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Poetic and political,
Strayed Homes invites architects, interior designers, and urbanists to think again about common concepts in architecture - 'private', 'public' and 'home'.
Whereas most writing about the public/private focusses on urban space, this book focusses on the domestic - exploring those overlooked, everyday places where private and intimate activities take place in public. With four chapters set in four small, liminal spaces: the launderette, the greasy spoon, the fire escape, and the sleeper train - the book is part architectural history, part cultural history. It follows a series of allusions and impressions, to explore how films, adverts, books and anecdotes shape experiences of everyday architecture. Making a case for the poetic interpretation of space, the book can be used as a sourcebook for architects, designers, and theorists alike - prompting the reader to rethink the emotional state of leaving home, intimacy in public, and lonely dreaming.
List of contents
List of Illustrations
Acknowledgments
1. INTRODUCTION Rocks, Dreams and Extensions
1. Secular Eruvin
2. Question your teaspoons
a. Reading: Roland Barthes
b. The Everyday: Michel de Certeau
c. Space: Gaston Bachelard
2. LAUNDERETTE
1. Gossip shops for lazy people
2. What was the state of Britain’s laundry in 1949?
a. The public washhouse
b. The commercial laundry
3. The arrival of the launderette
4. Play
5. Wait
3. COUCHETTE
1. Double negative:
a. Location
b. Consciousness
2. Cut up and carve
3. Hide and seek
4. Missing and Crossing
5. Strayed homes
4. FIRE ESCAPE
1. The long and heavy ladder
2. Trapdoor
3. Unmarried women
4. Theatre box
5. Left space
5. GREASY SPOON
1. The milk comes and the post goes
2. Home-cooking
3. Stay
4. Cramped
5. For the price of a cup of tea
5. STRAYED HOMES: Politics, Practices, Emotions
Bibliography
Index
About the author
Edwina Attlee is Senior Lecturer in Critical and Contextual Studies at the Sir John Cass
Faculty of Art, Architecture and Design and a Teaching Fellow at the Bartlett School of
Architecture, UCL, UK.
Summary
Poetic and political, Strayed Homes invites architects, interior designers, and urbanists to think again about common concepts in architecture – ‘private’, ‘public’ and ‘home’.
Whereas most writing about the public/private focusses on urban space, this book focusses on the domestic – exploring those overlooked, everyday places where private and intimate activities take place in public. With four chapters set in four small, liminal spaces: the launderette, the greasy spoon, the fire escape, and the sleeper train - the book is part architectural history, part cultural history. It follows a series of allusions and impressions, to explore how films, adverts, books and anecdotes shape experiences of everyday architecture. Making a case for the poetic interpretation of space, the book can be used as a sourcebook for architects, designers, and theorists alike – prompting the reader to rethink the emotional state of leaving home, intimacy in public, and lonely dreaming.
Foreword
Part architectural history, part cultural history; an exploration of overlooked, everyday places where private and intimate activities take place in public.
Additional text
Strayed Homes explores everyday spaces that have none of the cultural or emotional investments of home but which, when examined as carefully as Edwina Attlee does here, tell us how we live. With an eye for the arresting detail and a poetic turn of phrase, Attlee opens up exciting new spaces for the study of everyday life.