HOMELESS
The above proposal aims to enhance the individual’s search for the values of privacy and security that develop throughout our lives at home. The house is clearly a privileged space that unites all these concepts as a fundamental value and reaches the sense of home. If we dissect any privacy or security value inside a house, this gap is auto- matically regenerated from the memories of our mind.
Une maison dressée au coeur
Ma cathédrale de silence
Chaque matin reprise en rêve
Et chaque soir abandonné.
Une maison couverte d’aube
Ouverte au vent de ma jeunesse}
A house built in the heart / My Cathedral of silence / Resumed every morning in dreams / And every night abandoned / A house covered with dawn/ Open to the wind of my youth
Jean Laroche, Mémoire d’été, ed. Cahiers de Rochefort, p. 9.
Near where I live there is a large square where at the time there was a small industrial center. The warehouses were thrown to build ho- mes, but the imminent arrival of the economic crisis has crippled the land along the years. In the spring, the ground is covered with wild plants, each passing year the plants are reaching more height. In this period, a family in a situation of social exclusion, decides to settle in this esplanade, choose an empty space between plants and there are installed. They didn ́t have a shanty, just a simple hut with four sticks and cloth is all that used to shelter from the rain. The plants are so high that no passenger could suspect they are living there, only from the height of the buildings you can invade their privacy. It runs spring and late summer the company that owns the land decides to clean all vegetation.
The day fixed for clearing vegetation, the family collect their few possessions without a word and leave his makeshift home.
The word “home” is used to designate a place where an individual or group inhabits, creating in them the sense of security and calm. In this sense it differs from the concept of “house”, which simply refers to the physical property.
That family created a small family home among some walls of plants that gave them an apparent security and calm as defined above. And I wonder: What factors are necessary to create a sense of security and calm? What factors are necessary to create a home? Do these fac- tors vary depending on the person who lives in that home? Are there essential factors to create a home?, Do the factors change in the so- cio-cultural moment we live?, Do they vary according to our wealth? There is only a home?
