Home is where the Heart Is

"The continuing collapse in property prices might be able to achieve one thing of worth. It should obliterate the tendency to treat a home as if it were merely an asset, a thing to be bought, improved and sold at an unlikely profit. This has been a trend that has fundamentally altered and, I think, diminished one of the few things we have left which root us to place, to history and to the meaning of dwelling. Our everyday existence, so much of it spent in soulless offices, airports, restaurant and retail chains, cars, and in the ether of cyberspace is increasingly deracinated. We could be anywhere. The home is one of the last repositories of a language of symbol and collective memory that ties us to our ancestors, to profound and ancient threads of meaning. We may not know where these symbols come from, what they mean or how they came to look the way they do but their presence enriches the landscape of our lives and, as I hope to show in this column over the next few months, they remain fundamental to our idea of a home. Dwelling is both place and process. The idea, that our lives can be “read” through our homes, through their decoration, their design and their contents, infiltrates popular culture."Edwin Heathcote

The Financial Times weekend edition is starting a new column on the meaning of homes. Given that many of us move and live, work, study and play in multiple countries during our lives, the concept of homes has always intrigued me. Is our home always where we were born? Or is it somewhere else where we feel connected and more alive and in flow? In many parts of the world homes have also become just a financial asset as opposed to a sacred space that marries history, identity and heritage. I have very much looking forward to Edith's new column.