Les figures du seuil comme dispositif de l’intime dans l’architecture domestique : du sens du chez-soi à l’espace d’habitation spécialisé

This research study addresses the meanings of domestic space and investigates the challenge of understanding the sense of home within the context of the socio-spatial architectural meaning of the living space. Meanings of home and its importance are examined in terms of residential and long-term care centres for elderly persons, through an investigation of the significance of lived spaces from earlier eras and in the Modern era. The concept of intimacy in the home is studied with the overarching theme of threshold, and how the threshold is considered as a spatial device favouring intimacy. In this context, the relational character, of intimacy is defined by considering how people are engaged in a social process inherent in dwelling. Intimate engagement is first in the relation of the inhabitant to the self, and second, in his/her relations with others and to the architectural space. This thesis posits a poststructuralist orientation, that is inspired by semiology and iconological methods and that is then applied to the interpretation of the sense of the architectural space of the house and its use, from a socio-historic perspective. The French urban palace and the Parisian bourgeois apartment are studied and used as places that propose spatial systems that represent the intimate character of domestic space. A sequencing of thresholds is presented in terms of the values afforded to the interiority of dwellings and how these become vehicles of communication for people as they move to and from the domestic environment. These strategies are also studied as they are then applied in the context of design of the domestic contemporary architecture during and since the Modern Movement. The means of using the threshold, how these are organized and how they are ordered within a systems is examined, and as these favour intimacy in the living space. These structured concepts are then used to examine a generic environment of a long-term care institution environment, known in Québec as a CHSLD. The emergent analysis shows a significant disparity between the functioning of spatial devices within CHSLDs and that of the domestic architecture examined. This research study contributes to knowledge in three ways. First, by conceptualizing the meaning of domestic architecture, this thesis proposes a model that considers the specific role of thresholds as a means of intimacy. Second, in terms of socio-history of domestic architecture, the generative principles of spatial disjunction and inter-territorial mediation are of interest, as the fundamental device of intimacy and the dialectical tension of the system of thresholds are of value in considering spatial intimacy in the domestic environment. Lastly, in the interpretation of the specialized living space for seniors, the view of thresholds and intimacy in the context of the institutional domestic environment revealed the disorder of the threshold system and a significant lack of spaces of refuge, as intimate spaces, within CHSLDs, that may explain the shortcomings of the sense of home conveyed by these places as these were studied.

Keyphrases: Intimate, Threshold, Domestic space, Domestic architecture, Home, Specialized housing, Seniors, Residential and long-term care centres (CHSLDs)