Objects in Purgatory: How We Live with Uncherished Gifts

ABSTRACT

The personal and emotional aspects of living with buildings and things are high on the agenda in recent architecture and design. One established area of industrial-design research connected to this shift is concerned with creating long-term emotional attachments to products as a way to encourage sustainable consumption. In this paper, the author looks beyond products' physical attributes to consider how practices of keeping things in the domestic interior can influence attachment to a possession. The research examines conflicts in attachment associated with uncherished gifts, and how owners may feel compelled to keep even those with negative associations. In particular, it looks at how and where these troublesome possessions are kept in the home, and how recipients' efforts to overcome gifts' negative associations are supported by the domestic interior. The research brings thinking in spatial and industrial design together with literature on expressing the self through the home, to suggest an alternative way for designers to understand products' emotional longevity.

KEYWORDS:

• domestic space
• practices of keeping
• attachment
• possessions
• value