The Architecture, Culture & Tectonics Research Group warmly invites you to attend their Seminar on Wednesday 5th July 2023 at 13pm online via Teams.

The Meaning of Domestic Objects:

Foreign Architect‘s Homemaking in UK

Guest speaker: Ye Xu

Abstract:

This presentation will discuss a study focusing on the meaning of domestic objects in architect’s home, which is also a part of my ongoing PhD project entitled ‘Architects Rethinking Domesticity: Cross-Cultural Understandings of Home’.

Objects carry multi-layered meanings in the process of 'inhabitation', the process of appropriating domestic spaces by individuals. They often evoke experiences and memories from different time and space, creating unexpected time-space juxtapositions. This presentation addresses the deep significance the objects often hold both individually and collectively, by investigating the acts of discarding, retaining, purchasing, collecting, etc.

I will devote particular attention to the process of the objects and home on the move. For one of the leading features of modernity is "fluidity", the fact that our bodies and minds are always in a dynamic network. For most contemporary urbanites, a lifetime stay in their hometown has become an exception. One way or another, we are always reinventing our home in different places throughout our life cycle. It is in this process of mobility that relationships between people and things, between people and places, are mediated, negotiated and re-established.

This presentation takes the example of foreign architects' homemaking practices in London and Nottingham,  and uses the outcomes of two drawing workshops as main study materials. In concentrating on objects and object-related practices in the reinvention of home, this project addresses the intermediary role of objects, not only in reviving memories of past homes, but also in building multiple belongings to different cultures. It also points out the architects' particular understandings of objects in both conceptual and practical terms, which helps them establishing their professional identity. Lastly, on the basis of the understanding of the domestic objects, this study proposes an interpretation of home, in which home is not fixed in time and space, but is reinvented time after time in different locations.

 

Biography:

Ye Xu is currently a PhD candidate in Architecture of ACT group, University of Nottingham, under the supervision of Katharina Borsi and Jonathan Hale. She graduated from Peking University with a master’s degree of Geography (urban and regional planning). Her research revolves around the intersection between domesticity, housing, and the urbanism; drawing and critical visual practices, etc. Her PhD project is entitled ‘Architects Rethinking Domesticity: Cross-Cultural Understandings of Home’.

ye.xu@nottingham.ac.uk