“INSIDE IS REALLY LOVELY…ONCE YOU GET INTO IT” Conflicting narratives of home ‘either side of the wall’ in Basil Spence’s Claremont Court housing scheme

ABSTRACT

This article interrogates the articulation of architecture and home through the lens of residents’ domestic narratives in Claremont Court housing scheme (1959-62), Edinburgh. The Scottish tenement, a housing form underpinned by the Victorian domestic model, is the backdrop for the exploration. While Claremont Court dwellings are a representation of the modern home, the spatial arrangement of the scheme builds on Victorian working-class tenements. Such paradoxical conflation of domestic images within the design of Claremont Court serves as a framework for the exploration of the domestic narratives of five households through the use of semi-structured interviews. In revealing conflicting narratives of home ‘either side of the wall’, the findings problematize the wall as domestic boundary and contribute by showing the spatial relation between housing and its context as a culturally specific device in the construction of home. This, the article expands on the symbolic meanings of the home’s ‘interior’ and ‘front’.

KEYWORDS:

• architecture and home
• Scottish tenements
• modern domesticity
• home boundary
• Basil Spence
• gentrification

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Claremont Court Residents Association; Historic Environment Scotland.

DISCLOSURE STATEMENT

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Sandra Costa Santos

SANDRA COSTA SANTOS IS A SENIOR LECTURER IN ARCHITECTURE AT THE DEPARTMENT OF ARCHITECTURE AND URBAN PLANNING, UNIVERSITY OF DUNDEE. SHE IS INTERESTED IN THE SOCIOLOGY OF ARCHITECTURE AND, IN PARTICULAR, HER WORK HAS EXPLORED HOW NOTIONS OF HOME ARE SPATIALLY CONSTRUCTED. [email protected]