House and Home

With this book Thomas Barrie offers us neither a guide to how to build, nor a history of domestic architecture, nor a survey of significant houses, although a concern with all three informs his discussion of house and home. At issue is something more fundamental: the need for both physical and spiritual shelter that is inseparable from human being; the way houses and thoughts about houses, especially in literature, have articulated changing convictions concerning how human beings should take their place in the world, how they should relate to an encompassing reality, to others, and to themselves. Aware of the countless directions such articulations have taken, of the historical roots of our idealization of the suburban home, Barrie does not attempt to formulate some other ideal that would provide our building with a direction; instead his study of house and home calls attention to timeless themes that responsible building must consider, such as the tension between the need to be placed and the demands of freedom, between the need for privacy and the need for community, the place of the dead in our lives, the bond that ties the domestic to the sacred. Thus he has given us a prolegomenon to responsible building. - Karsten Harries, Howard H. Newman Professor of Philosophy, Yale University, USA In this learned study, Thomas Barrie takes us beyond contemporary civilization's limited and individualistic assumptions of home and house as mere bastions of privacy, to reveal how the concepts respond to our human need for meaning - for dwelling in place and with others. His meditations through diverse historical and topical examples are invaluable for anyone concerned with building and inhabiting a world resonant with humanity's existential questions. - Alberto Perez-Gomez, author and professor, McGill University, Montreal, Canada