Witold Rybczynski: A House is Not a Home: Witold Rybczynski Explores the History of Domestic Comfort

Abstract

Beginning with the Middle Ages, Rybczynski takes us inside the dwellings of the aristocrats and the bourgeoisie of Western Europe and eventually of twentieth-century North America. Rybczynski’s tour is not the “note-the-many-Rembrandts-that line-this-corridor” variety to which tour guides subject us. Rather, with Rybczynski as our guide we learn something of what these dwellings meant to those who lived in them, the kinds of objects, surroundings, and relationships those house owners valued, and why. When Rybczynski points us towards portraits, it is not because of the gilded light they shed on their owners, but rather because of what they tell us about the interior and domestic lives of the societies which shaped their creators. His intent throughout is to search out and understand the social forms that gave rise to the notion that comfort and domestic well-being are worthy goals. His hope, as he makes clear in the interview which follows, is that such an understanding can help homeowners recapture or refashion a sense of comfort that has been lost, by generating comforts appropriate to present lives and emerging social forms. After several years spent teaching at McGill University, he now lives in Philadelphia and is the Martin and Margy Meyerson Professor of Urbanism at the University of Pennsylvania.