Domestic Space: An interdisciplinary research site on houses, homes and gardens

Our friends from the SSN network have just mentionned in their last newsletter what seems to be an interesting source for references about the domestic space:

Domestic Space: An interdisciplinary research site on houses, homes and gardens - A project within the Department of Humanities at Simon Fraser University in Vancouver, the site has its origins in a workshop, Rethinking Domestic Space: Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Home and Garden, held at Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, November 1998. Includes an extensive, searchable bibliography, an international events calendar and a collection of useful links.

You can access this database via this link

Call for Article: LIVING IN THE PAST: HISTORIES, HERITAGE AND THE INTERIOR

(Vol. 2 Issue 1 – March 2011)
LIVING IN THE PAST: HISTORIES, HERITAGE AND THE INTERIOR

The editors Anne Massey and John Turpin invite contributions to the journal’s 2011 special issue Living in the Past: Histories, Heritage and the Interior.

This issue will examine the theme of the interior as a marker of history. Deeply embedded in historical processes, interiors are mutable spaces, shaped and re-shaped over time. The issue will seek to reveal the numerous ways in which interiors register and mark the passing of time and question the ways in which time and the effect of social, cultural, political and economic factors shape our understanding and assessment of the interior.

• The editors welcome submission of articles addressing the following themes:
• History and the Interior. How do interior designers, decorators, architects and industry use or work with history?
• The concept of history as it informs design practice
• The challenge of working with/within historic buildings
• Historicism and revivalism in the work of architects, interior decorators and designers
• The trade in architectural interiors
• Re-modelling as a design practice
• The Re-designation of Interiors. How have interiors figured in practices and discourses of urban and economic regeneration?
• The re-development of war or disaster damaged buildings
• The re-purposing of obsolete industrial/commercial/recreational/religious spaces
• Histories of alteration of re-use within a single building type
• Hybrids (the preservation of the architectural facade / tensions between modern interior/historic exterior)

Heritage and the Interior. How do curators and those working within the heritage industry address the question of history?

• Consider issues of conservation, preservation or renovation
• Explore the curatorial challenges of working with and presenting historic interiors (e.g. periodisation, narrative)

The Interior as History/Memory. How do interiors register changing patterns of social activity or human presence and in what ways do historic interiors act as a focal point of social negotiation/cultural exchange?

• Explore agents of change and the re-assignment of the use of interiors in response to the changing needs of particular communities
• Consider histories of alteration and re-use through study of a single site (e.g. functional shifts from domestic to commercial or religious to secular use)
• Consider re-modelling and the erasure of history/histories

Submissions reflecting the latest research on the interior from historians, practitioners and theorists are particularly welcomed. Principal articles of 5,000 to 7,000 words, including notes and references, with 4-8 illustrations are invited, and should be sent as an attachment to interiors@bergpublishers.com by 1st June 2010.

Further details of the Journal, including Notes for Contributors, are available at www.bergjournals.com/interiors If you have any queries about the Journal or about submitting an article, please contact

Shape-Morphing Textiles Workshop

Lately I have been quite busy designing & facilitating a research seminar & workshop on Shape-Morphing Textiles in the Design of Domestic Spaces at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts, School of Architecture, Copenhagen with the support of CITA. I am happy to share with you a flavour of the event.

The workshop gathered together researchers from polymer science & engineering, textile design & architecture to address the potential of shape-morphing textiles for the home. With the intention to encourage cross-disciplinary dialogue between science & design, we looked at how responsive polymer technologies can merge with fabric to design soft architectural membranes for resilient spaces.

Our journey started with the exploration of dielectric actuators through the design and making of electro-active modules with the support of Guggi Kofod , from Potsdam University. These experiments supported discussions on the opportunities and challenges of shape-morphing technologies, their design implementation & stakes, questions we explored further through scenario-building, brainstorming & prototyping with moisture responsive materials.

To enlarge the discussion, we presented our respective research to the public via a dedicated seminar on the topic who gathered designers, architects, researchers from all across Denmark & Sweden. The debated was very lively and we received a lot of interest.

I have to say it was a very rich and inspiring experience. Thanks all for taking part in this event.

Shape-Morphing Textiles Seminar

An international seminar on shape-morphing textiles organized by Aurélie Mossé for the Centre for IT & Architecture, Royal Academy of Fines Arts, school of Architecture, Copenhagen.

Bringing together a panel of international speakers from the field of polymer science & engineering, textile design & architecture, this seminar will explore the potential of shape-morphing textiles for the home. With the intention to encourage cross-disciplinary dialogue between science & design, the seminar will discuss the opportunities and challenges of shape-morphing technologies while investigating their design perspective & stakes. A particular emphasize will be given to the question of how responsive polymer technologies can merge with fabric to design soft architectural membranes for resilient spaces.

Royal Academy of Fines Arts, School of Architecture, Philip de Langes Allé 10, 1435 Copenhagen

Please note this is a free event but with limited number of seats so please RSVP aurelie.mosse[at]karch.dk if interested.

Eco-Home

Aurélie Mossé's Constellation Wallpaper, prototype 2

The Geffrye Museum's Eco Home exhibition is now on until 7th Feb 2009. 'This exhibition hopes to address, without preaching, widespread and increasing concerns about ecology and the state of the planet and how this links to our homes and the way we use, decorate and inhabit them.'' A series of currently available eco-products for the home are on show alongside with few more prospective artefacts such as my Constellation Wallpaper. Jo Angell from Puff and Flock is also displaying her Bittern Wallpaper.
One more good reason to visit the Geffrye Museum which is a charming place to visit anyway !

Constellation Wallpaper at Eco-Home exhibition

9th of october till 7th of february

At the occasion of the Eco-Home exhibition organized by the Geffrye Museum, I will have the opportunity to present my Constellation Wallpaper, an energy-storing wallpaper concept.

The show itself will address widespread and increasing interest in the way that climate change and the state of the planet affects our homes and the way we use, decorate and inhabit them.It is supported by John Lewis.

Eco Home will examine current ideas around eco living in an informative and timely way. The climate change agenda is having an impact on almost every area of life and the home is no exception.Recycling and saving energy have, for some, been part of daily life for generations, and is today enjoying a resurgence as well as new significance and urgency.The mantra ‘Reduce, Reuse, Recycle’ is prompting us to rethink our habits and behaviour. This exhibition will offer visitors food for thought on what they can do to make small but important eco changes in their homes.

We are now being encouraged to think about saving resources like water and electricity and turning to renewable sources.People are also beginning to consider the impact of industrial production methods and responsible sourcing. Eco Home will investigate how so-called ‘green’ issues have entered our domestic spaces, using both products that are already well established in the marketplace as well as futuristic prototypes.

Histories of the Home Conference

Julius Shulman

The Histories of the Home SSN and The City Centre at Queen Mary, University of London present the first Histories of the Home Subject Specialist Network (SSN) Conference on 5 June 2009 at London Transport Museum.

This conference will showcase different approaches to the study of the home from material culture studies and art history through to contemporary ethnographic studies. The papers draw upon a wide range of sources including inventories, paintings and diaries and span the 17th century to the present day within a British context. The event aims to bring together academics, archivists, museum professionals and postgraduate students to inspire new ideas and foster interdisciplinary dialogue.

Speakers will include:
Alison Clarke (University of the Applied Arts, Vienna)
The home as process – contemporary ethnographic methodologies in making histories of the
home
Victoria Kelley (University for the Creative Arts, Rochester)
Cleanliness, shine and polish in working-class and middle-class material culture in the late 19th
and early 20th centuries.
Jane Hamlett (Royal Holloway, University of London)
From drawing room to dressing room: marital dynamics and middle-class domestic material
culture in England, 1850-1910.
Dianne Lawrence (Lancaster University)
Borders of distinction and fashionable friezes – wallpaper and wall decoration in colonial
homes in Tasmania, in the latter half of the 19th century.
Sara Pennell (Roehampton University)
Home is where the hearth is? The uses and meanings of the hearth in Restoration London.
Kate Retford (Birkbeck, London)
Fabricating the domestic interior? The conversation piece in Georgian England.
Tim Richardson (independent scholar, freelance garden historian)
The importance of biography and connections in understanding the emergent English
landscape garden, 1680-1720.
Barbara Simms (independent garden and landscape historian)
The 20th-century house and garden: a review of research and an evaluation of its contribution
to our knowledge of the role of gardens in domestic life.
Divya Tolia-Kelly (Durham University)
South Asian post-colonial identity within Britain: memory-objects in the home.

Conference fees
£45 (£35 concs. – full-time students and the unwaged)(includes light lunch and refreshments)

For further information, please contact SSN Co-ordinator Krisztina Lackoi at
klackoi@geffrye-museum.org.uk or +44 (0)207 739 9893.

DETAILS
Venue: London Transport Museum
Covent Garden Piazza
London, WC2E 7BB
Date: Friday 5th June 2009
Time: 10.00 – 5.00
Cost: £45 (£35 - full-time students and the unwaged)

LIMITED PLACES – BOOK NOW!
Please return the completed form with payment by Friday 22 May 2009 to:
Krisztina Lackoi, SSN Co-ordinator
Geffrye Museum, Kingsland Road, London, E2 8EA

Domestic Probe - Call for participants

The Home at the Digital Era

Aurélie, as a part of her PhD project in textile design, is looking for volunteers to take part into her Domestic Probe called Home at the Digital Era, a research investigating what the notion of home encompasses nowadays. The idea of this Domestic Probe is to engage with real people and real domestic spaces to understand how home looks like today and what the notion of domesticity means in a contemporary context, within real people’s life.

Goal : This project takes place within the frame of a PhD project in Tectonic Textiles, undertaken in CITA, Centre for IT & Architecture, Copenhagen and hopes to gather up-dated data about the perception of the contemporary home, susceptible to inspire design ideas for smart textiles.

Why I need you? Your active participation will encourage going beyond traditional clichés about the home as well as gathering authentic up-to-date data about contemporary domestic spaces.

What are you supposed to do? I would like to ask you to become a one-day special correspondent of the domestic, reporting about your own home. If you decide to join the research, you will be asked to respond to these two main tasks.

• First of all, to take several pictures about your home. A disposable camera will be kindly provided if you don’t have access to a digital camera.
  
• Answer quick questions about you and your home.

The datas collected (pictures and survey) have to be sent back along with the consent form, by the end of march, preferably by email, if not by post at the details mentioned below.

Profile Any volunteer from 18 years old is more than welcome to join the research. I am interested in the most diversified profiles, whether your home is a castle, a single room or a tent. The most important is your motivation.

So would you like to contribute to this research?

For full information, please find here:

• The survey form with all the tasks required from you
  
• The consent form, attesting your participation and understanding of the research process

If you feel ready, just go ahead and send the information back to Aurélie when done.

If you are still hesitating, feel free to ask Aurélie any question:

Aurélie Mossé, PhD student,Centre for IT & Architecture, School of Architecture, Philip de Langes allé 10, 1435 Copenhagen, Denmark

Tel +45 32 68 66 54

Aurelie.Mosse@karch.dk

http://cita.karch.dk/

Addressing the Interior

"To address the interior is to address the splitting of the wall."

Beatriz Colomina in Dwelling as a figure of thought, p81

Home by John Berger

“Home is represented not by a house, but by a practice or a set of practices. Everyone has his own. These practices, chosen and not imposed, offer in their repetition, transient as they are by themselves, more permanence, more shelter than any lodging. Home is no longer a dwelling, but the untold story of a life being lived. At its most brutal, home is no more than one’s name.” John Berger

Thanks to Carole for sharing these inspiring words

Domestic Realm

The notion of home has been traditionally associated with crafts, the feminine and as such trivialized in most academic research. However, interested in contemporary interpretations of the domestic from a design perspective, I have found out that the history of the home, as an academic topic, has shown a revival of attention, especially in United Kingdom. Several works across university disciplines in the humanities and social sciences and also within museums, have lead to hubs of activity including the AHRC Centre for the Study of the domestic Interior (V&A/RCA/Bedford Centre for the History of Women), Kingston University’s Modern Interiors Research Centre, the Museum of Domestic Architecture and Design (MoDA) at Middlesex University. The Geffrye Museum's (a must in term of domesticity) new Histories of the Home Network is the most recent development in the field and builds upon this research. Another valuable resource is the Berg publication: Home Cultures which focus on main aspects of the domestic realm, from interior design to architecture, including material culture and anthropology.

Source: Histories of the Home SSN Symposium
Geffrye Museum, Saturday 27th September, 2008

Domestic Probes

Beyond textiles, the common denominator of our research is practice-based, design-led research. Working within the domestic context, and particularly interested in the concept of Design Probes, I have found the Domestic Probes approach used within the Equator Project at RCA extremely inspiring and valuable.

Defined as a 'design-led approach to understanding users stressed empathy and engagement', the Domestic Probes are defined by the group as :

a collections of provocative tasks designed to elicit inspirational information from people about their lives at home. They provide an alternative to more traditional methods of user research from the social sciences, such as questionnaire studies, focus groups, or ethnographies.

As Gaver, Boucher, Pennington and Walker argued in Cultural Probes and the Value of Uncertainty, the approach values uncertainty, playfulness, exploration and ambiguity as a research methodology, which is of interest to me as an exemple to deal with and recognize 'the notion that knowledge has limits', a perception particularly relevant in term of practice-based research.

Discover more about the methods and perspective used within the Equator Project regarding domestic experiences here.