At Home in the City

“It is evident that home is not an object, a building, but a diffuse and complex condition that integrates memories and images, desires and fears, the past and the present. A home is also a set of rituals, personal rhythms and routines of everyday life. Home cannot be produced all at once; it has its time dimension and continuum and is a gradual product of the family’s and individual’s adaptation to the world. A home cannot, thus, become a marketable product.” - Juhani Pallasmaa, 2005 The topic of this thesis is about how a diverse community and the feeling of home come together at different scales, the scale of the city , of the neighborhood, of the street and of home. It is also about how architecture weaves these scales to adjust the boundaries of “self ” and “other”. It focuses on how to transition from the big scale of the city to the intimate scale of home. It examines the walls of home and how they interact with society. Also, it extends the elements of home beyond the intimacy and safety of our bedroom. It embrace mixtures of uses and it seeks to generate diversity. The topic seemed important to me because it is a reflection of the constant movement and change of times. Also, it explores the elementes that make a home. It has always intrigued me what is it that makes you feel at home. It sometimes seems that units are treated like garages that can easily park in and out individuals. In these layouts dwellers fail to feel rooted. It is almost as if they are never able to “unpack”. Finally, it serves personal interests. I am one of many young, early professionals and parents from diverse cultures that move frecuently and seek fertile ground for re-invention and to build a home. In my own search, my inspiration and point of reference in this exploration led me to the Southwest region of Washington DC.

Name thesis:degree_name

Master of Architecture

Level thesis:degree_level

masters

Discipline thesis:degree_discipline

Architecture

Department dc:contributor.department

Architecture

Grantor dc:publisher

Virginia Tech

Year dc:date.issued

2014

Author dc:creator

• Guevara Sanz, Maria L.

Chair dc:contributor.committeechair

• Emmons, Paul F.

Committee members dc:contributor.committeemember

• Pacheco, Luis Diego Quiros
• Feuerstein, Marcia F.

• Home
• City
• Housing
• Transition
• Roots
• Diversity
• Critical Regionalism

Statement dc:rights

• In Copyright

Licence dc:rights.uri

• http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/

Dc Identifier Other

vt_gsexam:1796

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:vtechworks.lib.vt.edu:10919/25353