From the Elizabethan long gallery to the Turkish sofa: rethinking the art of inhabitation

Abstract

During the last century, optimisation processes of the residential architecture have been eradicating many archetypal spaces of the pre-modern house from domestic layouts. The sofa of the Turkish house, among these archetypal spaces, is a relevant precedent that can help us question and eventually undermine the typical features of the western domestic interior. Its basic essence as a transition space originates from the ancient Anatolian courtyards. This paper aims to discuss both spatial and typological features of the sofa to emphasize its intrinsic modernity, as it has been done in the case of recent reconsideration of the Elizabethan long gallery. Sofas allowed a domestic experience to be filled with visual richness, deep intimacy, and spatial variations. The sofa could extend, adjust, and widen the experience of the private realm letting diverse uses and accommodations. This is exactly the degree of indeterminateness that a contemporary flat dramatically lacks.