House and Home

Author(s): JOSEPH RYKWERT

Source: Social Research, Vol. 58, No. 1 (SPRING 1991), pp. 51-62
Published by: The New School
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Houseand
Home / BY JOSEPH RYKWERT

JTJLome is where one startsfrom.That much is obvious.A

home is not the same as a house, whichis whywe need two
different words.Does a home need to be anything builtat all,
any fabric?I thinknot. Home couldjust be a hearth, a fireon
thebare groundbyanyhumanlair.That maywellbe theone
thingthat nobodycan quite do without:a fireplace,some
focus.Afterall, if a home had no focus,you could not start
fromit.
Home is at thecenter.For manyof us, a hearthmarksthat
focusfromwhichwe start.Its fireneed notnecessarily burnin
thefireplaceof thelivingroomor thehall,sinceevenwhereit
is notneeded forwarmth,firecan shelterfromterrorsof the
encroachingnight.Predatorsfear it. As human beingsseem
unable to subsiston raw food alone forlong,cookingis also
essential.In thehottestdesertor tropicalswamp,youmayhave
to makea firein orderto eat. Eatingis usuallydone closeto it,
so thateatingand sleepingtogetherhave come to definethe
household: the old English marriageservice speaks of a
commonbed and board as the summaryof the life of the
nuclearfamily.For manyof us the focus may be a kitchen
range.
Tamingfireis theoriginofculture,thetokenofcontrolover
environment. Fireis also themarkof settlement. Hearthsand
middens,kitchen-refuse heaps,are some of the earliesttraces
of humanhabitation-theverynotionof home seemsto have
grownround the hearth.It followsthata notionso deeply
rootedin humanexperienceshouldhave itsappropriateterm
in everylanguage: yet translatorshave alwayscomplained

SOCIAL RESEARCH, Vol. 58, No. 1 (Spring1991)

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52 SOCIAL RESEARCH

about the difficultyof finding an exact equivalent for

it- particularlyin Romance languages.
Take French. "His home" is usuallyrendered by chezlui, and
"my home" is chezmoi. Although chez is a preposition,not a
noun like "home," it is a corruptionof the Latin noun casa, a
hut or cottage,somethinghumble. Where we use "house" the
Romans said domus; which could also mean domesticity,
household effects,homeliness- even peace- and is as close to
"home" as you will get in Latin. And yet Latin also provides
two other words for the house: as a thingbuilt,aedes,and as a
place of rest- which home so emphaticallyis- mansio,from
maneo,I remain or abide, and it is from that word that the
French get their maison,which in turn translates into our
"house."1
The Greeks called the house domos,which sounds almost the
same as the Latin: yet the Greek home was oikos,a word from
whichwe get a whole range of concepts,such as economy. The
businessof buildinga fabric,of shelteringthe home, as it were,
was oikodomein: the words were run togetherto emphasize their
separate meaning.
The very similar words arrived in classical languages by
differentroutes. The Romans got their domusfrom the Old
Indo-European root dem,family;while the Greeks derived it
fromexactlythe same-sounding root, meaning to build. That
the two differentwords moved so close together,linguistsnow
tell us, was a coincidence, but it seems to me to indicate an
affinitywhich is notjust accidental.
Or to move outside Europe: the Chinese dealt with such
matters quite differentlywhen they inscribed the character
for "fire," huo, under the thatched radical for "roof" or
"hut," miãn, so that the result was zai, "disaster." On the
other hand, if they inscribed "pig," shi, beneath that same
radical, they suggested well-being or- at any rate- easy

1 See Emile Benveniste,

Indo-EuropeanLanguage and Society(Coral Gables, Fla.,
1973), pp. 241ff.

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 HOUSE AND HOME 53

circumstance;the-pig-in-the-house, jia, which the character

drew,read "home"- as well as "family."2
Germanmightseem to providethe closestand the easiest
intoEnglish:Heimis, afterall, almosta homonym
translation
of "home"- yetthegrammatically neuterHeimhas a feminine
Heimat,forwhichthe Englishword is not reallythe "mother
country,""motherland"whichthe dictionariesofferbut the
now more common"fatherland," whichhas a romanticand
quite unarchaic sound; so that the familiarword acquiresan
alien association. Indeed, it was German-speakingSwiss
mercenary soldierswho firstsufferedHeimweh in thefifteenth
century,and it took the Englishanotherthreecenturiesto
nametheunfamiliar sentiment "homesickness." Of course,the
Germans,liketheEnglish,distinguish Haus undHeim,bywhich
they signifynot only all their possessionsbut their very
ofa place,to whichtheEnglishequivalentwouldbe
citizenship
"hearthand home."
BothEnglishwords,"house"and "home,"are in turnheavily
coloredbya notionembeddedin case law thatthegreatJaco-
beanjudge, Sir EdwardCoke, enshrinedin the dictum:"The
houseof everymanis to himas hiscastleand fortresse, as well
as hisdefenceagainstinjuryand violence,as forhisrepose."3A
nineteenth-century legal historiancheapenedit into"the En-
glishman'shouse is his castle,"4and thiswas adoptedinstantly
as a slogan for all thatis impliedby the notionof a home.
Almost imperceptiblythe householder's legal rightswere
stampedon thelandbeyond- theymovedfromhousetohome.

2 Edoardo
Fazzioli, ChineseCalligraphy:
FromPictograph
toIdeogram(New York, 1987),
p. 155. This is an archaic usage, however; the same word, zai, is now writtenas
water-and-fire.Character spellings I have given here- following Fazzioli- are all
archaic. Unfortunately,Chinese characterscannot be reproduced here.
JSir Edward Coke, Reports,1600-1615 (London, 1738), V, 91b. He was, in fact,
translatingthe Anglo-Norman adage of Sir William Stanford, Les Plees del Coron:
Diviseesin plusioursTitles& CommonLieux (London, 1567), p. 14 b.
Edward A. Freeman, TheHistoryoftheNormanConquestofEngland (Oxford, 1873),
2: 82.

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54 SOCIAL RESEARCH

Withoutthatmove, I suspectthe developmentof the suburbsin

Anglo-Saxon countriescould not have been possible.
Some distinction between home, the situation- with its
implication of well-being, stability,ownership- as against a
rather more inert notion of the house, persists in most
languages, persiststhrough very powerful cultural shiftsand
over vast distances. Its variation may be an indicator of
differingmentalities,as well as of radical social innovation.Yet
almostalwayshomeis at the centrifugalhearth,the fireburning
at the center of my awareness, as its light once spread like a
stain in the hostile night.
It is the family.
"House" means shelter,and implies edges, walls, doors, and
roofs- and the whole repertoryof the fabric.
"Home" does not require any building, even if a house
always does. You can make a home anywhere: a littletinder,
even some waste paper, a few matches,or a cigarettelighteris
all you need. In our technicallyadvanced civilization,it can be
secured withless trouble (but a great deal of equipment) by a
VCR tape, which will make flames leap up on your television
screen at the push of a button.
But a house must be brick and timber,mortarand trowels,
carpentryand masonry,foundations and topping off: and it
requires takingthought.
Taking thought about building is one of several useful
definitions of architecture-which is where I come in, I
suppose; particularlyas a common accusationagainst architects
is that they fail to do just that. On the other hand, too much
taking thought by architects is not considered entirely
desirable either. Only too often in the last twentyyears or so,
they have been hectored about how wrong they had been to
take on themselvesthe role of social thinkersand reformers;
they should instead have got on with what has been called
"packaging a life-style";and should have done so in the most
expeditious and agreeable way theymight.
afterall, is thrownup by the people: throughit
A "life-style,"

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 HOUSE AND HOME 55

and mutelydeclaretheirwilland aspirations.

theyinstinctually
Likethemarket,thispopular"style"has itsinternal,
imperious
lawsof lifeand growthwhichcannotbe defied.
Withoutwishingto digress,I wouldliketo remindyou of a
verypopular slim book, full of beautifulimages,published
some years ago, which was called Architecture
Without
Architects,
as ifsucha thingwerenota contradictionin terms.It suggested
thatthe sheltersof monkeysand the dams of beaverswere
analogousto thoseof "untutoredbuildersin space and time,"5
nomads,peasantsand suchlike, whosehouseshad evolvedfrom
thoseoftheanimalswithout anyneed fordeliberation-likethe
animals,theyworkedbyinstinct.
A centuryearlier,the ReverendGeorgeWood, who was a
veryprolificscientific
popularizer,called an analogous,much
bulkier book more accuratelyHomes WithoutHands, and
discussedanimaldwellingsonly.The Viennesearchitectand
witBernardRudofsky, the authorof myfirstbook,admired
the buildingsof primitivepeople fortheirintuitive Tightness,
thewaytheyseemedto "fitin" withnature.He echoeda belief
commonamong historiansof architecture thattherewas an
unarticulated, immediate harmony between the primitive
builderand hisenvironment whichhad been lostbytheoverly
brain-bound
reflective, moderndesigner.School-trained archi-
tects, who take too much-or perhaps the wrong kind
of- thought,not onlygo againstthe natureof place but also
againstthatof the societyin whichtheywork.
Now, I suspectthatif one were to investigateany of the
human dwellingsillustratedin Rudofsky'sbook, however
"instinctual"
theymayappear,one wouldsoon findthatmany
were produced by specialistcraftsmenwho could be very
articulateindeed about whattheywere doing. Their notions
mayhave been framedin termsof legend,but theiraccounts
of themwouldoftencontaintheword"because."
Even whentheymerelyfolloweda ruleof thumb,and built

5 Bernard
Rudofky,Architecture
Without
Architects
(New York, 1964), p. 16.

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56 SOCIAL RESEARCH

according to habit,the rule of thumb stillhad to be taught to

be transmittedfromgeneration to generation; and often such
teaching had the character of initiation. It teaches by
cross-referencebetween techniques of building and cosmogo-
nies, or between storiesabout the origins of the tribeand the
builder's skills. At their simplest,such referenceswere often
enshrined in the work songs in which people celebrated their
effortsand the troubleto which the population of a settlement
was put when building was a communal rather than a
specialized activity;at their best, such songs could even turn
the act of building, with its repeated rhythmicaction, into a
game and a festival.
Unlike even the most elaborate animal construction,human
building involvesdecision and choice, always and inevitably;it
thereforeinvolves a project. A project may demand only a
close adherence to a traditionaltype- but a type can almost
alwaysbe specifiedin words: whetherit is the Mongol yurtsof
skin and embroidered feltstretchedover a wooden frame,or
Eskimo igloos built up of blocks of ice, or the mere propped
mats of Andaman Islanders or even the leaf shelters of
pygmies in Central Africa- all these types can not only be
"specified"by theirbuilders and by theirinhabitants,as I said,
but also "justified,"glossed in mythicalterms,and given some
specific legendary weight. However atrophied and ritualized
that life-stylemay seem to us, building for them is never the
"packaging of a life-style."
Moreover, "primitive" or "traditional" buildings always
presuppose neighbors. An isolated nuclear family in such
dwellingsis not thinkable.Indeed, our word "home," like the
German Heim, is sometimes thought to derive from the
Indo-European root kei, "to lie or settle"- from which came
the Greek khomi, whichmeans a settlement,a village (as against
a town), a rustic place and rustic festivalsthat extended into
dances and play acting,which the Greeks (and thereforealso
we, followingthem) called "comedy,"so that "home" becomes
also a communal and neighborlymanner of dwelling.A hermit

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 HOUSE AND HOME 57

maymakea home forhimselfin isolation,of course- but for

all that,humandwellingsare alwaysmoreor less communal.
Howevershabbyand casual it may look, a rusticdwelling
dependson beingpartof an articulated(I am eventemptedto
sayan organic)layout;oftena layoutwhichwas understoodas
a body withhead and membersinto whichthe homesteads
were"integrated."
I would argue furtherthata house, whetherit is ruralor
urban, can be a true home only in such neighborly
circumstances. Whilethe lonelyhearthwillnot quite make a
home, therefore,yet the erectionof the home-houseinto a
castlewhichdefiesits neighbors,and may be seen as quite
separatefromthepublicrealm,makesit muchlessof a home.
Or, in otherwords,an individualcan have manyhouses,but
onlya personcan makea home.
In the villagesof preindustrial
Europe,and to some extent
also in the townsthere,even in the earlysettlements of the
New World,neighborliness was a normalcondition.It was
taken for grantedas long as the body continuedto be the
metaphorforthe bodypolitic.However,about 1800 the new
scienceof biologytaughtthatthe human body was just one
kindof organictissueamongmany.The notionof an organic
substance-meaningany tissuecontainingprotoplasmiccar-
bon compounds-displacedthatof theorganon, thebodyas an
instrument ofa willor mind.BythentheIndustrialRevolution
was alreadyin full swingin the United Statesand in Great
Britain,and theorganizingof energyforproductionwas seen
as the overridingsocial good fromwhichall otherbenefits
wouldflow.
Industrialismwas to bringvastbenefits.Meanwhile,itwould
also involvemuch suffering: the versionof social Darwinism
which inspired many of the great industrialistsof the
nineteenth century-and therefore presidedoverthebuilding
and the rebuildingof cities-taught that progresswas an
organicprocess,thatsocietydevelopedfollowing internaland
inexorablelaws, like those which governedthe growthof

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58 SOCIAL RESEARCH

plants; and that(by inference)the ills of the environmentwere

the mere detritus of the great onward march- which one
popular writerof the time called The Martyrdom ofMan .6
Older images of a corporate city faded into an increasingly
stiff and remote irrelevance before the imperatives of
production. In the two principal English-speakingcountries,
the form and extent of cities grew in a way that had no
precedent. Business was increasinglypacked at the center; the
perfectingof metal structureand the firstsafe elevatorsmade
ever-greaterheightspossible,and promoted the speculation in
land values. In consequence, the main and usually older
institutionalbuildings- town halls, government offices, law
courts,churches- were soon dwarfedby the increasinglyhigh
monuments to enterprise.Those who profitedmost by these
buildings (and what went on inside them) soon moved out of
the darkening citycenters; theybuilt theircastles and palaces
in the surroundingcountryside.They were followed by their
most successfulemployees,and so on down the scale, until the
dormitorysuburb,where everyman'shouse trulywas his castle,
extended all round the tall urban core.
There was nothing new about the suburb, the faubourg,of
course; even while citywalls offeredthe only available security,
areas outside the citygates were populated by those who, for
one reason or another, were brave enough to escape city
regulations and city taxes. When that security became
somethingof an irrelevance,magnates who wanted to benefit
from large landholdings withineasy reach of the centers of
powerjoined the riffraff.St. Honoré and St. Germain in Paris,
Piccadilly and Bloomsbury in London, were crowded with
palatial mansions from the sixteenth until the nineteenth
century.
But the new industrialsuburbs were quite different.Since
theywere not withinwalkingdistanceof the city,theyrequired
transport. The upper crust of commerce and the middle
6 WilliamWinwood Reade, The
ofMan (London, 1872). There were many
Martyrdom
subsequent editions.

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 HOUSE AND HOME 59

classes had taken over the land of the magnates who

simultaneouslymoved to town houses and countryones,
havingparceledout theirsuburbanpalacesat vastprofit.The
riffraffhad forthemostpartmovedbackintothecitycenters,
sincea concentration of urbanworkerswas easierto battenon
than the diffusesuburbanites.By the thirdquarterof the
nineteenth century, thenotionof thehearth-on-the-ground as
the centerof the house had been firmly graftedonto thatof
the house as everyman's castle.Put the essentialhearthinto
everyman's castle,and youhave thepowerfulcommonplaceof
the suburbanhouse. Such housescannotbe piled up, one on
top of theother- thehearthhas to be on theground.
Buildingin heightwas forcedon the older citiesby their
immoderate nineteenth-century growth. In Europe, the
variousensanches- a termcoined in Barcelona,like the very
wordurbanism, and bythesame man,IdelfonsoCerda7- were
additionsto (or ringsaround) older cities,so that historic
centerscontinuedto playtheinstitutional rolefortheenlarged
areas and populations, whilein theNew Worldveryfewtowns
had such pointsof reference.
Where (as in Washington)such referencewas deliberately
createdon the scale of new and much largercitiesbut in a
quasi-ruralenvironment, it was to produceitsown problems.
The greatmajorityof townsbuiltin the New (as in the Old)
World during the nineteenthcenturywere gridded and
undifferentiated tissuesinto whichthe new proletariatwas
herded, usually with disastrousresults,and they in turn
produced horrid new linguisticusages: housing reforms,
housingquestions,and housingschemes.
By the middleof the nineteenth housingbecamea
century,
word whichsignifieddoing good to the poor by providing
them,institutionally, withhouses in whichtheycould make

7 Idelfonso Cerdà's Teoria

generalde la urbanizacióny aplicaciónde sus principesy
doctrinasa la reforma
y ensanchede Barcelonawas published in Madrid in 1867. Cerdà's
plan was originallydrawn up in 1859.

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60 SOCIAL RESEARCH

some kind of home. Some of these do-gooders were

philanthropists, others(of whomEbenezerHoward mayhave
been the most interestingand the most successful)were
planners and Utopians.A few of them did see that the
provisionof places to live had in some wayto be relatedto a
physicalstructurewhich would in turn correspondto the
articulated organization of oldertowns.Still,none foresawthe
worldpopulationcatastrophethathas overtakenour citiesin
thelastquarterof thiscentury, and throughwhichwe are still
workingand living.
Housing reformsand schemesspawned questions,minis-
tries,administrations. Soon all thisbecame more ambitious:
"Homes forHeroes" was the programof the Britishhousing
administration after1918; it was not an unqualifiedsuccess,
but it was echoed and amplifiedin the great rebuildingof
war-ravaged countriesafter1945. Architects wentat it witha
will. The notion of the Existenzminimum, which had been
launchedin the 1920s in Germany,had an enormoussuccess
in the '50s and '60s.
Architects triedto fiteverything thatwenton in a "typical"
householdintoa closelypackedshell.It wasas iftheysawtheir
businessnot as the provisionof houses but the enclosureof
Home, over whichFrank Taylor and his motion-study was
patron.They forgotthe importantmoral whichKarl Kraus
once triedto instillin them,whenhe said thathe expectedof
thecityto providehimwithwater,gas,electricity, and working
roads:dieGemütlichkeit besorgeich- l will the
supply homeliness,
he added.
Obsessedwiththedetailedworkingofthehomewhereevery
movement was planned,wherea bed wouldneverstandunder
a window, and babycarriagescould be storedawayunderthe
stairs,theyforgotthattheirbusinesswas withhouse and not
withhome. It is, moreover,withhouse in context,whetherin
thetownor in thecountry.For all theirconcernwiththeexact
layoutof the home, the assumptionwas somehowmade by
manyof thoseconcernedwithplanningand buildingthatthe

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 HOUSE AND HOME 61

pointor theslabblockwouldprovidetheanswerto all thebulk

problemsof urbanhousing.A numberof factorshavebrought
disappointment to the planners.The mostimportantis the
deterioration of thesocialstructure,forwhichtheycannotbe
heldresponsible;whichhas been attributed to thelossof faith,
the two-income family, or television-or a combination of all
three.But almostequallyweightyis the poor performance of
the physical fabric of many of those buildings, their
all-too-rapid decay.
I mustthereforeplead withmycontemporaries to reassess
theconjunctionbetweenhouse and home. Let the profession-
als recognizethattheirbusinessis withthe house, not with
home; withstructure, withphysicalfabric,withlimits,with
context.
Look at thereal-estate advertisingin New Yorkpaperswith
thisin mind.If a homeis offeredyou on thesixty-ninth floor
of a pencil-sharp skyscraper,know for sure thatthe sidewalks
and indeed the surroundingsof the buildingwill be the
purlieus(ifnot the home) of the dispossessed,howevermany
the varietiesof marble which line its walls, or photo-eyes
blinkfromitscornices.
The apartmentin the New York point block is, in its
luxuriousand alienatingway, no more welcomingor safer
than quarters in municipal-housingslab blocks in the
immediatepostwarperiod,of whichPruitt-Igoein St. Louis,
dynamitedby the authoritythat had paid for its erection
twenty yearsearlier,has becomethemostinfamous.In spiteof
thatclamorousdestruction, entirecitiesof slab-blockhousing
have been built since- in EasternEurope, in some African
countries,and in South America. In the West, private
developershave replacedthe regimentedslab witha chaos of
points,whichare sometimesdeckedout withfancy"classical"
detailing,as if cosmeticsof thatkindhad anythingto do with
the case. Othershave triedto focusattentionon the possible
adaptation of the quasi-public spaces left over between

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62 SOCIAL RESEARCH

skyscrapers;it is essential first-aidaction, but in conceptual

terms,it is like applying Band-Aid to a cut jugular vein.
The truth is that planners, developers, architectsneed to
recognize again that they are not the creatures, nor yet the
servants,of inexorable natural forces,but are in the business
of taking thought about building. Architects may not be
entitledto impose theirUtopianideas on theirclients- and yet,
all those concerned with building must recognize that every
foundation laid is always and inevitablya political act. The
damage they can inflict is more grievous than that of a
bungling surgeon or a physician.I would thereforelike to see
developers and housing directorsliable in law for professional
malpractice: not for the collapse of a building (for which the
architectand engineer are almost always blamed anyway),but
for puttingup buildings which should be blown up- because
theyare so ugly,or because theydamage the textureof urban
life. The constraints of market forces or the alienating,
capitalistconditions of labor are not an extenuating circum-
stance for our sins of commission.
The trouble is to find a suitablejudge and jury. To exercise
judgment, such a court would need to learn again, as we all
need to, that the cityis what we will it to be; it is our common
act- not a piece of organic tissue growing at the behest of
inflexibleand barely comprehensible forces. This is a lesson
which it will take many years to articulate and to apply.
Perhaps in any case it is too late, our cities are no longer
salvageable. I thinkit is worthtrying.And the sooner we begin,
the better.

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