Foreword

ReHab is a book about housing containing twelve essays on topics ranging from the history of ideas to jurisprudence, from urban planning to the arts. Two visual essays focus on ceramic and wood models. Living, inhabitants, and houses are the three sections of the book. Living is the term used to indicate expressed or attributed meanings on the relationship between residents and houses; inhabitants are considered to be the individuals who use or own houses and their definition and classification; houses are the material objects, homes, used in everyday parlance and in technical processes. Living, inhabitants, and houses can in turn be related to three adjectives: real, imaginary, and symbolic. By real we do not simply mean the physical, material being of the houses and inhabitants, but rather that which reacts to our research studies and provides feedback. By imaginary we mean the collective mental representations of living and houses, found in psychological literature and ways of living, where the social link in the construction of the living imagery is evident and visible (family memories, expectations about the future, representations in time and down through generations, return and reintegration with the original house). The symbolic aspect establishes continuity and discontinuity with the imagery level, delving deep and leading to new meanings.