Decoding Homes and Houses

Houses are not just assemblages of individual rooms but intricate patterns of organised space, governed by rules and conventions about the size and configuration of rooms, which domestic activities go together, how the interior should be decorated and furnished and what kinds of household object are appropriate in each setting, how family members relate to one another in different spaces, and how and where guests should be received and entertained in the home. Decoding Homes and Houses introduces new, computer-based techniques designed to retrieve and interpret this wealth of social and symbolic information. The various representations and measures show how domestic space provides a shared framework for everyday life, how social meanings are constructed in the home and how different sub-groups within society differentiate themselves through their patterns of domestic space and lifestyles.

• Shows how domestic space can shape and embody social information • Introduces ‘space syntax’: a method for exploring large samples of plans • Can be used by architects to shed light on ordinary people’s lifestyles and to ‘test’ layouts at the design stage

Acknowledgements; 1. An introduction to the study of houses; 2. Tradition and change in the English house; 3. Ideas are in things, with Hillier and Graham; 4. Two domestic ‘space codes’ compared, with Hillier; 5. Shaping the taste of middle England; 6. Configuration and society in the English country house; 7. Visibility and permeability in the Rietveld Schroder house, with Rosenberg; 8. The anatomy of privacy in architects’ London houses; 9. ‘Deconstructing’ architects’ houses; 10. Decoding dwellings: the way ahead.