Contents - At Home

Today's lecture was  about the exploration and ideologies of home. We talked about the class system in the 50's and the ideas about class within the home. This is the scale we where presented with:

• Being seen by others to do/ have.
• Being identified by others as doing/ having.
• Being considered better than others who cannot do/ have.

I was quite interested in the way decorating our homes has evolved over the years. In Victorian times we use to display our belongings and it was seen as a sign of wealth and class, but now we are constantly wanting storage to hide away our possessions. Ikea are a great example of companies promoting storage to hie the 'clutter' within our homes. We discussed how our need for more storage reflects the fact that we must have more possessions which is a reflection of the mass increase of consumerism. We also discussed how our homes are a 'keep sake' for our memories and that we use our homes to store these.

In the seminar we delved further into the idea of memories within the home, how we can hoard items and does 'Tidy home' mean a 'Tidy mind'. Also is 'clutter' just things that are out of place?

I am really enjoying these sessions as they are allowing me to think more conceptually about day to day things that I would not usually think about.

Space, Design and Architecture

Last year I felt that all of the lectures were quite boring and lacked direction and I tended to avoid them along side the seminars which I admit was a very silly thing to do and I do regret that from last year. So this year I attended my first lecture which was based around my chosen subject of 'Space, Design and Architecture'. I was surprised when I really enjoyed the lecture. We discussed the concept of 'The Place of Home', and 'Place and Space in Modern Domestic Environment'. We also went into a deeper feminist approach to the word home and what it represents, discussing the idea that men were more involved in the design of the home, were as women were more involved in what the space was designed for in the 1950's.

The reading we had to prepare for the lecture was a piece named 'Pram Town' which made for some interesting reading. I am intrigued in the subject and when we got to discuss this in our seminar it made me look at 'home' as more of a concept as apposed to a place. I feel that this lecture gave me a much more conceptual view of space, and I will look closer into this along side my Urban Influences brief for a more conceptual and contemporary outcome rather than a literal 'urban' fashion based collection.