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Abstract
“Home” describes an intangible concept. It is the emotional and meaningful relationship between people and their familiar environment. In living conditions of individuation, temporariness and mobility, personal possessions gain utmost importance in the establishment of a sense of “home”. They become material icons of durability and continuity in everyday life which carry references to people, places, the past and, most importantly, to oneself – one’s identity and history. Home No. 7 (a sample of) is a practice-led study of this hypothesis. The project attempts to record and maintain a sample of a domestic interior – once regarded as “home” – created in the North Room on 262 Bethnal Green Road at the time it was about to be dismantled. The sample of ‘home’ is contained within a box. The interior of the box is divided into compartments, each of which holds a different means of registration: casts, cards, photos, samples, drawings and texts. The quasi-scientific way of registration aims at a clear presentation of the information recorded and an objective point of view. Yet, these means of objective recording inadvertently reveal personal systems of reference created by the inhabitant. The text that accompanies and reflects on the project discusses the relationship between an individual and his/her personal possessions drawing from the fields of anthropology, philosophy, history, critical theory and studies of material culture. Project and text attempt to understand the material “at home” constructed by one’s personal possessions and the immaterial “at home” created by their relationship to their owner.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.
Figure 1a and 1b Home no.7 (a sample of): the box and its contents. Source: Ersi Ioannidou.
Figure 2 Home no. 7 (a sample of): orthographic drawings: plan and elevation of the west wall. Source: Ersi Ioannidou.
Figure 3a and 3b Home no. 7 (a sample of): the box and the plaster cast. Source: Ersi Ioannidou.
Figure 4a and 4b Home no. 7 (a sample of): the box and the finds register. Source: Ersi Ioannidou.
Figure 5 Home no. 7 (a sample of): photographic record cards. Source: Ersi Ioannidou.
Figure 6a, 6b and 6c Home no. 7 (a sample of): the box; materials samples in phials and rectangular material sample.
Notes
1 Rescue excavations have the character of sampling or ‘evaluating’ investigations. Very often only a small part of a site is uncovered and that is sometimes only partly excavated.
2 I adopted the methods described in Andrew Boddington. 1978. The Excavation Record: Part I, Stratification (Archaeological Occasional Paper No.1). Northamptonshire: Northamptonshire County Council.
3 The term “scenography of interiority is inspired by Vlad Ionescu; he writes, “Reflecting on interior design is … a question of building up a scenography for a subjective life” (Ionescu Citation2018, 3).
Additional information
Notes on contributors
Ersi Ioannidou
Dr Ersi Ioannidou is an architect, educator and researcher. She is currently Senior Lecturer in Interior Design in Kingston School of Art, where she holds the post of PGR Student Director for The Design School. Her research is primarily concerned with the modern meaning of the minimum dwelling. Particularly she explores how this meaning has been shaped by two interconnected developments: the understanding of the home as a personal project and the advance of the machine as design paradigm. She pursues her research through an interaction of design and text and at the same time investigates how this interaction produces new forms of developing and presenting research in design. E-mail: [email protected]