Moving home: Changing attitudes to residence and identity

Journal of Architecture

Volumn 7, Issue 3, 2002, Pages 249-262

  Attfield, Judith ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHAMPTON   (United Kingdom)

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EID: 42449158306     PISSN: 13602365     EISSN: 14664410     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1080/13602360210155447     Document Type: Review

References (34)

1. This essay reflects on several earlier publications and current continuing research into the history and material culture of the domestic interior. J. Attfield, 'Pram town' in J. Attfield & P. Kirkham (eds.) A View From the Interior: Women and Design (London, The Womens Press [1989], 1995) pp. 215-238
2. J. Attfield 'The empty cocktail cabinet: display in the mid-century British domestic interior' in T. Putnam & C.Newton (eds.) Household Choices (London, Futures, 1990) pp. 84-88
3. J. Attfield. 'A case for the study of the coffee table: design as a practice of modernity' in Journal of Material Culture, 2/3 (1997) pp. 267-89
4. J.Attfield 'Bringing modernity home: open plan in the British domestic interior' in I. Cieraad (ed.) At Home: An Anthropology of Domestic Space (Syracuse, New York, Syracuse University Press, 1999) pp. 73-82
5. J. Attfield, Wild Things: The Material Culture of Everyday Life (Oxford and New York, Berg, 2000)
6. J. Attfield [forthcoming] Bringing Modernity Home: Writings on Popular Design and Material Culture (Manchester, Manchester University Press)
7. I am grateful to Hilde Heynen for her invitation to participate in the 'Architecture, Gender and Domesticity' colloquium and her exemplary critique - Architecture and Modernity (MIT Press, 1999) - that have been important motivators in revising my ideas concerning questions of identity in the interpretation of domestic design. I do, however, take full responsibility for the rather tentative 'conclusion' to this essay, maybe more accurately described as a starting point for a new direction in my continuing study of the social meanings of the home interior
8. The current Labour government is still trying to build-in Aneurin Bevan's ideal 'living tapestry of a mixed community' through current planning policy by inserting an element of so-called 'affordable housing' in every private housing development even though the desired effect is not reflected in reality. A. Minton 'Utopia Street' in Guardian Society, 27 March, 2002, pp. 10-11
9. The term 'free' plan derives from Le Corbusier's theory. See P. Boudon Lived-in Architecture: Le Corbusier's Pessac revisited (London, Lund Humphries [1969], 1972), pp. 123-4
10. Attfield 'Pram town' op. cit
11. This is not to say that the domestic interior in its more elite country house manifestations has not long been a subject of academic and connoisseurial interest and study as an aspect of the decorative arts. While design history has concentrated more on the middle class home and its social history in the context of Modernism. The perspective that is not so well covered and that is referred to here, concerns the reception of architectural design by the residents who inhabited social houses designed by architects - an area of study that has in the main characteristically been attended to by female commentators, feminist architects and design historians. See e.g.: J. Attfield 'FORM/female FOLLOWS FUNCTION/male' in J. Walker Design History and the History of Design (London, Pluto, 1989), pp. 199-225
12. J. Attfield 'Pram town' op cit.
13. E. Darling 'What the tenants think of Kensal House: experts' assumptions versus inhabitants' realities in the modern house' in Journal of Architectural Education, 53/3 (2000) pp. 167-177
14. Matrix Making Space: Women and the Man made Environment' (London, Pluto, 1984)
15. A. Ravetz 'The home of woman: a view from the interior' in S. Bowlby (ed.) Women and the Environment, Built Environment 10/1 (1984) pp. 8-17
16. J. Attfield & P. Kirkham (eds.) A View From the Interior: Women and Design (London, The Womens Press [1989], 1995) pp. 187-205
17. M. Roberts Living in a Man-Made World (London, Routledge, 1991)
18. J. Rothschild (ed.) Design and Feminism: Re-visioning Spaces, Places and Everyday Things (New Brunswick, New Jersey & London, Rutgers University Press, 1999)
19. It is significant that many reforming ideas on changing the status of interior domestic space have emanated from feminist research. See J. Rothschild, Design and Feminism, ibid
20. This study is based on three stages of research, the first two in the form of an oral history project carried out between 1982 and 1986 in Harlow - one of the fourteen new towns designated by the first New Town Act of 1946 that formed part of the Reconstruction scheme to provide overspill from the over-crowded slums and bomb damage of inner-city London - with interviews of first and second generation residents, furniture retailers and local authority architects and officers involved in the construction of the new town. See J. Attfield, Pram Town, op cit
21. The last stage of research was an ethnographic pilot case-study made in 1999 of a block of forty nine purpose-built flats as sheltered accommodation for residents over the age of fifty-five. See J. Attfield, Wild Things op. cit., pp. 256-261
22. D. Miller 'Appropriating the state on the council estate' in T. Putnam & C. Newton (eds.) Household Choices (London, Futures, 1990), pp. 43-55
23. F. Gibberd 'Harlow New Town Master Plan' 1947 [unpublished document housed at the Local History Library in the Museum of Harlow]; F. Gibberd, The Design of Harlow (Harlow Council and Harlow Development Corporation, 1980)
24. R. Tubbs, Living in Cities (Harmondsworth, Middlesex, Penguin, 1942), p. 33
25. J.M. Richards, 'Failure of the new towns', in Architectural Review, July 1953
26. R. Tubbs, Living in Cities, op. cit., p. 39
27. E. Denby, Europe Re-housed (London, Allen & Unwin, [1938], 1944)
28. Jane Jacobs was also advocating this type of plan in 1961. See Ghislaine Hermanuz 'Outgrowing the Corner of the Kitchen Table' in J. Rothschild Design and Feminism, op cit., pp. 68-69
29. I. Goffman, The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life (Harmondsworth, Middlesex, Penguin, [1959] 1980)
30. P. Bourdieu, Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgement of Taste (London, Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1984)
31. 'Harlow Trade Council Report' in Harlow Citizen, 8 January 1955
32. D. Miller 'Behind closed doors' in D. Miller (ed.) Home Possessions (Oxford and New York, Berg 2001), pp. 1-19
33. This concern is a recurring theme of feminist design theory of planning and domestic design. Eg, see S. Torre 'Expanding the Urban Design Agenda: A Critique of New Urbanism' in J. Rothschild Design and Feminism, op cit., pp. 35-43
34. D. Miller, Home Possessions, op. cit., p. 15