Space, function and symbol. Architectural furniture in domestic spaces

Abstract

[EN] The Baldaquin of the Saint Peter’s Basilica in Rome represents the spiritual core of the building and holds a distinctive meaning for the complex and the people in it. This piece, defined for this research as architectural furniture, conditions the use of the space it belongs to, affects its scale, gives purpose to its routing, and defines the symbolic reading of the whole.This monumental object is used as a reference, and its personal, social, spatial, and functional implications are relayed across the field of architecture to the domestic space. An approach to furniture to create a home molded to the needs and desires of the individual and the society he belongs to is detected in the pieces of furniture by Ettore Sottsass and Joe Colombo, presented in the exhibition Italy, the new domestic landscape in 1972. This paper intends to indicate those concepts embodied in a selection of four contemporary housing renovation projects that have used furniture as a complex design element to shape homes.