Photo Lizzie Orme
When I decided I wanted to become an architect at quite a young age, I managed to buy a small collection of second-hand architectural books from a shop in Sunderland. One of them was a book by the French philosopher Gaston Bachelard called ‘The Poetics of Space’ and it changed my life forever. Bachelard, often refers to the psychological importance of the hearth, how it changes the atmosphere in a home, how it can be a beautiful focal point in a room, but also how the flickering flames can somehow capture our imaginations and in some hypnotic way send us into a world of day dreaming. I often compare looking into a fire to looking out to sea. Both fire and sea have the power to make us switch off from everything else in the world and just be absorbed in its movement and beauty.
Obviously, in the past, a fire in the home performed an incredibly important function. It was not only vital in providing heat and comfort, but a fire would also have been used to cook our food and boil our water. We now have other things in the home that do these things for us, a gas boiler with connected radiators in each room and an oven, hob and microwave in the kitchen. So we don’t really ‘need’ to have a fire or a wood-burning stove in our homes, but they are now as popular as ever, simply because they’re beautiful and they transform the way a room feels.
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December 2016
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