Foreword - More than Just a 'Home': Understanding the Living Spaces of Families

Abstract

The year 2024 marks 60 years since the release of A House Is Not a Home, a 1964 drama, whose soundtrack includes the song with the same name written by Burt Bacharach and Hal David. Drama, from the Greek drama [action] means scenic action represented by characters. It is any piece intended for representation, with an action that unfolds from a conflict, at a determined time and space. Not by chance, we use the dramaturgical metaphor to begin the foreword of the volume More than Just a ‘Home’: Understanding the Living Spaces of Families. The image explored in the song’s lyrics of a chair that remains (still) a chair, even if no one is sitting there, seems especially insightful to think beyond the physical boundaries of the space, the architecture, the people, and the artifacts we often and wrongly take for granted as necessarily part of the home and, consequently, of the family.