Rachel Berman
Professor Xavier Costa
Topics in Architectural History 22 April 2018
Technology is Killing the “Home”
The home is an idea that has existed for centuries. It has evolved but its essence has remained. The idea of the home is more of a mental state than it is physical. “But in truth I believe that if you examine all the little changes in the way people use and think about their homes, you can chart great, overarching, revolutionary changes in society,” explained Dr. Lucy Worsley. For many, the home is what everything else is based off of. William S. Sax explained the idea: "People and the places where they reside are engaged in a continuing set of exchanges; they have determinate, mutual effects upon each other because they are part of a single, interactive system." (Beck, Julie)
There is the home and then everything else. While the qualities are difficult to quantify, the values of home are physical structure, a territory, a means of identity and self-identity, and a social and cultural phenomenon. However the home is still a subjective phenomenon. (Fox, Lorna) “For much of the earliest history of our species, home may have been nothing more than a small fire and the light it cast on a few familiar faces. Home is home, and everything else is not-home. Not that you can’t feel ‘at home’ in other places. But there’s a big psychological difference between feeling at home and being home. That, I think, is one of the most basic meanings of home—a place we can never see with a stranger’s eyes for more than a moment.” Verlyn Klinkenborg
Although the term “home” is instantly familiar the physical reality is an important feature of our everyday lives. As laypersons we know that there is “no place like home‟, that “home is where the heart is‟, and that “a man’s home is his castle‟. (Fox, Lorna) One’s home cannot be seen through a stranger’s eyes. People may feel at home in other places but the ideological connection to ‘home’ is unique to its own. People move often in our society and change their house but the quote “the home is where the heart it, “ is more than a tacky exaggeration. The home provides some form of spiritual connection no matter how the home is used or what parts of the outside world have overlapped. Susan Clayton says that “for many people, their home is part of their self-definition, which is why we do things like decorate our houses and take care of our lawns. they are part of a public face people put on, displaying their home as an extension of themselves.” (Beck, Julie)
The hearth used to be the psychological center of the home because it gave an image to this idea or feeling of that space. Early censuses didn't count people or houses: they counted 'hearths', as the cooking fire was the central point of a home. The hearth served as the image of the center of the home where that mental connection grew from the opportunities of gathering and connecting with energy until the Second Machine Age which introduced domestic machines. This movement broke the hearth up into machines that could be hidden in the walls of a house with electricity and plumbing and as Reyner Banham explains, into the shell of the home. “ Now large single volumes wrapped in flimsy shells have to be lighted and heated in manner quite different and more generous than the cubicular interiors of the European tradition around which the concept of domestic architecture first crystallized. Right from the start, from the Franklin stove and the kerosene lamp, American interior has had to be better serviced if it was to support a civilized culture, and this is on of the reasons that the U.S. has been foreing ground of mechanical services in buildings.” (Banham, Reyner) The hearth used to exist for the purpose of providing warmth and cooking along with a center point for the home. The idea of a home
connected with the visual representation of the “home”. The hearth provided a source of energy for the family. The hearth used to create a gravitational pull within a home to a center for family to gather. As the hearth faded and was replaced by electricity, this physical center also dissolved in the home. “Man started with two basic ways of controlling environment: one by avoiding the issue and hiding under a rock, tree, tent or roof (this led ultimately to architecture as we know it) and the other by actually interfering with the local meteorology, usually by means of a campfire, which, in a more polished form, might lead to the kind of situation now under discussion.” (Banham, Reyner)
This path has been reproduced by the television and its transition for a stationary location to portable technology of online streaming. Both the hearth and the television have served as focus point for families; however, both have experienced transition and are, in many cases, no longer needed with the replacement of personal devices. As television was introduced into the home it took on the same quality as the hearth once did. At one point it seemed like homes must always have a center that draws people together but every center eventually fades and is followed by something new until nothing follows or the idea of the home disappears.
Frank Lloyd Wright had often stated that, “The hearth is the psychological center of the home.” (OConnor, Allison) Fallingwater in 1936 and the Pope House in 1939, shared a strong connection with Wright’s ideals on family, values, and architecture, and especially with his belief in the centrality of the hearth in a home. Frank Lloyd Wright focused on the relationship of an individual to a house and he was committed to creating homes that would uplift spirits because of their welcoming a homey like essence. (OConnor, Allison)
“Wright created that spirituality in large part through the prominent integration of fireplaces and hearths into houses. The hearth was not just a psychological center for Wright; it became a physical center as well. Together with the kitchen, the hearth formed a core around which Wright wrapped the dwelling. Though central heating and modern kitchens were well established in American homes by the 1930s, Wright still centered his designs for families on the hearth. Common among Wright designs, even in homes as different as Fallingwater and the Pope House, the hearth, together with the kitchen, formed a central core around which the house was built,” explained O’Connor. His positioning of the hearth in the Pope House and Fallingwater brought back together two aspects of the hearth that were divided by the Second Machine Age. The kitchen and fireplace came together as spaces to gather. (OConnor, Allison)
The mental image associated with the home and it center readjusted as the hearth disappeared from visual center and transferred to the image of the entertainment. The radio or the family television led this new image of the home. The radio brought information in where the family could sit around and listen such as the Fireside radio chats by FDR during the war. The television in the 20th century existed in parallel as a technological center of energy. In its new form the energy drawing people together came as entertainment. While less of a basic necessity for shelter, it still provided a place for families and company to gather around. Then as history repeats itself, technology outgrows this center piece allowing for individual streaming of similar entertainment. While both the hearth and the television represent vastly different programs of the home, they both brought people together and both have lost their pull to new technologies. The Television brought a new form of energy for people to gather around as it provided entertainment and brought part of the outside world into the home. This new technology added to the idea or function of the home. As Michael Arnold explains in The Connected Home: Probing the Effects and Affects of Domesticated ICTs: "Homes were connected electronically to the outside world less than 100 years ago. And now... the homes of many... connect directly to friends, acquaintances, and... million[s of] strangers: to the local community, to work, to social, political and commercial organizations, to entertainment and service providers." (Krotoski, Aleks) The home and its spiritual connection remained but the purpose and function of the home had grown as the outside world was brought in.
The home and its function continued to grow as technology increasingly brought more into the home along with bringing the feeling of home to other places. The home used to exist separate from the outside world, separate from social events and the office. However those lines have blurred as there is no longer a concrete image to associate the mental understanding with home anymore. The television has begun to fade in its presence as that center image. Technology has advanced to the point of personal devices. The ability to stream television and get the entertainment and information at any point anywhere, has lead the television down the same path of distinction as the hearth once did. The center as the television has been broken apart by technological advancements where what function it provided can spread to every edge of the house and even further beyond that.
There might be no physical replacement for this center image associated with the psychological center of the home. Nothing left to define it and maintain its meaning. Some have argued that the kitchen provides this center to gather, but it does not hold the same weight. Society today does not place value on the sit down meal as a daily occurrence but instead as a special occasion. The idea of the kitchen table itself fosters the idea of bringing people together but it does not have the energy to maintain that image like the hearth or the television did. The kitchen table essence has been replicated in many offices to provoke gathering and discussion, but this has only blurred the lines between the home and the outside world even further.
The idea of the home has expanded especially once the internet started to create a new concept of home. (Krotoski, Aleks) “Over the last 20 years, we have been encouraged to think of spaces on the web as our homes, from infinitely adaptable personal home pages that we decorate like the walls of a teenager's bedroom to readymade web hubs such as Facebook in which we surround ourselves with people and properties that are meaningful to us. What the web has inspired, then, is a postmodern understanding of what ‘home’ is: a de-physicalized, conceptual and psychological phenomenon that externalizes its invisible meanings. And interaction designers recognize this: the web is another castle that the Englishman can live in, and he seeks to create virtual places that have as much effect on pride, self-esteem and identity as the bricks and mortar version where he sleeps.” (Krotoski, Aleks)
Following the functions of sheltering and gathering to entertaining and informing, the office’s intrusion into the home has brought work and productivity into the home. Technology has blurred the division of work home and redefined what is means to be in each. (English- Lueck, Jan) “’No longer a sanctuary where the family was relatively shielded from intrusions from the outside world, the home is now a communication hub, infused with messages of diverse and increasingly global origins.’ (Bachen,2001)” (Geser, Hans) A study done by Jan English- Lueck in 1995 was about "infomated households."
“These are households with a critical mass of at least five information devices, including some combination of VCRs, CDs, laser discs, fax machines, answering machines, voice mail services, computers, and cellular phones. Infomated households revolved around work, both paid work and an endless series of tasks that formed a greater environment of work ranging from gainful work to voluntary activities and working on ones family.” (English-Lueck, Jan)
“First, we discovered that people don't just own or use individual devices, but ecosystems of technologies at home.” (English-Lueck, Jan)
“As information technology allows households and communities to become places of production, it also changes the way such social institutions think of themselves. Families and communities, like upgraded software can be ‘refreshed’ or ‘reinvented.’ Families can then become a kind of product. Finally, the pivotal assumption that work is done at a workplace and family life is lived at home is much too simplistic. Many forces, not the least of which is the technical ability to work from home, have blurred the domains.” (English-Lueck, Jan)
In more than 20 years after this study, personal computers no only allow people to watch television from their isolated bedrooms but also allows them to do work at home. At one time there used to be “the family computer” where parents might have done work occasionally or check emails and children would play games. This almost had the strength to bring people together but there is no need for it anymore. Personal laptops or personal phones are the new center image, but they do not stay in one place such as the home but they might hold the weight that the feeling of being home carries.
People feel less connection to their houses now because the center might not be a physical element of the house anymore. The personal computer or personal cellphone provides more mental connection of home than the house itself does. This is because of the feeling that our lives were determined as based off of the home and the personal devices are the most powerful image of our time. Images of our society do not exist without the personal device. Everything people do is considered with the personal device in thought. The home does not have a new center image to base the psychological center on to anymore because technological advancements have created this feeling in personal devices. Before personal devices, the role of landlines in the home helped maintain separation of different social spheres as it was a fixed phone with a physical location. Landlines helped maintain a separation of work and home life. However, cellphones helped to reach specific individuals directly whether the conversation be personal or professional. They undermine the idea that physical and communicative isolation are correlated. Cellphones decrease the connection of social relationships and social systems from being anchored in space to being anchored persons. (Geser, Hans)
Social dynamics have clearly changed in the past few decades with the growth of personal devices and people are openly aware of its affect on society. However it is also the reason the idea of the home is changing. "... mobile phones afford a fundamental liberation from place, and they soon will be joined by wireless computers and personalized software. Their use shifts community ties from linking people-in-places to linking people wherever they are. Because the connection is to the person and not to the place, it shifts the dynamics of connectivity from places--typically households or worksites--to individuals." Wellman (Geser, Hans)
The idea of a home now represents our society. The definition of the home is evolving as technology changes our society. Some argue that home is where the family is, but that is not universally true for everyone. Whether people agree with that or no, home is still a concept familiar if not in a physical or visual sense but instead in a mental and spiritual sense.
The concept of homesickness or wanting to go home can exist while one might already be in their house. It is more about the psychological meaning that used to be associated with this space that is fleeting. This idea of the home is familiar still but might not hold as much weight in the near future.
Homes could still reflect the unity of families, but are likely to become “empty shells” without influence on what is "really going on" on the level of social communication and cooperation and with that trajectory it is unclear how he stability of the home be guaranteed when it can no longer be anchored on physical structures. (Geser, Hans) Physical sizes of homes have grown because of the desire to include all of the new added functions that a house can provide now. However, the actual idea of the home has shrunk to the size of our hand held personal devices.
“We are adaptable creatures and will work within the confines of our existing homes to integrate this new creature into our lives. We have already made the web part of our domestic ecologies and we continually imbue it with a sense of place. Perhaps its malleability is why it has been so successful and why we are willing to bring this interruptive technology into our most intimate worlds.” (Krotoski, Aleks) From the first introduction of machines in the home, to the newest technology input, the home as a psychological center has remained. The image associated with that feeling such as the hearth or the television has lost its connection, but the center itself has attached to the home without a physical immobile element. The home has grown in function with sheltering, gathering, entertaining, and working but its spiritual meaning has held on in a non tangible form. This change in the past century reflects the change in architecture itself. Our world is growing with technology in a virtual sense, not as much in physical space. For the idea of the home to survive it has had to grow with the immersion of technology as it once did with domestic machines. The home has always been the real psychological center, but it no longer has a visual representation as society has grown into a technological web that cannot be concentrated to a controlled center.
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