Inside Homes Around the World

Walk inside a home in a new country, and it can look and feel so different! One big difference is the organisation of the inside, or interior space. For example, rooms in a house are usually separated by walls, but not always, and in the same ways.

The use of walls and doors

In many parts of the Arab world, people like to have homes with very large spaces, and they avoid partitions. Anthropologist Edward Hall explains that Arabs like to be together, so they don’t look for privacy in separate spaces in the home.

Hall claims that Germans, on the other hand, like privacy. They have thick walls and heavy doors in their homes. And these doors are often closed. But in the USA, doors in the house (and at the office, too) usually stay open. When a door is closed, it is probably for a private conversation, or for study, resting, sleeping, dressing, or sex. Some modern homes in the USA and other places have no walls at all. This arrangement is an ‘open floor plan’.

A special kind of wall

The walls in traditional Japanese and Korean homes are unique. They are semi-fixed walls, or partitions. These are made of light wooden frames covered with special paper. The partitions are movable, so that rooms can be used for different purposes, such as sleeping, talking, or studying.

Furniture

Another big difference among homes is in the type of furniture, and where it is placed in the room. Homes in the USA look cluttered to many visitors because they are full of chairs, tables and chests. Americans often place the furniture around the walls. In Japan, however, furniture is often in the centre of the room, and sometimes there is no furniture. In German homes the furniture is traditionally solid and heavy, and stays fixed in one place. In many countries, including Ethiopia and Iran, Japan, Laos and Turkey, to name only a few, people often prefer to sit on floor mats or beautiful rugs, and not on chairs. Thus, rooms can have less furniture than in the West.

Closed doors, open doors, or no doors; thick walls, paper walls, no walls; lots of furniture, little furniture, or no furniture at all - these are just some of the differences we find from home to home, place to place.

partition a divider or wall / a room divider

unique special, one-of-a-kind

semi-fixed partly attached

As you read, try to fill in the boxes with a word or two.

	Japan	Germany	The USA
Doors		heavy, often closed
Walls
Furniture

Exercise 1

Write in which room you would look for the following people

1. an artist a _ t _ _ _ _

2. a football player a ch _ _ _ _ _ _ - room

3. a gardener in winter a c _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

4. a novelist a s _ _ _ _

5. a patient before an appointment a _ _ _ _ _ _ _ room

6. a photographer developing pictures a _ _ _ k _ _ _ _

7. a prisoner a _ _ l _

8. some workers during their lunchbreak a c _ _ _ _ _ _

9. some teachers between lessons a s _ _ _ _- _ _ _ _