ABSTRACT
The detail and architecture of migrant housing produced a new ethnic aesthetic and new spatial organisation with references to alternative architectural traditions, and this created new sets of cultural practices. Architectural alterations and new architectural design accommodated migrants’ inhabitation and mediate everyday dwelling and ceremonial practices. Housing provided a platform for human agency and subjectivity. According to Bourdieu, an individual is located within society through their objects, which function to produce a ‘sense of place’ and fit in society. The migrant garden, the migrant facade, the terraces, the summer kitchen and other spaces designated for domestic productivity that characterise the migrant house develop this architectural ‘fit’. Such architectural elements, singularly and in combination, also constitute the distinctive details of architectural cultures. The similarity between the house-as-norm and the migrant house, as well as their uncanny differences are encapsulated in these ‘tell-tale details’. Drawing on data of migrant houses in Melbourne, this chapter will discuss distinction in the form of a series of telling-tale details of a new Australian housing, and develop a toolkit for a sociocultural architectural historiography.
