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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,...

This article investigates the spatial articulation of architecture and home through the exploration of current domestic experiences in Basil Spence’s Claremont Court housing scheme (1959-1962), Edinburgh. How architecture and home are both idealized and lived is the backdrop for a discussion that draws on the concept of “model home,” or physical representation of a domestic ideal. The article reads Claremont Court as an architectural prototype of the modern domestic ideal, before exploring its reception by five of its households through the use of visual methods and semistructured interviews. Receiving the model home involves negotiating between ideal and lived homes. Building on this idea, the article contributes with a focus on the spatiality of such reception, showing how it is modulated according to the architectural affordances that the “model home” represents. The article expands on scholarship on architecture and home with empirical evidence that argues the reciprocal spatiality of home.

The few discussions of Alejandro de la Sota's Domínguez House which currently exist cite a retrospective text, dated 1976, where he developed activity and repose as two distinct images within human dwelling. While the Domínguez House has previously been understood in relation to biological rhythms, this paper presents a different reading of this remarkable project – as a deconstruction and reformulation of the contemporary dwelling, one which challenges the inward-looking understanding of human dwelling as shelter. I therefore propose that Alejandro De la Sota was as an architect with a theoretical agenda, far from the conventional view that his was an empirical approach to architecture.

Examining the relationships between architecture, home and community in the Claremont Court housing scheme in Edinburgh, Home and Community provides a novel perspective on the enabling potential of architecture that encompasses physical, spatial, relational and temporal phenomena.\ud \ud Based on the AHRC funded project "Place and Belonging", the chapters draw on innovative spatial layouts amid Scottish policymakers' concerns of social change in the 1960s, to develop theoretical understandings between architecture, home, and community. By approaching the discourse on home, and by positioning the home at the confluence of a network of sociocultural identities bound by spatial awareness and design, the writers draw on sociological interpretations of cultural negotiation as well as theoretical underpinnings in architectural design. In so doing, they suggest a reinterpretation of the facilitating role of architecture as sensitive to physical and socio-cultural reconstruction.\ud \ud Drawn from interviews with residents, architectural surveys, contextual mapping and other visual methods, Home and Community explores home as a construct that is enmeshed with the architectural affordances that the housing scheme represents, that is useful to both architecture and sociology students, as well as practitioners and urban planners.

Rising life expectancies and declining social capital in the developed world mean that an increasing number of people are likely to experience some form of loneliness in their lifetimes than ever before. Narratives of Loneliness tackles some of the most pressing issues related to loneliness, showing that whilst recent policies on social integration, community building and volunteering may go some way to giving an illusion of not being alone, ultimately, they offer a rhetoric of togetherness that may be more seductive than ameliorative, as the condition and experience of loneliness is far more complex than commonly perceived. Containing thought-provoking contributions from researchers and commentators in several countries, this important work challenges us to rethink some of the burning issues of our day with specific reference to the causes and consequences of loneliness. Topics include the loneliness and mental health of military personnel, loneliness and social media, loneliness and sexuality, urban loneliness, and the experiences of transnational movement and adopted children. This book therefore makes an overdue multidisciplinary contribution to the emerging debate about how best to deal with loneliness in a world that combines greater and faster connectedness on the one hand with more intensely experienced isolation on the other. Since Emile Durkheim first claimed that the structure of society could have a strong bearing on psychological health in the 1890s, researchers in a range of disciplines have explored the probable impact of social context on mental health and wellbeing. Interdisciplinary in approach, Narratives of Loneliness will therefore be of great interest to academics, postgraduate students and researchers in social sciences, the arts, psychology and psychiatry.

This theory-grounded chapter adopts the thesis that when the ‘unwilling’ homeless reject shelter, the apparent paradox of staying in the cold uncovers a desire to confront loneliness. In order to discuss this assumption, the chapter critically reviews both sociological and philosophical literature under the framework of structuration theory. The chapter concludes offering an alternative reading of homelessness as an ontological crisis characterised by loneliness, thus problematizing constructions of homelessness as individual failure.

This paper introduces our novel cross-disciplinary methodology developed under the research project ‘Place and Belonging: what can we learn from Claremont Court Housing Scheme?’. This original methodology integrates research methods from architecture and sociology in order to investigate the relationship between place and sense of belonging to a community, using the case study of Claremont Court, a post-war housing scheme in Edinburgh. The research’s theoretical framework defines ‘place’ as the physical space together with the spatial atmosphere, or phenomena that give meaning to it (Norberg-Schulz 1996, Gieryn 2000). Through individual and collective spatial practices, people attach meanings to a place that they can then claim belonging to (Benson & Jackson 2013). Thus, the meaning and (co-)production of place become critical in the presentation of the self (Cooper 2004), and in establishing belonging to a collective identity. Consequently, our methodology is underpinned by the theory of non-verbal communication, according to which people generate the meaning of a place through ‘personalisation’ (Rapoport 1982:21) of their environment.\ud Drawing on these premises, we developed a qualitative research design which combines architectural research methods (laser-tape survey, photo-survey, contextual mapping and visual narratives); with research methods from the social sciences (biographical, walk-along and photo-elicitation interviews). Through visual (or non-verbal) methods, we study physical cues from which we infer inductively the meaning of place. Through interview (or verbal) methods we study verbal behaviour, which further uncovers the meaning of the place through thematic analysis. From the synthesis of both analyses we elicit the meaning of place for the dweller. The variety of research strategies, from architecture and the social sciences, that we have applied to the Claremont Court case-study, responds to the understanding of place as a physical and socio-cultural reality. Therefore, the research design is structured upon the idea of considering visual methods as cross-disciplinary means, which are able to integrate the physical and socio-cultural aspects of the research problem, enabling the dialogue between different disciplinary areas. \ud The findings of this work are two-fold. First, as part of our original methodology, this paper introduces ‘contextual mapping’ as a novel research method for visualising and interpreting the data collected in relation to the lived spaces and their phenomena. ‘Mapping’ is here intended as suggested by Deleuze and Guattari (1980: 13) in opposition to the action of ‘tracing’: “the map does not reproduce an unconscious closed in upon itself … it fosters connection between fields”. We assume here that architecture can be an interpretative tool for the situations of daily life: thus, it follows that drawing is “a way of re-presenting those situations, […] of communicating a plot, of revealing a situation” (Troiani et al., 2014: 6). Secondly, this paper questions commonly used methodologies to study environmental meaning that rely on linear models (such as those studying semiotics or symbols); we suggest instead that visual methodologies can support the synthesis of physical and socio-cultural data in a cyclic model that brings together research approaches coming from two different, yet interconnected, fields of knowledge such as architecture and the social sciences.

This article explores the possibilities of using innovative, interdisciplinary methods for understanding home-making. Drawing on a study of Claremont Court (1959–1962), a post-war social housing scheme designed by Sir Basil Spence in Edinburgh, we discuss the methodological potentials of combining architectural and social science methods to study the home. Claremont Court was built in the post-war era as part of Scotland’s social housing drive. It was designed following the principles of ‘cross-class’ living in order to foster a sense of community. In subsequent years, inhabitants of the court have adapted their dwellings in numerous ways and the population of the court has changed dramatically. But, while meanings of home and understandings of the division between public and private have been reconfigured, the spatial layouts of the dwellings continue to shape residents’ sense of home. To explore how residents make home at Claremont Court, we use ‘facet methodology’, which opens up new ways of thinking about the research process through a ‘playful’ approach to epistemology. In doing so, we develop an innovative approach which combines architectural methods (including survey drawings and visual mappings of both dwellings and communal areas) with social science methods (including ‘traditional’ interviews and walk-along interviews). To conclude, we discuss the possibility of widening the scope of qualitative research by bringing architectural and social science methods into dialogue through visual methods, in order to attend to spatial and material aspects of the home. We argue that our novel cross-disciplinary approach broadens understandings of home, by bringing attention to the unspoken dimensions of physical space, embodied elements of home and what people said about their homes, all of which are central to home-making.

In The Origin of the Work of Art, Martin Heidegger explores the conception of ‘things’ as formed matter: if we appeal to use, function or purpose, form is prior to matter, since matter (-mater) wouldn’t be distributed in such manner where this not because of the form. If we elaborate this idea of “determination” or intention, the determinative character of the form is bound up with the purpose of the component made with a particular material, because material is something to be shaped according to intention. In the other hand, a second etymological meaning through the root –mater presents material as an agent of development: it spurs on processes than can be seen as extensions of the substance of matter, instigating perceptual possibilities, acting: absorbing, smelling, degenerating… Instead of the idea of determination, we are elaborating now the idea of “understanding”. \ud Triggered by this discussion on materiality and within the scope of timber as an architectural material, the following question is yet to be answered: is there an ideal form of the material, a form that gets closer than any other to that which timber should be? This work looks at the processes that have shaped and shape timber as a material in order to analyze if it can be released from culturally expected formal notions and respond to applications which extend its material history.

Within the scope of phenomenology and in order to understand architecture, the role of the technical system is as important as those of the purpose of the building or its form. Mass construction and skeletal construction relate to the architectural theory concepts stereotomy and tectonics respectively, which are suitable for describing the fundamental structural and constructive form of architecture. These two systems became established as man built his first shelters and, so far, represented opposite sides of the building industry’s possibilities. The development of new construction techniques and the relationship between research and technology have a great impact on architecture, although new processing methods and materials may not necessarily cause genuine tectonic changes. The technical dimension of architecture is analysed in this work describing how technical elements are built from materials, and then organised in systems. First, the paper examines the division of technical systems in two categories (massive systems and skeletal systems); then it studies timber’s modern production technologies and subsequently the paper critically analyses how these influence the architectural form. The paper concludes that a third archetypal technical system can be perceived with the assembly of surface elements, joining both the multifunctional aspect of the massive systems and the flexibility of the skeletal systems, this third category being fundamental in phenomenological terms.

This paper aims to elaborate the architectural theory on place-making that supported Claremont Court housing scheme (Edinburgh, United Kingdom). Claremont Court (1959-62) is a post-war mixed development housing scheme designed by Basil Spence, which included ‘place-making’ as one of its founding principles. Although some stylistic readings of the housing scheme have been published, the theory on place-making that allegedly ruled the design has yet to be clarified. Architecture allows us to mark or make a place within space in order to dwell. Under the framework of contemporary philosophical theories of place, this paper aims to explore the relationship between place and dwelling through a cross-disciplinary reading of Claremont Court, with a view to develop an architectural theory on place-making. Since dwelling represents the way we are immersed in our world in an existential manner, this theme is not just relevant for architecture but also for philosophy and social sciences.\ud The research in this work is interpretive-historic in nature. It examines documentary evidence of the original architectural design, together with relevant literature in sociology, history and architecture, through the lens of theories of place. First, the paper explores how the dwelling types originally included in Claremont Court supported ideas of dwelling or meanings of home. Then, it traces shared space and social ties in order to study the symbolic boundaries that allow the creation of a collective identity or sense of belonging. Finally, the relation between the housing scheme and the supporting theory is identified. \ud The findings of this research reveal Scottish architect Basil Spence’s exploration of the meaning of home, as he changed his approach to mass housing while acting as President of the Royal Incorporation of British Architects (1958-60). When the British Government was engaged in various ambitious building programmes he sought to drive architecture to a wider socio-political debate as president of the RIBA, hence moving towards a more ambitious and innovative socio-architectural approach. Rather than trying to address the ‘genius loci’ with an architectural proposition, as has been stated, the research shows that the place-making theory behind the housing scheme was supported by notions of community based on shared space and dispositions. The design of the housing scheme was steered by a desire to foster social relations and collective identities, rather than by the idea of keeping the spirit of place (genius loci). \ud This paper presents Claremont Court as a signifier of Basil Spence’s attempt to address the post-war political debate on housing in United Kingdom. They highlight the architect’s theoretical agenda and challenge current purely stylistic readings of Claremont Court as they fail to acknowledge its social relevance.

After the introduction of timber boards as diaphragms in light-frame construction opened the way to modern timber construction, three major design changes would follow: the elements become multifunctional, they can work structurally in two directions, and they can be prefabricated as surface components in a non modular way. In other words, the multifunctional panel becomes the design unit of modern timber architecture. This work looks at various types of composite timber panels with a view to show the evidence of typological and tectonic changes caused by the new design unit.

Since timber is naturally directional, timber products become directionally neutral only due to the progress in manufacture technology. This work studies timber panels with a view to analyse their influence on the architectural form. From a design point of view, two sub-categories are defined. These are solid panels, and optimised panels. Solid panels have a homogeneous and compact section and their thicknesses are relatively small. Composite panels are generally made up with two boards and an inner structure to which they are bonded. The work concludes that the two main typologies of timber panels influence design in a different way: due to their homogeneous inner structure, solid panels allow flexible cutting of the openings, and loads and supports can be placed with few limitations. In the other hand, optimised section panels require more planning and should be treated as finished elements.