Home as a psychological safe place

I’ve always believed a home is more than the walls that protect you and hold your belongings, it’s a psychological space where the essence of humanity is unburdened from the mores of society. The only place where you can truly be yourself, unguarded, in all your weird and wonderful glory. A sanctuary of safety. To lose it is more than losing your belongings, it’s a violation of that safety.

Like so many others, I’ve been watching the LA fires through my phone. It’s a kind of horror voyeurism that’s hard to turn away from.

Among the many losses, I’m saddened to learn that Ray Kappe’s Keeler House has been destroyed. Kappe was a quiet giant of the 20th century, and co-founder of SCI-Arch.

Ray Kappe's Keeler House, photos by Tim Street-Porter

LA has long been a hotbed for architectural innovation. It’s the birthplace of Case Study Houses — the built experiments that promised a new way of living in the post-war era. There’s always been an attitude and outlook to the city’s architecture fuelled by wonder, and I can only hope this disaster doesn’t dampen that spirit.

Perhaps no one has explored the meaning and history of ‘home’ more than Bill Bryson, in his book At Home: A Short History of Private Life: “Houses are amazingly complex repositories. What I found, to my great surprise, is that whatever happens in the world – whatever is discovered or created or bitterly fought over – eventually ends up, in one way or another, in your house. Wars, famines, the Industrial Revolution, the Enlightenment – they are all there in your sofas and chests of drawers, tucked into the folds of your curtains, in the downy softness of your pillows, in the paint on your walls and the water in your pipes.”

And as an ode to LA – I can’t recommend this iconic BBC Documentary from the ‘70s enough – Reyner Banham Loves Los Angeles. Hosted by architecture critic Banham, it’s a nostalgia-fuelled delight, and highlights how history imprints itself on a city.