The Notion of "Home"

"Home" was born around 1609 in the United Provinces of the Netherlands. The Dutch had just ended a thirty-year war with feisty Spain and new government and social fabrics were emerging. In what could be considered Europe’s first republic since the fall of Rome, the Dutch created the first bourgeois state; social position was now determined largely by income. Birth and breeding became irrelevant. This new order changed domestic life right down to peoples' daily routines into a system that can be easily comprehended by today's standards. The home became privatized and the epicenter of the family unit. The family centered itself on the child and family life centered itself on the home.

"The Merry Family" by Jan Steen, 1668

                   

The word “home” connotes both a physical place and the more abstract notion of a state of being. Both meanings of the English home have identical definitions in German, Danish, Swedish, Icelandic, and Dutch, all of which are derived from the Old Norse heima. “Home” both refers to the house – the domus – and the household. Home is “…of dwelling and of refuge, of ownership and of affection” (Witold Rybczynski, Home).

Before the Netherlands’ Golden Age and the rearrangement of domestic lifestyle, the dwelling house lacked privacy in almost every sense. Home arrangement in the past depended upon the prerequisites and demands of society and what society deemed “appropriate” for a home. Now, the home, its layout, and its contents are governed by the individual. A space that does not provide the individual with physical and psychological support cannot be truly called a home.

Rembrandt's sketch "Interior with Saskia in Bed"

We have the ability to make a place “feel like home.” Ivan Illich said that “all living is dwelling. …To dwell means to live the traces that past living has left. The traces of dwellings survive, as do the bones of people.”

Neolithic village of Skara Brae, Scotland, circa 3100-2500 BC