domestic space

There need be nothing preternaturally sweet or homespun about the moods embodied in domestic space. These spaces can speak to us of the sombre as readily as they can of the gentle. There is no necessary connection between the concepts of home and of prettiness; what we call a home is merely any place that succeeds in making more consistently available to us the important truths which the wider world ignores, or which our distracted and irresolute selves have trouble holding on to.

As we write, so we build: to keep a record of what matters to us.

-- Alain de Botton The Architecture of Happiness