Annual conference 2014 - edwin heathcote

Topic: The Meaning of Home

Edwin Heathcote

What does a home mean?  It might seem a strange question.  Our homes mean comfort, security; they are treated as assets and as a vehicle for our desires for improvement.  Yet while we might explore a church, read a book or watch a film and attempt to decode its symbols and references, 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 which has passed down to us and which we subconsciously recognise - even if we don't immediately know it.  Our houses and homes, no matter what style they are realised in, no matter how modest or seemingly ill-considered their architecture or design, are vessels of an extraordinary history, perhaps the last repositories of a language of symbol and collective memory.  In this talk, Edwin will explore the myriad meanings, the symbolism and the iconography in the elements of the homes we live in.

Edwin has been the architecture and design critic of The Financial Times since 1999 and is the author of over a dozen books on architecture, culture and London. His most recent books include The Architecture of Hope (with Charles Jencks) and The Meaning of Home, an exploration of the symbolism and associations underlying everyday domestic design