249tial structure, conversely, graduated degrees of privacy can be
distinguished through the grouping of functions.
Since the form of retreat into the private sphere that a
single-family home makes possible is often regarded as the
ideal, certain apartment types attempt to approach this form
in the context of the multistorey building as well. The sepa-
rate apartments that lie along a rue intérieur, as in Le Cor-
busier’s Unité d’habitation, or along a street-style access bal-
cony do not have to share landings with other units. Through
its subdivision into levels, the maisonette apartment (French:
maisonette, little house) suggests the multistorey structure of
a genuine house. The private house may also take the form of
the multistorey ‘townhouse’ within the denser development of
the city centre.
- Despite recent tendencies in our society to cocoon one-
self in the home as an expression of a shrinking away from
connections with the outside world, one that converts the
home, according to Peter Sloterdijk into a ‘system for blunt-
ing input from the outside’, the home need not represent a
total encapsulation of the private life, but can instead, in the
words of Gert Selle, take the form of a ‘closure in relation to
the world, with the window opening towards the outside’.
To be sure, the home is vulnerable; it requires an enclosure
that offers protection and privacy. We can only receive guests
because we are able to admit people selectively, and are con-
fident in our ability to close off the home to intruders; open-
ing and closing, then, are elementary and reciprocal acts of
habitation. The possibility of retreat and defence, however,
coexists with the necessity to freely regulate the relationship
between public and private, seclusion and openness to the
world.
Our relationship to the outer environment in the imme-
diate vicinity is influenced by views from the residence and its
surroundings. That which is visible from the window partici-
pates in shaping our personal sphere just as much as the four
walls. Long-term residence at the same location, for example,