I. 1. Introducere [617871]

LEGO HOUSES
Cuprins
I. 1. Introducere
2. Scopul temei
3. Definirea termenilor
II. Evolutia spatiului interior
1. Prima casa
2. Spatiul casei raportat la perioada
3. Spatiul casei raportat la exterior
4. Spatiul casei raportat la comunitate
III. Teorii si principii ale flexibilitatii in arhitectura
1. Teorii ale flexibilitatii
2. Principii arhitecturale flexibile
3. Adaptarea
4. Mobilitatea
5. Transformarea
6. Interactiunea
IV .1. Implementarea principiilor in consruirea unei case

We put thirty spokes together and call it a wheel;
But it is on the space where there is nothing
That the usefulness of the wheel depends.
We turn clay to make a vessel;
But it is on the space where there is nothing
That the usefulness of the vessel depends.
We pierce doors and windows to make a house;
And it is on these spaces where there is nothing
That the usefulness of the house depends.
Therefore just as we take advantage of what is,
We should recognize the usefulness of what is not.
Lao Tzu (1)
1. Lao Tzu, The Tao Te Ching , 1934, chapter 11
„Tehnologia este esențială în arhitectură, dar calitățile poetice și artistice au întotdeauna o origine
și un motiv de existență. Arhitectura provine dintr-un sentiment sporit de viață. Aș sfătui pe studenți
să
privească totul, inclusiv tehnologia, cu ochii senzuali și poetici. Adevărata sarcină a arhitecturii este
să ne înnobileze viața de zi cu zi.”
Juhanni Pallasmaa
There is a crucial experience of difference and a corresponding experiment: every time we find ourselves
confronted or bound by a limitation or an opposition, we should ask what such a situation presupposes.
Gilles Deleuze (4)
4. Gilles Deleuze, “Difference in Itself” , 2004, p.61.
„Because the outside world of today affects us in the most intense and disparate ways, our way of
life is changing more rapidly than in previous times. It goes without saying that our surroundings
will undergo corresponding changes. This leads us to layouts, spaces, and buildings of which every
part can be altered, which are flexible, and which can be combined in different fashions”(6)
6 Benjamin Walter, Theses on the Philosophy of History,in Illuminations, p. 254
Carte Young People, Housing and
Social Policy
Setting the context: young people, housing and
social policy
Similarly, broad housing issues are discussed
without understanding that housing is an arena in which young
people are particularly vulnerable: they often lack knowledge of their
housing options; are frequently in low-paid and erratic work; and may

not yet have the skills needed to negotiate positive housing outcomes
for themselves. Thus, for example, policies that prioritise the
allocation of social housing to families and older single people fail to
acknowledge that young people are one of the groups least capable of
competing for alternative housing in the private rented sector.
In order to understand the range of housing scenarios in which
young people find themselves, it is perhaps useful to consider the
nature of the groupings in which young people live. In housing
terms, a distinction is usually made between a family and a
household. In official surveys such as the SEH a family may be
defined in one of three ways: it may be a married or cohabiting
couple with no children; a married or cohabiting couple with
children who themselves have never married; or a single person. A
household may contain one or more families, and is generally
defined as an address which is their main or only residence, and in
which they have at least one meal together each day and share a
living room. These definitions can usually cover most types of
experience, but there are instances when housing situations become
difficult to assess. For example, the sharing of accommodation is
very common amongst young people and comprises a variety of
experiences including lodging with another adult; living in a house
in multiple occupation and sharing facilities with people who might
not know each other, all of whom have separate tenancy
agreements; and living in a house with a group of friends under
some sort of joint tenancy agreement. In all these apparently
different cases, the young person is judged as being a single-person
family living in a single household.
Living in the parental home
The SEH 1996/7 found that living in the parental home is by far the
most common housing location of young people, and was the
situation of 3,552,000 (59 per cent) of 16–25 year olds. A common
theme running through this book is the increasing pressure of
structural forces encouraging young people to remain living in the
parental home for longer (Coles et al., this volume). A number of
chapters point to economic, policy and housing market changes that
have created difficulties for young people seeking to make their first
steps towards independent housing. There is a close relationship
between issues relating to living in the parental home and the sub stantial literature that has been produced on young
people leaving home for the first time (Ainley 1991; Furlong and Cooney 1990;
Jones 1990; Killeen 1992; Madge and Brown 1991). This material
helps to explain the patterns of young people remaining at home. For
example, the incidence of leaving home differs by age and gender:
women are more likely to leave, and leave when they are younger, for
the purposes of family formation (Jones 1990). As a consequence, it
is more usual for men to be living at home with their parents than
women: the SEH data showed only 50 per cent of female 16–25 year
olds lived in the parental home compared with 68 per cent of men.
Reasons for leaving home are also associated with age: those
leaving at aged 16–17 are likely to leave because of tension within the
family; 18-year-olds most often leave to take up higher education
courses; and later leavers are generally moving out to set up home
with a partner (Jones 1990). Thus there are substantial age differences
in the sub-group of young people remaining at home, and there is a
marked decline in the proportion of home stayers as young people
become older. According to the SEH, in 1996/7 almost 99 per cent of
16-year-old males lived in the parental home. By the age of 21 this

percentage had reduced to 67 per cent, and at the age of 25 had dropped further to only 34 per cent. The reduction
was even more marked in the case of young women: 97 per cent lived at home at the
age of 16, dropping to 45 per cent at the age of 21 and only 16 per
cent at the age of 25. Table 1.2 gives further detail. It becomes clear,
therefore, that it is unwise to discuss 16–25 year olds as if they were
a homogeneous group with a generalisable pattern of experience.
Policy changes have been built on this assumption of homogeneity,
and Rugg (this volume) discusses the introduction of a reduced
assistance with housing costs for people under the age of 25 that was
in part justified by the claim that most of this age group would still be
living in the parental home.
YOUNG PEOPLE AND SUSTAINABLE HOME
OWNERSHIP
Earlier sections of this chapter have shown how the proportion of
young people entering home ownership shrank in the 1990s and
discussed some of the reasons why this came about and is currently
being sustained. One important influence was a growing belief that
owning was ‘riskier’ than previously, but young people also
believed that, for a range of reasons, it was less attainable. In
contrast to the focus on the reluctance or inability to enter the
tenure, this section explores the experience of those who did
become owners. These two issues might also interconnect. To the
extent that the experience of owning was problematic, and
recognised more widely as such, potentially it could reinforce the
perception of home ownership as a risk.
THE IRON CAGE OF HOUSING POLICY
There is clear evidence that fewer young people are entering owner
occupation and that a substantial proportion are cautious about the
tenure. Some recognise that if they wanted to buy at a young age they
would find it difficult to do so and hard to sustain. Some have tried
and failed. An answer to a key question – whether what we are
recording is a temporary downturn structured by housing market
constraints, a permanent shift to delayed entry structured by a wide
range of constraints or a more permanent reassessment of tenure
preferences, or, as is more likely, some combination of these
processes – is not possible yet, although there is evidence in support
of the first two of these three possibilities.
Any more permanent reassessment of tenure on the part of young
people, however, raises the issue of its relationship to current housing
policy. Successive governments since the late 1970s have made clear
their commitment to owner occupation alongside their reluctance to
support social housing other than for those in severe need. This
overall pattern remains the policy direction of the Labour government
elected in 1997, although there is a stronger commitment in principle
to maintaining, improving and supporting social housing and social
housing communities. With respect to home ownership, the language
has changed from that of its further expansion to a concern with its
sustainability, but no real reduction in the proportion of households in
owner occupation is envisaged. Much is said about the need to
support and expand the private rental sector, and there is general
recognition that it remains a critical linchpin in the housing system,
but policy initiatives are few and fiscal support and initiatives are
deemed inadequate to bring about much additional investment (Kemp
1997).
From a policy perspective, the scope which young people have to

‘choose’ an alternative tenure on a permanent basis, if this is what
they want to do, looks severely limited. Housing policy is a major
constraint on the possibility of realising ‘de-standardisation’ and ‘de traditionalisation’. In the absence of alternatives,
all that most young people can do currently is to delay their entry until the pressure for
independent living leads them to ‘accept it’ in order to secure other
valued objectives such as partnership, family formation, privacy or
adulthood. Thus delayed entrants might include reluctant owner
occupiers as well as those with a preference to own but whose entry
has been constrained by the range of social, economic, institutional
and educational changes already discussed. Currently the balance
between these groups is unclear and research is necessary to explore
the motivations and preferences for housing in order to identify the
extent and direction of any change. A key task for policy makers is to
develop a sensitivity to the changing preferences and to modify policy
accordingly.
HOUSING NEED AND DEMAND
If social housing providers are to allocate vacancies according to
need, they have to define and measure the housing needs of
households in their areas of operation. The matter of whose needs
should be met by social housing has evolved over the years according
to prevailing social trends and political ideologies. That is to say, access is dependent upon some measurement of
housing need (inadequate housing circumstances) and a value-based judgement as
to the legitimacy of an individual’s or household’s claim for
assistance.
Successive government statements have emphasised state
responsibility towards families, rather than to all citizens (Holmans
1995b). Consequently, questions have been raised as to the legitimacy
of young people’s expressed demand to form independent
households, and to obtain secure housing in the social sector if they
cannot afford to buy or rent in the private market. Furthermore, the
housing needs of young single people have tended to be neglected in
national estimates for social housing provision, such as those
provided by Whitehead and Kleinman (1992) and Holmans (1995b).
Young single people seem to be viewed as ‘individuals who are not
yet families’ and thereby do not require the same security and
independence in their housing as family households. Garside (1993)
similarly argued that such attitudes resulted in the assumption that
single people were adequately housed in temporary, shared
accommodation.
Students and housing
Full-time students now comprise a large, and still increasing, group
of people. They are a section of the population that form a specific
key demand group for housing, having relatively clearly defined
requirements which set them apart from most other people of a
similar age. Despite this being the case, however, there has been little
examination of how students’ housing needs are met, how local
housing markets respond to their demand, and the nature of the
interaction between full-time students and other competing demand
groups for housing. This chapter therefore explores issues pertaining
to the housing situations of full-time students who are in attendance
at establishments of higher education.
As a result of the limited systematic information available on
students’ housing markets, a relatively speculative approach has been
taken in this chapter. Much of the evidence which is available is ad

hoc and localised in focus, and little of it is up to date. In the absence
of any large-scale and systematic information, therefore, the aim of
this chapter is to discuss in a general way some of the issues
surrounding student housing markets at the current time. Although
the chapter is speculative, it comprises an exploration of some of the
relevant literature as a precursor to a forthcoming national study of
student housing markets, which has been funded by the Joseph
Rowntree Foundation.
A GENERAL PICTURE OF STUDENT HOUSING
As noted in Coles et al. (this volume), students in full-time
education have specific housing requirements. For the duration of
their studies the majority of them have housing needs which are
flexible in character. In particular, a key feature is the temporary
nature of their demand for accommodation away from their parental
home and in the locality of their university or college of higher
education. Some full-time students will of course continue to live in
the parental home, perhaps because of the establishment’s
proximity, or because it is made possible by the structure of their
chosen course of study. Such students, however, generally represent
a small minority of the total.
For most students, separate term-time accommodation away
from the parental home is either necessary or desirable. This
convention is particularly the case in recent times, with the
incidence of students living at home during term-time having
shown a marked decrease. During the 1959/60 academic year at
the University of Edinburgh, for example, 36 per cent of students
were studying in the parental home, but by 1988/9 this figure had
fallen to just over 8 per cent (Nicholson and Wasoff 1989). More
recent evidence on students at the University of York shows that
during the 1994/5 academic year, 6 per cent were living at home
with their parents during term-time (Rugg et al. 1995). A small
minority of students might be owner occupiers, Nicholson and
Wasoff reporting that just over 11 per cent of students at the
University of Edinburgh in 1988/9 were of this type. Such people
might be either mature entrants or temporary owners during their
time of study, the latter possibly letting spare rooms to other
students.
The vast majority of full-time students live, at least during their
term-times, in the private rented sector (PRS), although there will
inevitably be differences in the extent to which this occurs. For
example, some evidence indicates that as many as one-third of
Scottish students study within the parental home setting (Kemp and
Willington 1995), although the example of Edinburgh University
students shows that this proportion is by no means uniform. Other
evidence indicates that there is some variation in the extent to which
students use the PRS according to their type of educational
institution, but even so the overwhelming proportion of students of
the different types of establishment live in private rented
accommodation of one sort or another (Rugg et al. 1995).
ELEMENTS OF SUCCESSFUL TRANSITIONS
Understanding the risks associated with certain pathways out of
care and the contexts in which more successful transitions occur can
provide pointers to the elements of a good transition for care
leavers. The most basic requirement of a good transition is that it
should not occur too early. A cultural change is needed in the care

system to counter the expectation on the part of managers, social
workers, residential workers, foster carers and some young people
that the move should be made at only 16 or 17 years of age, when young people are often not ready to cope with the
demands of
independent living. Early transitions are often a result of crisis
moves out of care, which lead to hurried unplanned transitions to
living situations which are unsupported and which rapidly break
down. Attempts to prevent placement breakdown for teenagers
would therefore also contribute to the achievement of more
successful transitions.
The corollary of this is that transitions should be well planned
and well supported. Careful preparation and detailed leaving care
planning were important features of successful transitions in our
study. Preparation that encouraged the development of informal
support networks and plans which delineated the sources of support
that would be available to young people were particularly valuable.
For young people often lacking consistent family support,
continuing care by social workers and carers is likely to be
important as they attempt to find their feet in the adult world.
However, a consistent finding of research in this area has been a
tendency for planned support to fall away soon after legal discharge
(Stein and Carey 1986; Biehal et al. 1992; Garnett 1992). Follow-up
support by residential staff was extremely rare in our study, and that
provided by foster carers declined once young people had moved
on. A similar pattern was also apparent for social workers. Although
two-fifths were still in touch at the end of the study, in most
instances contact depended on young people approaching their
worker if they needed help. If the aim is to ensure continuity of
support for young people through a difficult set of transitions, then
greater recognition and funding needs to be given to this continuing
care role.
The availability of a range of accommodation options to meet
differing needs can also contribute to good transitions. Looked-after
young people do not form a homogeneous group: their past
experiences and level of preparedness for moving on are likely to
differ markedly. Many young people in our study who lacked the
skills for independent living valued the intensive support available in
trainer flats, hostels and supported lodgings. ‘Floating support’
schemes had advantages for those wanting lower levels of support.
These forms of supported accommodation were an important
resource for young people in our study.
For those ready and willing to try their own flats a supply of good
quality permanent tenancies is needed. Securing a permanent tenancy
at an early stage can provide valuable stability for those ready to cope with independent living. However, we found
that the momentum of
the planning process often played a part in determining the age at
which young people moved to independence, since the time of
moving on was governed by the time at which the offer of a tenancy
was made. This was sometimes sooner than expected, leading to a
hurried move, often before the young person was ready to take
responsibility for an independent household. Closer co-operation
between housing providers, social services and young people
regarding the timing of offers of tenancies might reduce the risk of
tenancies breaking down at an early stage.
Joint working of this kind would be in keeping with the Children
Act 1989, which expects local authorities to adopt a corporate
approach, so that their strategic planning for children’s services,

housing and community care addresses the housing needs of care
leavers. The Code of Guidance to the Housing Act 1996 describes
care leavers as one of the most vulnerable groups of young people
and recommends that a joint assessment of their housing needs
should be carried out by housing and social services departments as
part of individual leaving care planning. This involvement of housing
authorities in leaving care arrangements represents an important
policy change (Brody 1996).
However local authorities organise their leaving care services, the
development of an appropriate range of accommodation options
represents a time-consuming and specialist function and one that may
best be undertaken by a specialist leaving care scheme. Such a
scheme requires an authority-wide overview of resources and formal
partnerships with housing providers – statutory, voluntary and
private. The development of joint initiatives also requires
considerable investment by social services. The three authorities in
our study, to varying degrees, had used Section 24 funds to employ
specialist scheme staff, to contribute to the salaries of support staff in
hostels managed by housing associations and, in one instance, to
secure quotas of hostel places.
However, while a range of accommodation options is required, this
should not be at the expense of policies that recognise the importance
of a flexible, needs-led approach to leaving care. The expectation that
young people should move on at such an early age is unrealistic and
the minority who were able to remain with carers until they felt ready
to leave ‘home’ were, perhaps, the most privileged of all. Only a
handful of young people in our study were able to remain in
placements beyond the age of 18 if needed, and this happened only where creative use of funding under Section 24 of
the Children Act
was used to convert foster placements to supported lodgings. A recent
inspection has found that, despite many young people wanting
fostering or very supported lodgings before moving to more
independent accommodation, these resources appear to be in short
supply (Social Services Inspectorate 1997).
Flexibility should also involve an opportunity for young people
to return to more supported accommodation when necessary. It is
not uncommon for young people who have left their family home to
return home and later leave again, so that in effect they leave home
more than once (Banks et al. 1992; Jones 1995). This process
involves shifts from dependence to independence and back again.
For care leavers, however, the provision of respite is rare. In our
study, it appeared to be an option available only to some young
people with learning difficulties or to young mothers where there
were concerns about the child. However, a number of other young
people experienced crises that placed them at risk of further
instability, including homelessness, and would have benefited
from a return to a more supported option. An approach which
allows for care leavers to return to more sheltered accommodation
when needed could contribute to a more successful transition in
the long term.
Finally, the provision of accommodation is unlikely to be
sufficient without an offer of ongoing support until young people no
longer need it or develop an alternative network of support. Although
many of the care leavers in our study were in contact with their
parents, very few had positive relationships with them or received a
great deal of support from them, so they were obliged to rely on
professional support. Many young people lacked the skills and

confidence to manage their homes without support and others
encountered crises at a later point. The ‘housing plus support’
approach of leaving care schemes was also a major factor in
increasing tenancy allocations. Housing providers were more likely
to take a risk on a young person if support plans were in place and
negotiated with them. A vital element of successful transitions,
therefore, is the provision of ongoing support commensurate with the
needs of individual young people for as long as they require it.
Singel parent
A house is not a home
The material comforts needed to turn a house into a home suitable for
a baby or small child are arguably greater than those needed for a
single person. Moreover, a mother needs to achieve certain standards
quickly. Whilst a couple or single person without children could take
time to accumulate furniture or domestic equipment, a young mother
needs certain items immediately. A refrigerator for food hygiene,
carpets to save small knees from splinters and to keep the home
warm, and a washing machine for the large amount of washing and
drying that a small child generates are not luxuries but necessities.
Many young mothers, though, live extremely impoverished lives once
they are in their own homes and have to go without even the most
basic of home furnishings and comforts for several years.
The Social Fund, set up to provide grants and loans for people in
need, has been well reported on in recent years (Craig 1993; Huby
and Dix 1992; NACAB 1990). Predominantly the Social Fund offers
loans, rather than grants: only those re-establishing themselves in the
community from a care situation would receive a grant. In this
respect, the Fund does not favour young parents over young nonparents.
A young single mother claiming benefits may be able to get a
loan to buy basic household furnishings and equipment, but she will
have to repay the loan from her limited Income Support. A young
father would almost certainly not be able to get help from the Social
Fund to equip a home for a visiting child.
Many authorities are now offering furnished lettings or providing
furniture packs through voluntary agencies (Rooney 1997). The
quality of the goods varies greatly from place to place, but in general
the help this provides is extremely valuable in the early days of
independence. Furthermore, a furnished tenancy limits the need for
credit and debt which plague so many young mothers, and which
cannot be accommodated by Income Support. Young fathers,
however, although often also eligible for assistance of this kind,
would generally only receive furniture for a single person. Additional
items needed to provide suitable accommodation for a visiting child
would not be provided.
CONCLUSION
Clearly single young parents have different housing needs to young
single non-parents in terms of the size, quality and location of their
homes. They are also the poorest of young people, with a greater
dependence on state benefits and the least able to take part-time work
to supplement their incomes. These young people are therefore
limited to renting the cheapest housing available in any sector, being
unlikely to be able to afford any shortfall between Housing Benefit
and rent. Thus there is a greater likelihood that they will have a more
socially and materially impoverished start to their independent lives

than most young people. Moreover, their children are more likely to
begin their lives in poverty. Because of their potentially long-term
dependence on welfare benefits, this impoverishment is likely to be
long lived and difficult to overcome. As a consequence, the children
of young single parents, whilst receiving as much care and love as
any other children, often begin, and continue, their lives at a
disadvantage. Poor housing is just one of the ways in which that
disadvantage manifests itself, but poor housing and the issues
associated with it, as discussed here in relation to both mothers and
fathers, have a knock-on effect on other aspects of life.
Housing is just one part of a complex process which these young
parents are undertaking. The mothers especially had very little
flexibility in their approach to gaining and maintaining independent
housing, and it is this lack of flexibility which made their housing
situation impinge so much on other parts of the processes they were
engaged in – growing up, learning to care for themselves and a child,
learning to manage budgets and often coping with the end of a
relationship. Current housing policy and practice does not recognise
the role of housing in this wider process. Moreover, current policy is
often counter-productive in relation to the objectives of other
government policies. For example, young single fathers are being
pursued by the Child Support Agency for maintenance, which many cannot pay because of their poor position in the
labour market. At the same time both lone parents and young people in general are being
made the focus of attention on unemployment through such policies
as the New Deal (Speak 1998). However, for those who are both lone
parents and young unemployed people, housing has a crucial role to
play in their ability to get and keep a job. For example, it seems likely
that more young single fathers, particularly those with time on their
hands because of unemployment, are prepared to take responsibility
for the care of their children than is normally assumed. It is also
becoming clear that young mothers both want to work and are in a
better position to get work in the new services sector jobs, but find
affordable childcare the biggest barrier (Marsh and McKay 1993).
Housing policy could have a role in bringing mother and father
together in a mutually convenient way. By recognising that some
young single fathers need family housing for their children, housing
policy could assist them to provide childcare, allowing young
mothers to come off benefits. In this respect, rather than being one of
the problems produced as the result of changing family formation,
housing could be central to the solution.
All young people need a high degree of flexibility in their early
independent lives, both with regard to housing and employment, as
they learn to prioritise different areas of life. However, young parents,
who arguably need the most flexibility if they are to negotiate the best
situation for their young families, have limited choice. Youth is a time
for learning, experimenting and making mistakes. One of the most
important factors affecting housing for young parents is the fact that
they are deprived of this crucial learning time. Mistakes, though, are
still made, but they have a more disruptive and longer-term effect.
Many policies, including housing policies, do not acknowledge the
importance of this transitional stage in life for young people.
Furthermore, policies are increasingly designed to encourage a level
of uniform behaviour, as if young people were a homogeneous
group. This sub-group of young single parents highlights the error
of this assumption. Moreover, policies increasingly also fail to offer
a safety net for the difficulties which many young people naturally
encounter. Housing policies in particular are increasingly based on

the assumption that young people can and should remain with their
families until they are able to support themselves financially, and
that they can turn to their families for support in the event of a
problem. For many young single parents, both mothers and fathers,
it is their status as parents which is perceived as a problem, which makes relying on family less feasible and to
succeed independently more important.
Young adults living in the
parental home
The implications of extended youth
transitions for housing and social policy
Bob Coles, Julie Rugg and Jenny Seavers
Many chapters in this book have indicated the difficulties faced by
young people trying to secure independent accommodation. A range
of economic, social and housing policy obstacles hinder young
people’s access to home ownership, social housing and private
renting. Furthermore, particular problems faced by sub-groups
within the 16–25 age range can exacerbate the process of
marginalisation within the main housing sectors. One common
theme predominates: the increased resort by young people to
accommodation in the parental home. The inability to take any first
steps in their housing career means that many young people remain
in the parental home for longer periods, and difficulty in sustaining
tenancies and independent living again means a greater reliance on
the parental home when these fail.
However, consideration of young people’s housing careers should
not take place in a vacuum: housing choices are made alongside
employment decisions and the steps young people take to form
households and families of their own. In this regard, it is appropriate
to consider young people living in the parental home in the context of
broader literature relating to the transitions that young people make to
adult status. It has been recognised that it is increasingly difficult for
young people to achieve what has been termed ‘traditional’
transitions between child-dependency status and full adulthood, and
commentators now discuss the growth of extended and fractured
transitions. Young people are facing a number of obstacles in the
process of achieving independence, and beyond the housing issues
outlined in some chapters in this book a number of other socioeconomic
factors can be associated with a longer stay in the parental home. It cannot be assumed, however, that young people
living in the parental home are a homogeneous group. The limited research which
does exist on this area suggests that those young people continuing to
live at home do so for a variety of very different reasons, so raising a
whole series of research issues. Indeed, focusing attention on the
implications of young people continuing to live in the parental home
for extended periods points to the need for a distinct research agenda
producing material to underpin in a more informed manner policy
relating to the housing needs of young people.
This chapter begins by introducing literature which outlines the
changing pattern of youth transitions. Factors associated with the
growth of extended transitions are examined, and particular attention
is paid to their impact on family relationships. Detailed exploration

then takes place of the sub-groupings of young people who continue
to live in the parental home. The chapter concludes with discussion of
some of the social and housing policy consequences of a heavy
reliance on the parental home to house young people.
Private Dwelling
What do housing professionals, architects, estate agents and town planners do
when they go home at night? Presumably they do the same as the rest of the
population. They indulge in that ubiquitous and unique activity called dwelling.
They use the housing planned, designed, managed, bought and sold by
professionals for uses specific to themselves: and while they are doing it, so is
everybody else.
Housing is something that is deeply personal to us. It offers us privacy and
security and allows us to be intimate with those we are close to. This book considers
the nature of privacy but also how we choose to share our dwelling. The book
discusses the manner in which we talk about our housing, how it manifests and
assuages our anxieties and desires and how it helps us come to terms with loss.
Housing is more that mere possession. It facilitates or restricts access to
employment, family, leisure, and the community at large. This is partly a question
of affordability and location, but it also relates to notions of identity, security
and the significance of place. What determines how we view housing, therefore,
is how we dwell. This shows immediately that there is a distinction between
housing and dwelling. Indeed housing, properly speaking, is a subset of dwelling.
Dwelling encloses housing, but much more besides. But this is to get ahead of
ourselves. We need first to look at these two notions at a more basic level.
First, he describes the idea of ‘settlement’. This is the mode of ‘natural
dwelling’, where humans develop, use and exploit the natural environment.
We can equate this to the process of the domestication of nature and its
subsequent development as a predeterminant of stable civilisations (Hodder,
1990). Accordingly, we can add the domestication of nature to the three
meanings already stated by Norberg-Schulz. Second, he describes the mode
of ‘collective dwelling’, where human interaction takes place in the medium
of urban space. This is where the first meaning of dwelling is fulfilled, as
people interact to exchange products, ideas and feelings in towns and cities.
Third, Norberg-Schulz defines the mode of ‘public dwelling’. This is the
forum where the common values, as articulated in his second meaning of
dwelling, are expressed and kept. He identifies this mode of dwelling with
the institution, be it political, social or cultural. Finally, he defines the mode
of ‘private dwelling’, as exemplified by the house. This is where we are able to
be ourselves. It is ‘a “refuge” where man gathers and expresses those memories
which make up his personal world’ (p. 13). This, then, is where we can
withdraw from the world to define and develop our own identity. Norberg-
Schulz’s conceptualisation of dwelling is able to encompass historical,
philosophical, psychological and social dimensions. In so doing, he
demonstrates the nature of the ‘belonging and participation’ which dwelling
brings. He shows how dwelling is the security (private dwelling) to participate
in, and withdraw from, a stable agreed culture (public dwelling) where social
interaction (collective dwelling) is facilitated within, and co-determined by,
our environment (natural dwelling).

Norberg-Schulz goes on to consider the meaning that dwelling gives,
and is given by, the individual and the community. He does this through the
articulation of two concepts, identification and orientation. Identification is
to experience a ‘total’ environment – where the four modes considered above
are present – as meaningful for what it is. He is here associating dwelling with
the phenomenological concept of the lifeworld. This concept, as initially
defined by Edmund Husserl (1970), refers to the meaningful world of things
into which individuals are born. Husserl suggested that the lifeworld can be
seen as a series of overlapping circles, beginning with the homeworld, and
rippling out into the social world. The lifeworld then consists of those things
that surround each person, yet are implicitly accepted without conscious
thought. David Pepper (1984) defines the lifeworld as the world of familiar
ideas, experiences and objects, like the furniture, ‘on which we do not
consciously bring to bear our thought processes but in whose sudden absence
we could feel disturbed, as if something were wrong’ (p. 120). We only
recognise this lifeworld by thinking ‘consciously and descriptively about things
we do not usually think of in this way in order to bring them from the back to
the forefront of cognition, and make explicit what was implicit’ (p. 120).
Short of their absence then, we must actively strive to recognise their
significance; we identify with them only implicitly through their taken-forgranted
presence. Pepper goes on however, ‘And since the “lifeworld” is a
personal thing, varying from individual to individual, we cannot induce lawlike
statements about it’ (p. 120).
The notion of the lifeworld, and of identification, relates to Heidegger’s
notion of things as being ready-to-hand (Heidegger, 1962). This is where a
thing is transparent to consciousness provided it fulfils its prescribed function.
The thing is equipment, an extension of the person using it, and thus
unnoticed as present-to-hand, as a substance with distinct properties. The
things which form our lifeworld therefore are equipment ready-to-hand.
Only once there is a problem with them, so that they are unready-to-hand,
do we become conscious of these things as present-to-hand, short of a
conscious deliberate act of abstract thought to focus upon these things. We
use the things around us as extensions of ourselves and not consciously as
distinct entities separate from ourselves.
Private dwelling
We have seen how our private dwelling is connected up to the social world
and how it is necessary for us to have this homeworld in order for us to be
able to orientate and identify with institutions and with other human beings.
But what of private dwelling itself? Does it offer us more than connection to
the social? Norberg-Schulz sees the house as the place of familiarity, where
life is implicit and habitual: ‘In the house man becomes familiar with the
world in its immediacy; there he does not have to choose a path and find a
goal, in the house and next to the house the world is simply given’ (1985, p.
89). This is a place where we are accepted and accepting, where we have a
measure of control over our environment. We are able, to an extent, to put
down or ignore any social role or responsibility we may have. The confines of
the home can be seen as liberating, in that they separate us from the public
sphere. We are individuated by having this personal space. As Norberg-Schulz states, ‘Personal identity, thus, is the content of
private dwelling’ (p. 89). Having this personal identity allows us to face up to the surrounding world.
It offers us security in our location in the public domain. One is orientated,
centred by personal space, it being one circle of the lifeworld, contiguous
with, but separate from, all others.
However, the house also offers a retreat from the world, where one can
disengage from the limitations imposed by fitting into a community. This
withdrawal, though, signifies not isolation but intimacy. We are not able to
obtain this intimacy in the public sphere, and nor would we want it. It is
rather only in the privacy of the household, where our commitments are not

mitigated by a diversity of public roles and obligations, that we can share in
intimate relations with those we choose to be close to. Relations within the
private sphere can therefore be characterised by love and care, rather than
contract or civic obligation as in the public sphere. Our private relations are
based on implicit voluntary commitments, as opposed to legal or formal
conjunctions. So not only is there a physical division between the private and
the public, but also a social and psychological separation in the sense of our
relation to such space.
One of the faults of academic study is to seek unity. This is first the
belief that a complete answer or explanation is possible and then to strive to
achieve it. It is thought that we can completely encapsulate an issue and
consider it fully. If we have not achieved this yet, this is not a result of any
fundamental epistemological problem but merely a matter of time and ongoing
theoretical development. 6 Part of this ambition derives from a belief in
rationality and logic: that we can construct a clear, precise and definitive
argument that encloses the important aspects of the problem or issue, and
then present some form of resolution. The aim is to pre-empt the unintended
and ensure greater predictability. This according to the Popperian view of
social science is the very purpose of enquiry (Popper, 1989). 7
In short, the problem is one of systematisation. We believe that through
the development of explanations we can define, codify and contain the
phenomena under study. We can excavate the underlying structures or draw a
suitably accurate map that reduces the problem to a contained system which
we are then able to understand.
This idea of a family resemblance offers a way into looking at the use of
housing. Housing differs in several important specifics when we compare
cultures, classes, even individual households. Yet there are areas of common
reference, of shared features, just as members of a family share traits such as
hair colour, build, shape of nose and so on, whilst still being separate and
distinct individuals. The resemblance in some cases will be striking, in others
difficult to detect. Moreover the nature of the common traits might be hard
to articulate. Yet we recognise the family resemblance as pertaining. Often
we will see the resemblance instantly as obvious. Hence we associate them
together with common words (consider notions of taste). Thus we can account
for differences yet also for the use of common terms in ordinary language
(Stroll, 2000, 2002).
A brick box or a velvet case?
Enclosing and enframing
Dwelling is both the performance of a technology – of things working to
maintain us – and an act of forgetting. And what we seek to forget is the very
technology that performs so much for us. Dwelling is where fantasy and reality
intermingle. Dwelling is both the functioning of a series of prosaic entities
and a series of aspirations and self-perceptions, which are disconnected from
the real world by the very adequacy of the functioning dwelling. The insulation
we achieve through dwelling allows us to dream. We may dream of a different
dwelling, or that its aspects and relations might be altered in some way; we
might dream of matters far beyond the quotidian level on which the dwelling
stands.
The dwelling might be said to act as a receptacle. Walter Benjamin (1999)
sees dwelling as ‘age old’ and ‘eternal’: as ‘the image of that abode of the

human being in the maternal womb’ (p. 220). Particularly for the Victorian,
the dwelling was a ‘receptacle for a person, and it encased him with all his
appurtenances so deeply in the dwelling’s interior that one might be reminded
of the inside of a compass case, where the instrument with all its accessories
lies embedded in deep, usually violet folds of velvet’ (p. 220). Despite harking
back to the Victorian bourgeoisie, this image fully conveys the manner in
which dwelling wraps us up within its padded folds.
Much of what we know about outdoors is conditioned by our internal
environment, through the very act of ‘looking out’ from the dwelling. What
we look out of determines how we view the external. This means that our
dwelling literally frames the external. In many and frequent circumstances
the external can affect the internal. Pag 64
When the dwelling works properly we are complacent with and in it.
It supports us and allows us to attend to our aims and interests without
worrying about what buoys us up.
Dwelling, even when it is considered eccentric, should be patterned
and consist of regularities. These regularities develop with use and thus over
time. Dwelling is rule-bound, and it is this that allows us to imagine and
dream and to separate ourselves from the outside world. We can do this
through the regularities of that structure we call dwelling. We can do this because the dwelling both encloses and enframes;
we can do this because the dwelling gives us complacency; we can do this because of the stability dwelling
offers.
Dwelling is then more than just a brick box. It is undoubtedly a structure,
but a structure based not merely on bricks and mortar, but on emotional and
ontological foundations: it is a subjective construction that builds on a physical
structure to create something infinitely more useful, more meaningful and
more creative. It is what enables us to withdraw and yet be part of a social
world: what enables us to dream and desire, and what assuages, but also
creates, many of our anxieties. It is a construction of sublime complexity, yet
one that is always ours. Dwelling, then, is very much like a case, with us
embedded in its deep folds of velvet.
Yet discourse theory goes further than merely an analysis of language,
and has been developed into a thorough critique of ideology. As Jacob Torfing
(1999) has suggested, discourse is now used in a wider sense than mere texts
and language. Following Jacques Derrida (1978) and Ernesto Laclau (1993),
Torfing defines discourse as ‘a decentred structure in which meaning is
constantly negotiated and constructed’ (1999, p. 40). The structure is seen
as ‘an ensemble of signifying sequences’ (p. 40) and allows for the inclusion
of both physical and non-physical objects.
Torfing (1999) argues that discourse theory offers an anti-essentialist
view of the individual subject as constantly constructed and reconstructed
socially:
In sharp contrast to the essentialist conception of identity, discourse
analysis emphasises the construction of social identity in and through
hegemonic practices of articulation, which partially fixes the meaning of
social identities by inscribing them in the differential system of a certain
discourse.
(Torfing, 1999, p. 41)
What this means is that the subject is created by discourse – their identity is
constructed through discourse – as much as discourse is created by individual
subjects in speech acts. One might therefore suggest that a social housing

discourse is not merely a label or a description of practices. Rather, in addition
to these policies and practices, it is made up of the dwellings, the tenants,
those organisations representing tenants, landlords, the surrounding
environment, and the perceptions of the wider society. What is important to
note here is that this discourse is not static, but is decentred, contingent and
shifting. The discourse alters as the context changes, but the discourse also
helps to change the context.
Ripples
Sharing, learning, reaching out
Accommodating others
One of the most important ways in which we share is in the upbringing
of children. It is in and through the shared space of dwelling that children
learn, and as they learn we can protect and preserve them. David Morley
(2000) suggests that the home is seen by the child as a series of rules by
which they learn to emulate their parents’ standards of behaviour. He suggests
that ‘children, through learning to live in the rooms which their parents have
furnished, learn the remembered values of their parents’ memories – of the
rooms which they grew up in. Thus is habitus transmitted through generations’
(p. 20). We cannot understand dwelling fully without appreciating the role
of this private socialisation, of how children learn and develop in the
relationship with their parents. It is through security within the dwelling that
children receive socialisation.
Would there be such a difficulty in accommodation in confinement if
the dwelling were merely a physical space? What creates the conflict is the
relational nature of dwelling: the different interests, aims, hopes and aspirations
that seek to bloom whilst coexisting within a confined space. This conflict
reaches its most extreme when normal interests come into contact with, and
get overridden by, an imperative. Consider the disproportionate impact caused
by the arrival of a new baby. The dwelling appears to contract as a result of
bringing home a human bundle barely twenty inches long. This is partly
because of the mass of artefacts now deemed necessary to care for a baby.
However, more germane is the fact that we now not only share the dwelling
with an extra person, but with one who cannot be held responsible for their
actions, or manage them themselves. Newborn children are implacable in
their needs. They cannot be reasoned with, nor sensibly ignored. They exist
on an entirely elemental level consisting only of short-term needs. So the
function of the dwelling alters, and routines are redrawn to suit the rhythm
of the child. The space is no longer our own but has been invaded by someone
who insists on taking, yet cannot give anything concrete in return. 2 This is
perhaps the most extreme example of a tyranny induced by choice. It is a
tyranny from which we can expect no respite because it is entirely of our own
making. Moreover, we do it willingly.
Desiring dwelling and dwelling in desire
So, bearing in mind the theoretical baggage that desire has to carry, what are
the links between dwelling and desire? We have already seen the paradoxical
quality of dwelling and desire: that boundaries give us the freedom to express
our desires, but in doing so they must be limited to ensure that others have a
like freedom. Yet this does not adequately express what it is we desire in and
from dwelling.
The most obvious thing we desire is a dwelling itself. We seek a dwelling
of a particular type, with certain characteristics, of a particular size and location,
and for a particular purpose. This latter point is important and starts to point
to a more nuanced position. We do not just desire a thing for its own sake.
Instead we desire a dwelling for what it can let us do, and that has enough
space, is in the right place, has the right level of amenity, is sustainable and

affordable, and so on.
This description is fine as far as it goes, but it appears to relate to a desire
at a fairly low level. It sees desire as about calculation, or cost/benefit analysis,
where we can weigh the pros and cons and the various options open to us. This
is what we might, rather facetiously, term the theory of rational desire, the state
in which desire is little more than choosing from available options.
But the essence of desire is that we want to choose without constraints.
There is little that is really rational about this type of choice. Indeed we might
suggest that desire comes into play precisely when we go beyond the rational:
beyond that which is within bounds and that follows on from our last move.
Desire is where we seek to go beyond ourselves into a new realm. If this is the
case, does the question of desire only arise when what we want is beyond our
reach? By definition what we desire is not the normal, the everyday, or that
which we can just reach out and touch. For something to be an object of
desire, does it not have to appear to be currently unobtainable or only attainable
with a great effort?
Is what is important in desire the seeking and not the attainment? Might
it not in fact be crucial for us not to attain what we desire, for then what
would we do? We may see that what we have craved so much for, and made so
many sacrifices for, is flawed, foolish and unfulfilling. We find that our dream
home is still just a brick box like all the others. It must still perform the same
basic functions as the one we had previously. The new gadget or piece of
furniture may look just right, but it still has a purpose to serve regardless of
its aesthetic appeal. As we live with these items and use them, we quickly find
their faults and limitations – those small things that annoy us because they are
not quite right, and those things that could be made better. What occurs here
is that the object of desire has become normal and so ceases to be anything
special. We then latch onto something else that we do not have and can just
see tantalisingly out of reach. We have to keep aspiring in order to feel that
we are progressing and achieving something: we need to feel that there is
something still ahead of us, and not just a flawed and sometimes regretted
past and a lacklustre present.
The fear generated by desire, therefore, might not be in failing to attain
our heart’s desire, but in actually fulfilling it and then finding that there is
still a void. What we thought was ‘the very thing’, was not really particularly
special, or rather, we have not been transformed very much by achieving that
thing. This appreciation, which amounts to finally accepting that dwelling is
really a means and not an end in itself, may be traumatic. Why have we sought it so earnestly if we are still empty and
unfulfilled? What else could or should we have done? Would it have made any difference if we had not done anything
at all? Who indeed has noticed what we have achieved? We have our dream
home, filled with all the appliances we could wish for; we have found the
partner we have so deeply desired and earnestly wished for. Yet the earth still
orbits around the sun and not us, other people still maintain their interests
and take no more notice of us. We come to realise that the longings we have
sought to fulfil are subjective entities that may erupt inside us, but leave the
world as indifferent to us as it ever was. What the fulfilment of desire makes
clear is that my desires are not shared by others, and that others are left
unmoved by my achievement of them. My desires may well be thoroughly
incomprehensible to others. For some people this object I have desired has
been available to them all the time: they could simply grasp it at a time of
their choosing, and it is in consequence an object of little regard and
unexceptional. For them it is trite and banal to desire what is such a common
object. For other people this object is so far away as to make meaningless any
effort towards it: they cannot possibly ever attain it, and so it does not register
on their senses as an object of desire. In both these cases, there is the question
of why we have bothered to expend so much energy. What has our desiring
amounted to, but a futile, pointless and perhaps even perverse quest for an

inconsequential item?
What might account for the discrepancy between one individual’s
subjective desires and those of another? Why are the desires of some seen as
absurd or preposterous, whilst others are seen as conventional or banal? Might
it not be that there is some matching up between what we desire and the
possibility of its attainment? We fantasise for that which is just above us, that
is for those things just out of reach, and which therefore may be achievable.
We may want the proverbial ‘untold riches’, and the palace of our dreams,
but we strive instead for what we can reasonably achieve. We desire comfort
and security for our children and ourselves: a bigger house, a better area to
live in, a paved drive, and so on. We seek something that equates with a
fantasy or image that informs others and ourselves what we think we are, or
should be, or even could be.
Consumed by desire
The everyday transformation of dwelling is made manifest through
consumption. However, this process is in no way transgressive. Instead it
conserves, by reinforcing the centrality of dwelling for the creation of personal
desire. We depend on the habitual and the known, but this does not inspire
us. So we try to take dwelling out of the habitual and into the fantastical. We
seek to make the dwelling into a special arena, by adding items and replacing
old features.
But how much of the construction of dwelling is based on illusion and how
much is authenticity? And, related to this (although to be dealt with more
fully in chapter 7), how much is anxiety part of dwelling? By way of opening
this issue up, imagine the questioning of a DIY enthusiast as follows:
Q: ‘Do you like where you live?’
A: ‘Yes, of course. I love it’.
Q: ‘Then why are you so intent on changing it?’
What would be an appropriate answer here? Or is the questioner really just
missing the point? What is demonstrated by the act of transforming the
dwelling? What does this show about our cravings? Is the dwelling
underperforming, is it letting us down? Or do we have some new purpose in
mind for the dwelling? Are we re-creating the dwelling to fit our self-image
or some other image of what, or where, we would like to be? Are we doing it
because we can or because we ought to? Might we not legitimately extract
from this just one point: does the DIY enthusiast see their dwelling as a place
for living in or as something from which they can fulfil their desires?
Perhaps for the DIY enthusiast it is not a matter of not liking their
dwelling, but that they are trapped within a circuit of desire. They simply cannot refrain from seeking more, be it space,
amenity, fittings, shelves or whatever. Their belief – what drives them – is that further improvements will
allow them to reach what they think of as a higher standard of living. They
believe that by improving the dwelling they can fulfil themselves more
completely. But, of course, this attempted movement up is continuous. When
they have done enough, or as much as they want, to their current ‘dream
house’, it is then onto the next: to a new dream with more amenities and,
crucially, a new challenge. Indeed, even before completing one project they
are looking to the next.

Fear and the comfort of the mundane
Dwelling matters so much, we can say, because it ensures that nothing much
else matters. What dwelling gives us is an anchor, something secure with
which to give us confidence and a sense of safety. At least that is what we
suppose it does. But clearly, and for a number of reasons, dwelling is not so
much the anchor we use to secure us, as the anchor that is tied fast around
our necks to ensure we sink. Dwelling, despite all its virtues – and we would
not want to be without it! – causes us anxiety. As we have already seen, this
anxiety might derive from desire: from a sense of unfulfilment, or perhaps
even the fear that having it all will not amount to much after all.
To animate: the soul of place
Aristotle (1986), like other Greek thinkers, used the concept of psyche, which
we perhaps mistakenly translate as ‘soul’. For Aristotle it was that faculty that
brought a body to life. As Hugh Lawson-Tancred (1986) suggests, in
discussing the meaning of psyche in his introductory essay to Aristotle’s De
Anima, ‘the most accurate translation of the term in English would be
“principle of life” or “principle of animation”’ (p. 12). The translation of
soul is therefore conventional rather than accurate for what Aristotle saw as
being ‘that in virtue of which something is alive’ (Lawson-Tancred, 1986, p.
12). So psyche or soul is that which animates the body, which causes it to be
alive, to change and to traverse the world: it is what might be seen as the
motive force of a body. It is that which differentiates a body from a life.
Conclusions
The stopping place
These speculations have looked at the personal use of housing, and what our
housing means to us. What I have tried to do is consider the manner in which
we relate to our housing, not as a commodity with a price attached, and not as
a collective entity, but as something we use. We may need to look at housing in
these terms, and many do, but I have focused here on the subjective sense of
housing. Housing has an objective quality to it. It can be touched and measured,
but this is not all that is important. What I have tried to build up is a picture
that encloses both the palpable, quantifiable objects and the meanings we attach
to them. The result may be somewhat less straightforward and clear than other
perspectives on housing, but this, I would suggest, merely points to the very
nature of dwelling as a practice that is both rather diffuse and at the same time
particular to each and every one of us. I have frequently used this word ‘dwelling’
in place of housing, and hopefully the reasons for this are clear. Indeed an
understanding of the distinction between housing and dwelling is at the core
of my speculations: the physical entities called houses are just a part of what is
involved in what we have and do when we dwell, when we live in enclosed
spaces with others. Dwelling helps to explain why we do this, as well as just
detailing what it is we are doing. The answers I have given may be vague, but
this is precisely because I am trying to discuss a universal condition – something
we all do, but do differently. There is thus a rather unsteady mix of universalism
and relativism within this concept of dwelling. 1
On the one hand, we can never say enough about dwelling,
simply because it is so ubiquitous. Yet, as dwelling is also so unique – my
dwelling is not your dwelling; my experiences are mine and mine alone –
what can we say that is conclusive? Dwelling is so common that we really
ought to know everything that needs to be known already. But what is so
particular to each individual surely cannot be fully generalised upon. So either
way we appear to be stymied. Yet, of course, I have found much to say about
how we use housing and what to dwell therefore means to us.

There is nothing more particularistic than our housing, yet it is this
very private activity that we hold in common. Regardless of house type,
location, value, tenure, indebtedness or whatever, we can still use the dwelling
the same way. We are just as secure, just as capable of intimacy, just as private,
as much in control over what we can say, watch and do alone and together;
we can love as much, and we can share as much. There is then a very important
political point in here after all, even if we do not delve into policy as such.
What we appear to have forgotten is that what we all share is a common
interest based on the shared experience of housing itself. What is never called
upon as a means of social solidarity is the very ubiquity of housing as a lived
experience.
So, my final point, based on the preceding discussions of how we live, is
that there needs to be some attempt to build up this notion of a common
interest. In other words, we need to explore what is common to all households
through their ubiquitous relationship with their housing. These speculations
apply to us all, they apply all the time, and always will: what brings us together
– what gives us a real chance of solidarity – is that we all, as human beings,
dwell. The simple act of dwelling as separate households, then, can and ought
to be a source of solidarity. And in so doing, we will conserve what we hold
most dear.
HOUSING CULTURE
Traditional architecture in an English
landscape
Matthew Johnson
…Architecture is to be regarded by us with the most serious thought.
We may live without her, and worship without her, but we cannot
remember without her. How cold is all history, how lifeless all
imagery, compared to that which the living nation writes, and the
uncorrupted marble bears!—how many pages of doubtful record
might we not often spare, for a few stones left one upon another! The
ambition of the old Babel builder was well directed for this world:
there are but two conquerors of the forgetfullness of men, Poetry and
Architecture; and the latter in some sort includes the former, and is
mightier in its reality; it is well to have, not only what men have
thought and felt, but what their hands have handled, and their
strength wrought, and their eyes beheld, all the days of their life.
(Ruskin 1880:178)