(IN)TANGIBLE HERITAGE(S)

Abstract

Marc Augé’s description of architecture as ‘an expression of the system’ (Augé, 2008:xvi) indicates the close relationship between social, cultural and political ideologies and their evidencing through principles of design and construction. Nowhere is this more evident than in the relationships and rituals reflected in the constructed spaces we call ‘home’. As Italo Calvino observes, ‘buildings, like cities, tell of their present but also ‘contain [their past] like the lines of a hand, […] every segment marked with scratches, indentations’ (Calvino, 1997:11). Thomas Barrie suggests that ‘architecture, like literature, is a predominant cultural output and, as such, can, does and has served related cultural purposes of materializing our all too human condition’ (Barrie, 2017:xxvii). The repurposing of domestic spaces over time provides a narrative of social and cultural positions not only in the context of family life but also as a reflection of wider societal changes. Set in the context of the physical and psychological constructs of ‘home’, this paper will consider how repurposed domestic spaces used as settings for the narratives of five novels by twentieth-century women writers explore ‘the perennial role and capacity of architecture to articulate the human condition’ (Barrie, 2017:29). Referring to key thinkers including Augé, Bachelard, Baudrillard, Bourdieu, Foucault, Harvey and others, the paper will explore how the design of domestic spaces and their subsequent repurposing allows the writers of the selected novels to interweave layers of meaning that illuminate and materialize elements of the social structures, relationships, dreams, secrets and realities of those who are contained within their walls.