This thesis explores the design and modernisation of public houses in London and environs in the period between the licensing acts of 1872 and 1902. The late nineteenth century public house of historical account has emerged as a site spatially and materially designed and organised to meet the needs of customers anxious to preserve class-based social distinctions within the public sphere. The thesis argues that this dominant socio-spatial mapping of the interior has obscured other important and intersecting influences on the design and organisation of London's public houses in the period, notably the relationship with the home and the influence of gender on the development of the interior. Further, the productive -and socially constitutive nature of the interior has been left largely unconsidered. The study explores the spatial, material and aesthetic models upon which London's . late nineteenth century public houses developed. It employs a public/private framework as an historical analytic with the flexibility to investigate social, spatial and intellectual constructs, and as a way of examining the site in terms used by publicans, customers and legislators to define its spaces and negotiate its boundaries. The thesis aims to extend current understanding of the public/private relationship through an examination of material change in a single building type; to evidence the historical processes by which the boundaries between public and private spaces and activities were negotiated, contested and formalised; to explore the implications of these negotiations for class and gender identities; and to provide a material focus for more abstract discussions about space.

This thesis is an exploration into the modern meaning of the minimum dwelling. It discusses how this meaning gradually became disengaged from the minimum house. It proposes a new definition of the minimum dwelling based on the minimum social unit, that is, the individual. At the beginning of the 20th century, the term Existenzminimum dwelling proposed a new way of living. This modernist definition of the minimum dwelling was based on a reproducible expendable minimum house. This thesis argues that this definition is no longer valid; yet, any present definition of the minimum dwelling is still informed by it. The reconfiguration of the minimum house as an expendable object disempowered the house as a tool for the experience of the home. This dissociation of the house and the home is a condition that has gradually diminished the role of the house in everyday life and redefined the experience of the home. The meaning of the home is now invested in a multiplicity of locations, experiences and objects. This thesis defines the minimum home as a core of personally meaningful possessions, the spatial configurations they create and recreate and the information they carry. This thesis’s definition of the minimum dwelling is based on this minimum home. This argument is pursued through two modes of inquiry. On the one hand with a critical analysis of texts, buildings, architectural projects and works of art. On the other hand by the development of a series of projects. These two investigations are parallel and overlapping. In this document, they are organised in a linear way. This structure assists the progress of the argument and reveals the gradual development of this thesis from an interest to develop a truly individual minimum house to the realisation that the minimum dwelling is a personal project.

The work comprises a critical commentary and a portfolio of ten published major texts by the author, presented in whole or part. It represents a set of related themes and approaches to the subject of culture, technology and being. The portfolio critiques and develops theories of technology in response to significant examples within cultural contexts, in order to address and interrogate contradictions and assumptions pertaining to technologically led readings of images, objects and environments. The publications range from critical approaches to major theorists of technology and culture, including Baudrillard, McLuhan and Heidegger; artists who have utilised technology within performative contexts (Warhol, Duchamp, Gorgerous): and phenomenological studies of network-based culture. The commentary focuses on dominant theoretical concepts in order to connect the texts. These include Baudrillard's principle of 'reversibility', McLuhan's reading of disembodiment, Heidegger's 'standing reserve' and Jarry's 'pataphysics'. The work concludes with a critical obituary of Jean Baudrillard, and shows how the portfolio of publications (1999-2011) has had an impact within academe and for a more general readership, and how it informs current research and future publications.

No description available.