Home and Community: Lessons from a Modernist Housing Scheme

Examining the relationships between architecture, home and community in the Claremont Court housing scheme in Edinburgh, Home and Community provides a novel perspective on the enabling potential of architecture that encompasses physical, spatial, relational and temporal phenomena.

Based on the AHRC funded project "Place and Belonging", the chapters draw on innovative spatial layouts amid Scottish policymakers' concerns of social change in the 1960s, to develop theoretical understandings between architecture, home, and community. By approaching the discourse on home, and by positioning the home at the confluence of a network of sociocultural identities bound by spatial awareness and design, the writers draw on sociological interpretations of cultural negotiation as well as theoretical underpinnings in architectural design. In so doing, they suggest a reinterpretation of the facilitating role of architecture as sensitive to physical and socio-cultural reconstruction.

Drawn from interviews with residents, architectural surveys, contextual mapping and other visual methods, Home and Community explores home as a construct that is enmeshed with the architectural affordances that the housing scheme represents, that is useful to both architecture and sociology students, as well as practitioners and urban planners.

Sandra Costa Santos is an architect and Senior Lecturer in Architecture in the University of Northumbria’s Department of Architecture and the Built Environment, Newcastle upon Tyne, UK. She is Principal Investigator of the AHRC-funded project “Place and Belonging: what can we learn from Claremont Court housing scheme?” Her work explores the social dimensions of architecture.

Nadia Bertolino is an architect and Research Fellow in the University of Northumbria’s Department of Architecture and the Built Environment, Newcastle upon Tyne. Her research includes collective urban spaces, community regeneration and collective housing.

Stephen Hicks is a social worker and Senior Lecturer in Social Work in the University of Manchester’s School of Health Sciences, Manchester, UK. He is Co-Investigator of the AHRC-funded “Place and Belonging” project. His work researches families, social change and communities.

Camilla Lewis is an anthropologist and Research Associate in the University of Manchester’s School of Social Sciences, Manchester, UK. Her research centres around urban change, belonging and community, and the influence of material culture and social inequalities on urban regeneration.

Vanessa May is a sociologist and Senior Lecturer in Sociology in the University of Manchester’s School of Social Sciences, Manchester, UK. She is Co-Investigator of the AHRC-funded “Place and Belonging” project. Her work researches the various dimensions of belonging, and nonbelonging.