Some of the new products and innovations they welcomed into the home were killers … ‘300 children and old people died each year from burns due to flammable materials.’ ibid.
Home is where one starts from. T S Eliot
My home is in Heaven. I’m just travelling through this world. Billy Graham
What a place: parquetry flooring, tin-openers fixed to the wall, double glazing, and the neighbours, talk about stylish! Ken Loach, The Wednesday Play: Cathy Come Home, story Jeremy Sandford ***** Cathy’s commentary, BBC 1966
Everyday miracles have transformed our homes, our worlds and ourselves. Everyday Miracles: The Genius of Sofas, Stockings and Scanners I, BBC 2015
Inventors and designers have transformed our homes. ibid.
Our first everyday miracle ... foam ... Just quite how important materials are – they are at the heart of civilisation ... ibid.
A new technology that soon everyone in the world would want ... Cragside: he [Armstrong] wanted to go electric ... The light-bulb was born ... In 1948 transistors arrived that could do the same job as valves ... Next came silicon ... LED lights ... ibid.
Concrete has been used as a building material for over four thousand years ... It can be moulded in almost any shape ... Steel is unbelievably strong under tension. ibid.
Plywood is another everyday miracle ... The glue bonds with the woods fibres and sets hard ... Strength, flexibility and mouldability ... The Mosquito was the fastest aircraft in the world, and the secret to its success was that it was made almost entirely of plywood ... All because of the remarkable properties of plywood. ibid.
Materials have transformed the ways we live. ibid.
We know it simply as plastic ... The ultimate manufacturing material ... Plastic fibres ... nylon … ibid.
Every day our lives collide with thousands of things ... The trappings of modern life and the materials they are made of have transformed our lives. Everyday Miracles: The Genius of Sofas, Stockings and Scanners II
It’s called carbon-fibre composite ... His high performance running leg. ibid.
MRI is now a standard diagnostic technique – an everyday miracle. ibid.
It’s with us now and it’s called 3D printers ... A powerful new technology. ibid.
Consider yourself at home
Consider yourself one of the family. Oliver! 1968 starring Ron Moody & Oliver Reed & Shani Wallis & Harry Secombe & Mark Lester & Peggy Mount & Leonard Rossiter & Kenneth Cranham & Hugh Griffith & Jack Wild et al, director Carol Reed, Artful Dodger to Oliver
You can see how this [Bible] would be an inspiration in the home. Maysles Brothers & Zwerin, Salesman, Paul Brennan ‘The Badger’, 1968
Let me go home before I die. Alan Bleasdale, Boys from the Black Stuff: George’s Last Ride ***** George to doctor, BBC 1982
‘I cannot understand why you should wish to leave this beautiful country and go back to the dry, gray place you call Kansas.’
‘That is because you have no brains,’ answered the girl. ‘No matter how dreary and gray our homes are, we people of flesh and blood would rather live there than in any other country, be it ever so beautiful. There is no place like home.’
The Scarecrow sighed.
‘Of course I cannot understand it,’ he said. ‘If your heads were stuffed with straw, like mine, you would probably all live in beautiful places, and then Kansas would have no people at all. It is fortunate for Kansas that you have brains.’ L Frank Baum, The Wonderful Wizard of Oz
Most of them were artisans and labourers out of employment and evidently in no hurry to go home. Some of them had neither tea nor fire to go to, and stayed away from home as long as possible so as not to be compelled to look upon the misery of those who were waiting for them there. Others hung about hoping against all probability that they might even yet – although it was so late – hear of some job to be started somewhere or other. Robert Tressell, The Ragged Trousered Philanthropist
The house – now almost destitute of furniture and without carpets or oilcloth on the floors – was deserted and cold and silent as a tomb. On the kitchen table were a few cracked cups and saucers, a broken knife, some lead teaspoons, a part of a loaf, a small basin containing some dripping and a broken earthenware teapot with a broken spout … The floor was unswept and littered with scraps of paper and dust: in one corner was a heap of twigs and small branches of trees that Charley had found somewhere and brought home for the fire. ibid.
A man’s foes shall be they of his own household. Matthew 10:36
There is no need to do any housework at all. After the first four years the dirt doesn’t get any worse. Quentin Crisp
Homes fit for heroes. David Lloyd George
Such is the patriot’s boast, where’er we roam,
His first best country ever is at home. Oliver Goldsmith, The Traveler l73
Where I did end up was another sort of hell – a so-called mobile home on this dilapidated caravan site. Undercover Britain: Hell on Wheels, Channel 4 1995
Conditions are disgusting and frequently dangerous. ibid.
The sewage was regularly sprayed on a field in the middle of the site. ibid.
The place is beginning to get to me and I do feel depressed. ibid.
Unconventional homes in demanding locations … World’s Most Extraordinary Homes I: Mountain, BBC 2017
The Santa Monica mountains where one home owner built her dream home from the most unthinkable reused building material … built from the wings and tailfins of a disused 747. ibid.
Tucson mountain retreat: DUST architects … the walls are made from rammed earth. ibid.
Otago, New Zealand: ‘A series of spaces that are beautifully lit with fantastic atmospheres.’ ibid.
Swiss Alps: a holiday home perched on the side of a mountain. ibid.
Madrid: to an ancient pine forest … an unconventional four-bedroom home … right amongst the trees in the forest without damaging them: Casa Levene. World’s Most Extraordinary Homes II: Forest
US: Minimising the footprint within this densely wooded plot … a tree-house with a twist … the living space at the top … Tower House was entirely clad in glass. ibid.
Upstate New York … Shokan by Jay Bargmann … continuous bands of tinted glass wrap around the building … stainless steel surfaces are featured throughout this house. ibid.
Auckland, New Zealand: bringing the forest right into the house … Under Pohutukawa by Herbst Architects. ibid.
Kristiansand: the family escape on a thirty-minute boat ride to their very own remote paradise island: Cabin Lyngholmen. World’s Most Extraordinary Homes III: Coast
Southern Spain: Costa Tropical: built into a steep cliff-face with a 42 degree incline: House on the Cliff by Gilbartolome Architects. ibid.
Marlborough Sounds, New Zealand: the challenge for the architect was to design a house which would sit on a narrow strip of land between the shore and protected bushland: ‘a dream-like state of sensory bliss.’ ibid.
Nova Scotia: a three-bedroom holiday home set on the edge of this wild coastline: Two Hulls by MacKay-Lyons Sweetapple Architects. ibid.
Building a subterranean house embedded in the Earth can provide an intriguing and magical living experience. The World’s Most Extraordinary Homes IV: Underground
Antiparos, Greece … Vals, Switzerland … an underground den as a holiday home … Queenstown, New Zealand … Dutch Mountain House by Denieuwegeneratie Architects. ibid.
In the 1970s Villa Road in South London was a squatted street. Behind these doors anarchists mixed with hippies and communists … This was a generation who wanted to change the world. Lefties I: Property is Theft, BBC 2017
By the mid-’70s there were about 5,000 squatters in Lambeth. ibid.
1976: under threat of eviction the squatters on Villa Road decided to defend the houses by barricading themselves in. They were now living behind their own iron curtain in a state of siege. ibid.