Relocation issues -NZ houses

Another aspect of homes that fascinated me during a couple of years of involvement with an relocation company is process of choosing a new home/ house for the incoming transferee.
The company I worked for specialised in settling foreign professionals (mostly executive level ) and their families to Auckland, and I was constantly intrigued by the issues these families faced in choosing and settling into their (short-medium term ) rental accomodation.

Concerns about not only areas to live in but the specifics of the NZ housing style, construction, interior layout and design were common queries as we looked at potential properties together.
Mostly northern hemisphere transferees, they frequently expressed horror at not only the poor quality rental properties on the market, but the high prices being asked for them (even taking into account executive budgets anywhere from $500 to $1000 + p/wk).

Most of them also came from being homeowners themselves and were facing a rental situation for perhaps the first time in a decade or more (if ever!). They often seemed surprised unprepared for the reality of parting with their money to go into a 'compromise' sitiuation- a less than mortgaged ideal.
An English family likened the separate little houses crammed and dotted amidst the tree-lined valleys in the East coast bays to 'shanty towns'.... although aware of the hugely inverse quality of the expensive housing there, this visual impression was not one to inspire comfort.
A Thai couple stopped mid-tour in Mission Bay and declared themselves to have arrived in 'paradise' with its beach and shops, relaxed park/ holiday atmosphere and spread out housing (compared to their years of apartment living in Bangkok). And could they please rent a place there immediately?!

So much of a transferee's expectations in coming to NZ revolve around ensuring a better lifestyle than what they had at home. Partially the is the unstated but understood compensation for making such a major, yet 'temporary' move (often an imposed, unwilling relocation for family members).
Where the executive transferee has already adopted a self-imposed positive approach to all things new and uncomfortable, as they were the ones who invited, or accepted the offer to relocate. If the family were unwillingly moved from their homes...their resistance can make the choosing of a new home particularly fraught!

House interiors bring myriad problems coupled with disbelief (!)for all but the most hardy souls, as they face their first winter in a typical unheated, unlined, uninsulated NZ weatherboard house with wooden floors and leaky, single-glazed windows.

Then there are the hopelessly high electricity bills for the old-fashioned heaters which they can't bear NOT to have going most of the time, not to mention the ;
...no-nonsense brisk responses of 'just put another jersey on' from uncomplaining NZ neighbours and workmates;
...blase dismissals of the need for double-glazing "in this climate", where they are also expected to keep the windows open in the day to ventilate their increasingly dampening house (due to the heaters being on 24/7....);
...and anyway double glazing would cost an arm and a leg and is consdiered a luxury;
...and gas heaters are even more rare and highly priced.

They're feeling colder than they ever felt at home in a snow-covered northern winter...!
And they hadn't expected a house that created physical discomfort and this was often a discouraging start to the long and emotional process of setting up 'home' in another country.

Homes in time and space

In a recent lecture entitled 'The gift of truth', AUT's head of spatial design Tina Engels-Schwarzpaul discusses the Pacific cultural concept of not being alone in your body...Moreover the body functions as an environment melding both time and space where you ancestors also dwell; a kind of multi-habitation, essentially allowing them to making their time-space home in you! I kind of like this idea of my own body as a home base for my ancestors...! I can already think of a few who might be there/ here..Schwarzpaul goes on to describe the design processes as a cultural construct in itself (xf. Schwarzpaul), where meaning is created through the necessary and unconcious drivers of interactions with others. And I'm thinking also of the influences those 'many' persons who live and within us may have..This seems to me also part and parcel of the way we recreate 'homes' in a new environment- the relocated cultural construction which bears influences of past and present lives...

Thinking about home...

How do we make ourselves at home in a new country? What do we bring with us or create around us that enables our inner self to react as '''aaaah, now I'm home!'

I'm interested in exploring the built environment as an aid or hindrance to the process of resettlement. What role do the visual and sensory images and objects play in creating a physical and sensorial envionment that facilitates a smooth settlement process, a comforting sinking into soft pillow space we will call 'home'.

In my previous (and mistakenly deleted...oops! techno virgin at fault) blog reader Stan added a comment about the idea of home pages as home bases , staying with you wherever you travel to...people having a cyberspace place to be themselves maybe..

Ailsa added the thought that home is even more non-directional in being an interior place, being 'at home' as sited in one's self; the internal headspace of 'home', and thus inseparable...

A modest brown teddy bear functioned as the sole visual/ sensory image of home in my daughter's life; the only comfort (apart from the parental level) that she seemed to need as we moved around, renting and recreating our new 'homes' wherever we landed...

What can explain an immediate, unexpected and slightly disconcerting sensation of feeling totally and myseteriously at 'home' in a foreign country, a stranger's house, surrounded by a previously unfamiliar, unknown architectural style or design?

What are the physical determinants of 'home' and how do we go about recreating simulacrums in our own new place, our new home and work environments?

This is a start of a personal quest, a searching for paths and answers and new questions about moving, relocating, settling in and settling down... a mixture of personal exploration and hopefully merging with more formal reserach projects...stay tuned.