The Notion of Home from 19th Century to 2020: A Reading on the Effects of Covid-19 Period

Abstract

This study aims to investigate the reflections of the ideal home notion starting from 19th century till today. The study which makes the investigation through Istanbul firstly discusses the notion of home and its reflections, then it evaluates different types of dwelling units in a chronological way. The study that underlines the definitions of ideal home in architectural literature in this process tries to figure out the differences in the definitions of the reflections of the ideal home. The detached house that is located in a garden had been considered as the ideal home many times in the study which shows that ideal home had been reconsidered through new housing production systems in different periods. The authors estimate that the understanding of the ideal home has been rechanged/retransformed with the Covid-19 period and they thought that there is an idealization process towards to detached home again. Therefore, in addition to the literature review and analysis, an online questionnaire is held in order to investigate the reflections of the ideal home notion before and in the process of pandemic. In the questionnaire which is composed of close and open ended questions, the spatial experiences of the participants during the pandemic in their homes and their ideas about home and ideal home are investigated in the context of pre-pandemic and pandemic periods. In addition to the multiplechoice and classification questions with the help of an online questionnaire with 114 participants, it is aimed to understand the effects of ideal home perceptions due to the pandemic on the participants through the questions that may develop qualitative data. As a result, it is observed that the ideal home perception of most of the participants point out to the detached house and the change of the ideal home perception idea of the authors has been partially verified.