Door Locks, Wall Stickers, Fireplaces: Assemblage Theory and Home (Un)Making in Lewisham's Temporary Accommodation

摘要

This paper explores resident experiences of life in PLACE/Ladywell, a "pop-up" social housing scheme in London providing temporary accommodation for homeless families. Specifically, we consider barriers to, and assertions of, homemaking in this temporary setting through fixtures and fittings-a door lock, wall stickers, and a fireplace. The paper utilises assemblage thinking to understand homemaking within these time-limited and constrained circumstances. Despite their seeming banality, fixtures and fittings offer a material, politicised, and lively means of studying the attempted and thwarted production of home by residents living in PLACE/Ladywell. The absence of door locks reduces parents' ability to maintain privacy and intimate relations; restrictions on hanging pictures and other decorative measures are circumvented by the use of wall stickers; and a defiant decorative fireplace establishes a sense of home in a temporary setting. Together, these objects constitute vital elements in negotiations between fixity and impermanence in temporary accommodation.