“Housing and dwellings”- by Barbara Miller Lan
“A ‘HOME’ is different than a house.”
House is a physical aspect where different elements such as door, window, furniture, objects comes together and create one shelter where we can live. But the home is much more than that.
The book is based on American and European context. what is American home?
“Plumber is the hero oh the house”- adolf hous
he says, services are focused in American houses.it is a priority. They also focus on cleanliness and efficient use of available resources. American houses are easy to construct, light weight. Where the traditional European houses are very different. It is very heavy, dark.
In case of the traditional European house, the ground floor used to store wet things ,because climatically it is wet and damp. They use attic to store the dry things & light weight things because climatically it is very light and airy.
Home is where you feel free to be yourself, a place has the feel of alone, a place that have the feel of family a place which also have some scary spaces in a home. For the European people the attic floor is the home. Bcz they can disappear there, they store their photos, they get lost in the memories. For the American the house with front yard and back yard is the home.
Today, the idea of vertical housing and apartment is growing very rapidly. The idea of apartment is a Parisian idea. Romans had the flat so there are some pros & cons. like the loss of direct attachment with ground, struggle to put the different elements in your house, the idea of front and back in the apartment the feeling of the street, the idea of your own front space, small storage places.
So, then the task to find out what people do when they have houses on ground, what are that activates. what happened to those activities when they moved to apartment, how do people struggle from vernacular/ house on the ground to apartment house in Indian context.