Enhanced descriptions from Syndetics:

The house is home to many things. Far more than four walls and a roof, it contains our private and public lives, our families, our memories and aspirations, and it reflects our attitudes toward society, culture, the environment, and our neighbors. In a literary tour of the spaces of our homes, Geography of Home reflects on how we define such elusive qualities as privacy, security, and comfort. Part social history, part architectural history, part personal anecdote, this rich book uncovers the hidden meanings of seemingly simple domestic spaces, in chapters ranging from "The Front Door" and "The Porch" to "The Library," "The Kitchen," "The Bedroom," "The Bathroom," and "The Garage," among others.
These writings about the home touch on our culture's fundamental issues: the notion of family, the aging of the population, working at home, and respect for the environment. Together, these eloquent essays help us understand not only what home means for each of us, but how our idea of home shapes our place in the world. As Busch writes, "There are times when our homes express infinite possibilities, when they reflect who we are and what we might be."

Reviews provided by Syndetics

Booklist Review

Two new engaging architectural studies examine why we're drawn to living in certain places. Busch, a writer for House and Garden and Metropolis, offers a meditative, fascinating tour of the home. Her book explores our emotional attachments to a house's elements, and the way our relationships to rooms have changed with time and technology. Each chapter opens a door to interesting insights: the kitchen, Busch writes, signifies "the possibility of transformation . . . the place in the house where the ordinary becomes extraordinary." She calls a set dining room table "an act of courage" performed to satisfy "an appetite for order" over nature. The formal library, she notes, is nearly extinct in U.S. homes yet was recently identified in a magazine survey as the most wished-for room. (Second in ranking was the exercise room.) What does all this tell us about ourselves? Busch's thoughtful and personal work will be of interest to readers deeply attached to the place they call home. Hildebrand's book is more challenging for the non-architect than Busch's but just as rewarding. A professor of architecture at the University of Washington, Seattle, and the author of a respected study of Frank Lloyd Wright, Hildebrand suggests that our personal responses to architecture originate in the innate behaviors of our ancestors. So that the layreader might describe, evaluate, and select satisfying spaces in which to live and work--and for architects to use in design--Hildebrand's book presents practical criteria that help us understand our emotional reaction to a space: refuge and prospect (view), enticement and peril, order and complexity. These terms take on valuable meaning by way of the author's excellent examples and the 125 black-and-white photographs that keep the reader on track. A worthwhile, intelligent guide for all architecture lovers. --James Klise

Kirkus Book Review

An appealing, insightful collection of musings on the architecture, psychology, and history of house and home in America. Busch, a contributing editor at Metropolis magazine, has assembled 14 essays originally published there. Analyzing the domestic spaces that compose the American home, she offers fascinating insights into the changing conditions and circumstances of our habitats. The front door, for example, in her view has become almost obsolete, not only because we use the door closest to the driveway, but because ``it represents a formality for which we have little use in an age when informality and casualness provide comfort.'' As we have come to increasingly view our home as a private sanctuary providing respite from a chaotic and menacing world, states Busch, we tend to avoid the door that is closest to the public, though we continue to build houses with front doors. Front porches'until after WWII an integral part of every home, a place where people shared news and gossip'have also become somewhat an anachronism, the author believes. People get their news elsewhere and are wary about exposing themselves to the fumes of passing cars. In urban environments, front stoops that once served as a ``neighborhood's outdoor living room'' are avoided for fear of aimless violence. But the importance of other architectural spaces has grown. Closet space is now regarded as a priority because, suggests Busch, ``as we become a more transient society, we tend to define home by the accumulation of possessions as much as by place.'' In other words, the more tenuously we view our daily existence, the more fervently we pile up things. Living rooms are now often decorated according to the inhabitant's personality. Kitchens, ironically, have expanded, as homeowners find the work done there'from preparing food to eating'a necessary relief from technology and mechanization. This cozy book provides provocative and intelligent insights that land close to home.

Author notes provided by Syndetics

Akiko Busch is a contributing editor at Metropolis.