Abstract:

My first experience of architecture, a nearly universal case, was that of the house I grew up in - mine being a century old, black and white, clapboard farmhouse outside of Kingston, Ontario. Having grown up and left behind this home I find I have developed a certain amount of nostalgia or homesickness when dealing with my mainly positive memories of home and recurring dreams that take place there. The house is not lost, in fact my parents still live there and I return several times each year, to retrace my childhood rituals, sleep in my old room, dream in my old bed, to eat and play and reminisce in my old home.

The home can be returned to but not my childhood and yet the two seem inseparable. My dreams and memories of childhood are housed in this space; floorboards, doorknobs, and wallpaper are all triggers for recollection, the ornamentation of the home is a connective entity into my past.

As my parents grow older, they are finding they don’t want to be so isolated, alone in a house too big for just the two of them. The possibility of selling the home looms heavily on my mind. I don’t want to lose this house.

This is a study of the way in which an individual becomes bound to architecture, psychologically and physically, using the home which I feel so connected to as a guide.

I’ve grown apart from my house in the years since I moved out and much of the connection has been broken; in its place at my return there is a certain sense of the unfamiliar in this familiar space.

How can I make this intangible connection both apparent and relevant to someone else?