What makes a home a home and why some places will never be one?

The mystery of this place raises a lot of questions. Why do you feel this good only at home? Is there any interior design hack?

Home is what we had, have, and will have. This is a place where we return daily or where we come only once a month, but each time feels the same. This is a place that protects us from all working storms and emotional waves. This is a place that will accept our failures to give us strength for new victories. This is a place that absorbs us and is absorbed by us.

How many homes are there?

Two. The nest of your childhood, and the nest of your maturity. Everyone is attached to the place where they have grown up. It’s an attachment you carry over all your life. Childhood memories are precious, but don’t let them fill all the heart. Make some place for the memories you will make in your own home.

Home is something physical, or spiritual?

It’s physical with a deep spiritual sense. Meaningless objects will never make a home a home. A home is a place that reminds you of the things you love. Remember that tree fort and a favourite tire swing in the garden? And what about granny’s rocking chair, peach wallpapers in the living room, and photos on the fireplace? And those piles of books and CDs in the bedroom, father’s turntable and your childhood paintings on the fridge?

How does it feel to be home?

• Safe. Because it’s comfortable and cosy only when safe. And it’s not about fireproof doors and iron bars on the windows — it’s more about emotional safety.
• Healing. Usually, you come home tired, disappointed, or hurt. Probably because you know what the best medicine for broken hearts is — the curing atmosphere of The home, the support of people waiting there for you, and the calmness this place gives you. Magic? Home. A place that listens like nobody else.
• Naturally. Here you stop pretending, depending, intending, descending, amending — and just live. Dance, shout when you’re mad, cook what you want, sleep in the nightie your granny has bought hundreds of years ago, change everything around, eat on the couch, cry and laugh just because you feel like this. What life would be like if we behave like this all the time?

Home is when you wake up with the sound of a mom preparing breakfast or mom shouting at you to get up finally. When you run to your apartment, insert the key into the keyhole, open the door and hit the warmth. When you lie down for the night and feel the cool crunchy bed sheet for the first time after a hard day. When you’re never hungry. When you hear birds singing outdoors. And you feel your heart singing inside.

What are the components of a home?

We asked 43 designers and architects at the MAKHNO Studio workshop, what makes a home a home for them specifically.

The most frequent answers were:

• A pet (dog, cat, fish). As it turned out, our colleagues are more dog people.
• A home smell. Always different. Especially mixed with favourite aroma candles, oils, flowers, food, and coffee.
• A bed, bed sheets, and plaid. The sleeping as it is.
• Music cassettes, disks, and books.
• A TV. Because if you don’t have a TV, what’s all your furniture pointed at? (Friends, season 9 episode 23)
• A vacuum cleaner. That large buzzing thing scaring your kids and home pets.
• A view of the city/garages/garden/fields/ neighbour’s house.
• Toys. The soft ones and not really. From childhood to adulthood.

Everyone mentioned one more thing. It is not part of a checklist because probably that’s the main point at home — people. Your parents, siblings, and grandparents. Your wife, husband, and children. Your friends. Everyone who is there for you.

When you travel a lot, is there a place you call home?

Absolutely. It’s a place you always want to come back to. The place where someone significant is waiting for you. The place where you know exactly who you are. A home is a place that absorbs all your feelings, and emotions and becomes a part of you.

And now it’s debatable — we are inside of a home, or a home is inside of us?

VISUALS — DMITRIY SAVVA