Home Vs. House

Feng Shui HomeWhat makes a house—or an apartment, a condo, a cabin or even a yurt—a home? We can certainly improve our mood by applying Feng Shui, color psychology, and interior design to a designated space, but how far do these tools go in creating a “home” versus just a house? Is the creation of a comfortable space enough? Or is there a lot more to the equation?

Tuan states that “Intimate occasions are often those on which we become passive and allow ourselves to be vulnerable, exposed to the caress and sting of new experience,” and that “Intimate places are places of nurture where our fundamental needs are heeded and cared for without fuss” (Tuan 137).

His statements urged me to reflect on my own sense of home. I live in an NYU dorm right now with my roommate, whom I have been living with for the last two and a half years, but my permanent home, where my parents and siblings live, is in Los Angeles. Even though my dorm is about three quarters the size of just my bedroom in Los Angeles, is clustered, and certainly doesn’t follow the rules of Feng Shui, I call it ‘home’. I wondered why this was, so I had a discussion with my roommate, who also feels like the dorm is (a) “home” to her. We both concluded that it was our relationship that made that space feel like home. It wasn’t a matter of the physical nature of the place, because as a dorm, it was almost transient, just a temporary place, but a matter of having our “fundamental needs heeded and cared for without fuss”. My roommate and I are so comfortable together that we are able to put our guards down… “become passive and allow ourselves to be vulnerable”. So then does that mean that this “sense of place” is highly dependent on our relationship with people within that space? Does a “home” depend on it? My roommate and I started wondering, then how is a home created if one is living alone?

Imagine someone living alone, in a space covered in white walls, without any photographs or art work, but just the essentials of living: a simple bed, kitchen, desk, chair, toilet. Could this be a home for someone, simply created by necessary utilities, ritual, and security (a door with a lock)? Or would this just be a house? In my opinion, it would just be a house.

Our living spaces nourish who we are, buffer us from stress, and provide opportunities both for privacy and for socializing with family and friends, but these things wouldn’t be made possible without familiar surroundings, people, and routines, all providing us with a sense of security and comfort.
We can create a beautiful space by decorating it with things we find aesthetically pleasing, and we can surround the space with objects, such as photographs or souvenirs from past trips abroad, that create a familiar atmosphere and remind us of happy moments in our past.
But is this enough to create a ‘home’, or do we need people that we can put our guard down with living there too? Also, is there a limit to how many ‘homes’ can we have?