Abstract
This paper deals with an issue of the urban architecture and its impact on social and cultural processes in urban society, especially on the perception of the city environment as a home, which significantly influences the quality of life of the inhabitants of urban areas. Using the example of an urban apartment window we will show how this symbolic and factual interconnection between the private and the public space determine the construction of the sense of home and how it contributes to identify with the space behind the window and the city as a whole.
This contribution draws upon an anthropological fieldwork among urban area dwellers. By the means of participant observation, qualitative interview and sensory ethnography was examined, how the dwellers perceive, exploit or modify their windows in order to raise the quality of their housing and their urban life in general, focusing to show how the materiality of windows and its architecture influence the lived experience of home.
As the research showed large building density of urban areas creates a specific environment rich in visual, acoustic, olfactory and bodily perceptions. These sensual perceptions are entering into the private space of home through the window.
The window is thus a channel to experience outside urban world as well as a medium through which this external world mingles with the private lives of the dwellers. In urban neighbourhood the window becomes also a communication channel that can influence the social dynamics among neighbours.
These factors strongly influence the well-being of inhabitants of urban areas. In order to raise its level, the dwellers create numerous strategies how to modify their perception of a window and thus their outside experience.
As the paper will show their practices in many cases contest the current architectural strategies in building windows, putting more emphasis on creating a balance between the specific urban sensory perceptions and the inner feeling of home.