Negotiating the modern cross-class ‘model home’: domestic experiences in Basil Spence’s Claremont Court

TY - JOUR

T1 - Negotiating the modern cross-class ‘model home’

T2 - domestic experiences in Basil Spence’s Claremont Court

AU - Costa Santos, Sandra

AU - Bertolino, Nadia

N1 - Funding: This work was supported by the Arts and Humanities Research Council [Grant number AH/N002938/1]

PY - 2020/11/1

Y1 - 2020/11/1

N2 - This article investigates the spatial articulation of architecture and home through the exploration of current domestic experiences in Basil Spence’s Claremont Court housing scheme (1959-1962), Edinburgh. How architecture and home are both idealized and lived is the backdrop for a discussion that draws on the concept of “model home,” or physical representation of a domestic ideal. The article reads Claremont Court as an architectural prototype of the modern domestic ideal, before exploring its reception by five of its households through the use of visual methods and semistructured interviews. Receiving the model home involves negotiating between ideal and lived homes. Building on this idea, the article contributes with a focus on the spatiality of such reception, showing how it is modulated according to the architectural affordances that the “model home” represents. The article expands on scholarship on architecture and home with empirical evidence that argues the reciprocal spatiality of home.

AB - This article investigates the spatial articulation of architecture and home through the exploration of current domestic experiences in Basil Spence’s Claremont Court housing scheme (1959-1962), Edinburgh. How architecture and home are both idealized and lived is the backdrop for a discussion that draws on the concept of “model home,” or physical representation of a domestic ideal. The article reads Claremont Court as an architectural prototype of the modern domestic ideal, before exploring its reception by five of its households through the use of visual methods and semistructured interviews. Receiving the model home involves negotiating between ideal and lived homes. Building on this idea, the article contributes with a focus on the spatiality of such reception, showing how it is modulated according to the architectural affordances that the “model home” represents. The article expands on scholarship on architecture and home with empirical evidence that argues the reciprocal spatiality of home.

KW - architectural affordances

KW - architecture and home

KW - cross-class domestic ideal

KW - domestic experiences

KW - modern model home

UR - https://www.scopus.com/pages/publications/85047814473

U2 - 10.1177/1206331218777426

DO - 10.1177/1206331218777426

M3 - Article

SN - 1206-3312

VL - 23

SP - 492

EP - 507

JO - Space and Culture

JF - Space and Culture

IS - 4

ER -