Home: a construction of national identity

Abstract

"We have become more self conscious about home as a vehicle for communication and display."Rattenbury, Kester. This is not architecture : Media Constructions. Routledge, New York, 2002. p12 As the private has become consumable merchandise, Colomina, Beatriz. Privacy and publicity : modern architecture as mass media. MIT Press, Cambridge, 1994. p8 the mask we present to the world is very much a constructed identity. Colomina, Beatriz. Privacy and publicity : modern architecture as mass media. p37 Mitchell comments that, "we intimately associate the image of our house with our conceptions of ourselves, just as most of us take some care over what we wear, and even over what we drive. We are extremely susceptible to the influence of fashions engineered by merchants sensitive to the anxieties of their clientele."Mitchell, David + Chaplin, Gillian. The elegant shed : New Zealand architecture since 1945. Oxford University Press, Auckland, 1984. p15 "The age of the photograph corresponds precisely to the irruption of the public into the private: the private is consumed as such, publicly."Barthes, Roland. Camera Lucida. Hill and Wang, USA, 1981, p98 The cameras power to reduce the world to a 'beautiful' commodity Sontag, Susan. Susan Sontag on photography. Allen Lane. London. 1978. p85 lends it to the tool by which we construct our own identities. Sontag notes that, "we learn ourselves photographically: to regard oneself as attractive is, precisely, to judge that one would look good in a photograph."Sontag, Susan. Susan Sontag on photography. p85 The consumer society of today consumes not only the products within the perfect life, but the very idea of living as well.