The Meaning of Home

We are so familiar with the features of our homes – the rooms, fixtures and myriad little decorative details – that we have forgotten how to look at them. We might explore a church, read a book or watch a film, and attempt to decode its symbols and references, but we rarely look at our homes with the same critical eye. Yet from the most ordinary apartment to the most extravagant mansion, every home is a deep well of meaning.

From windows to wardrobes, fireplaces to door knockers, Edwin Heathcote attempts to fathom the elements of our everyday domestic lives. He explores how, over time, ancient ritual elements transmute into practical features, and how some of these, charged with latent symbolic meaning, have persisted in modern dwellings despite having lost their original uses. Home will never quite look the same again.

EDWIN HEATHCOTE is the architecture correspondent for the Financial Times. He is the author of Contemporary Church Architecture, London Caffs, The Architecture of Hope (with Charles Jencks) and Furniture + Architecture of which Blueprint wrote 'Occasionally you come across a book that does everything it claims – and then some. This is one.'