.
One thing that Rybczynski does not mention, but I wonder about -- could it be that Modernist architecture and home design were a rejection, not just of "bourgeois" values, but of all things associated with "femininity"? That occurred to me in the discussion of Art Deco -- the way writers of the time described it was as highly feminine; and it was also the last major style that was comfortable (though not "cozy" in its more luxurious manifestations). By the 1920s, men in many professions were feeling threatened by encroachment of women; perhaps architects felt the need to assert control over the domestic environment and erase traces of "femininity".
Though this book is just a small overview, it provides good food for thought.
June 21, 2013
A tracing of how our modern ideas of comfort came about.
Starts with a discussion of medieval homes and monasteries, including medieval inventions of furniture -- the first drawers were used by the Church.
Life in the Dutch Golden Age and genre painting, showing their homes, and the women in them because for the first time the home really was becoming the woman's sphere, on account of the men starting to have places of business elsewhere.
The court of the Sun King and the evolution of chairs, which are not common world wide and led to such other inventions such as desks, and Rococo, which was the first design solely used for the interior.
The English country house, which meant that most upperclass English spent much of their time at home, or at other people's homes.
The evolution of plumbing, ventilation, and light, technologies that deeply influenced the constructions of homes and their comfort.
The American domestic engineers, who got a good audience because of the American lack of servants and produced such innovations as a much smaller home -- that much less to sweep -- sinks with cabinets under them for cleaning supplies, and kitchen counters.
Revival styles for interior decorating.
The New Spirit pavilion for the Art Demo Exposition -- Le Corbusier was involved. Much discussion of how it talked about mechanism and making the home a machinery for living versus the domestic engineers, who were actually doing the drudge work of working out how to make a home more efficient and consequently had no objections to decoration as long as it didn't hinder the housework. (Guess who comes off looking the worse.)
Concludes discussing how a new, modern style could come about -- the reason, he suspects, that we have so much old-style decor is that "modern" decor is not comfortable. It needs a new vision.
If it sounds very various -- well, all the topics fit in.
July 22, 2012
“The notion that what is artless must be better than what is not requires a precarious leap in reasoning, but for all that it carries great weight … It is a shallow conceit. A little reflection shows that all human culture is artificial, cooking no less than music, furniture no less than painting. Why prepare time-consuming sauces when a raw fruit would suffice? Why bother with musical instruments when the voice is pleasant enough? Why paint pictures when looking at nature is satisfying? Why sit up when you can squat? The answer is that it makes life richer, more interesting, and more pleasurable.”
“Imagine yourself on a winter afternoon with a pot of tea, a book, a reading light, and two or three huge pillows to lean back against. Now make yourself comfortable. Not in some way which you can show to other people, and say how much you like it. I mean so that you really like it, for yourself. You put the tea where you can reach it: but in a place where you can’t possibly knock it over. You pull the light down, to shine on the book, but not too brightly, and so that you can’tsee the naked bulb. You put the cushions behind you, and place them, carefully, one by one, just where you want them, to support your back, your neck, your arm: so that you are supported just comfortably, just as you want to sip your tea, and read, and dream.” (Quoted from Christopher Alexander)
“Imagine yourself on a winter afternoon with a pot of tea, a book, a reading light, and two or three huge pillows to lean back against. Now make yourself comfortable. Not in some way which you can show to other people, and say how much you like it. I mean so that you really like it, for yourself. You put the tea where you can reach it: but in a place where you can’t possibly knock it over. You pull the light down, to shine on the book, but not too brightly, and so that you can’tsee the naked bulb. You put the cushions behind you, and place them, carefully, one by one, just where you want them, to support your back, your neck, your arm: so that you are supported just comfortably, just as you want to sip your tea, and read, and dream.” (Quoted from Christopher Alexander)
December 31, 2013
This book offers a fascinating and incredibly detailed account of European and American developments in comfort, "home" (as a concept), house architecture, ventilation, plumbing, and other domestic technologies and cultural affectations. I really loved the many anecdotes and historical tidbits; my brain is now full of fun new facts and a deeper understanding when I look at houses and furniture.
The only thing this book lacks is an awareness of the narrowness of its scope; it consistently ignores its Euro-centric bias and has issues with classism, at times using quite objectifying language when referring to poor people. As a student of anthropology and social justice, I found these blind spots problematic and limiting. However, the author does have some awareness of gender issues, which yielded some very interesting passages about rich women and men and their differing needs and roles in Europe and America.
In short, it is what it is. It could be broader, or at least aware of its specificity, but it's not. But it does provide a lot of really interesting information about that specific subject. Read it to learn more than you ever knew you could know about the houses of wealthy people in Europe and America, and why they are they're built the way they are.
The only thing this book lacks is an awareness of the narrowness of its scope; it consistently ignores its Euro-centric bias and has issues with classism, at times using quite objectifying language when referring to poor people. As a student of anthropology and social justice, I found these blind spots problematic and limiting. However, the author does have some awareness of gender issues, which yielded some very interesting passages about rich women and men and their differing needs and roles in Europe and America.
In short, it is what it is. It could be broader, or at least aware of its specificity, but it's not. But it does provide a lot of really interesting information about that specific subject. Read it to learn more than you ever knew you could know about the houses of wealthy people in Europe and America, and why they are they're built the way they are.
Read
March 18, 2009I'm a fan of Rybczynski's architecture writing in Slate, so I figured I'd check this out. A history of the home as it has been defined over the centuries, this book not only builds a cohesive arc from the middle ages to the 1980s, it is brimming with all sorts of historical facts and antidotes that, at times, can be more interestingthat Rybczynski's overall point. As the book reaches its final chapters, Rybczynski begins to make some more critical statements, mainly in terms of the lack of architectual attention to comfort and interiors, as well as a condemnation of modernist design in furniture andother decor. He loses me a little there, though his opinions are certainly well thought out and not without merit. But when he bemoans modern chairs and says they'll never be what the public wants, it's hard not to, decades later, think of IKEA as an obvious rebuttal. It'd be very interesting to read a revised edition of this work circa 2009, for this reason and others, and any quibbles I had with the last few chapters did little to diminish my enjoyment of this book and its survey of comfort, domesticity, and design.
January 18, 2010
Starting in the 1500's and moving pretty quickly forward, the author explores how and when the idea of comfort in the home became possible and came about. This was pretty interesting to me, but Rybczynski is no Malcom Gladwell. The subject matter is thoroughly researched and well presented, but not a lot of fun. Also, there are a lot of paragraphs about chairs. And later there are a bunch more. Paragraphs about chairs.
the author stated at the beginning that this is not an interior design book, and it wasn't. It mostly focused on technological and architectural advances that influenced the comfort that we have in our homes and buildings today. I especially liked this statement from the mid-1700's;
"The household had changed, both physically and emotionally; it had become smaller and, more important, less public. It was now a place for personal, intimate behavior. This intimacy was reinforced by a change in the attitude toward children... The house was no longer only a shelter against the elements, a protection against the intruder - it had become the setting for a new, compact social unit: the family.
the author stated at the beginning that this is not an interior design book, and it wasn't. It mostly focused on technological and architectural advances that influenced the comfort that we have in our homes and buildings today. I especially liked this statement from the mid-1700's;
"The household had changed, both physically and emotionally; it had become smaller and, more important, less public. It was now a place for personal, intimate behavior. This intimacy was reinforced by a change in the attitude toward children... The house was no longer only a shelter against the elements, a protection against the intruder - it had become the setting for a new, compact social unit: the family.
July 22, 2021
I have started reading this book several times on several vacations. But vacations ended, and I shelved the book each time--until now. And I am so glad I finally finished because I loved it! Rybczynski met my expectations, and the Audible narrator--Wanda MacCaddon--exceeded them. The writing style is clear and interesting, and the author's commentaries and conclusions are insightful and rewarding. And McCaddon is a "hoot" to listen to.
So what promoted my newfound commitment toward completion? Another planned vacation and another opportunity to read. But this time, I did not wait for my vacation to begin. I started "early" and finished before leaving. My failure to complete the book had nothing to do with the quality of the book itself. In fact, what I had read, I liked. Rather, I oddly enjoyed flirting with Witold and his cozy book on the history of "home" over the years. But during this time, I also learned of--and had accumulated--other Rybcynski titles that interested me; but how could I begin those when I hadn't finished the first one? But now, having read--and finished "Home"--I am ready for more Rybczynski. Next, please.
So what promoted my newfound commitment toward completion? Another planned vacation and another opportunity to read. But this time, I did not wait for my vacation to begin. I started "early" and finished before leaving. My failure to complete the book had nothing to do with the quality of the book itself. In fact, what I had read, I liked. Rather, I oddly enjoyed flirting with Witold and his cozy book on the history of "home" over the years. But during this time, I also learned of--and had accumulated--other Rybcynski titles that interested me; but how could I begin those when I hadn't finished the first one? But now, having read--and finished "Home"--I am ready for more Rybczynski. Next, please.
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