Home in the Context of Contemporary Nomadism

Contemporary nomadism is not limited to digital nomads, and can be motivated by work, monetary and social circumstances that do not cancel the need for a home: a physical and spatial context, foreign to the material detachment imposed by digitalism. The article will address the opposite of this later stance, in which dwellers struggle with the lack of identity when they deal with the absence of a home in which their personality is reflected (in the spatial layout and objects defining it). Something absent in digital nomadism, in which detachment is an inherent feature. This identity is anchored in the possibility of choice – space, objects, affections – which collides with the nomadic need for impermanence and ephemerality. We will dwell in architecture, design and art in search of a methodology capable of subverting the anonymity underlying nomadism and together defining a home: mobile spaces that move with the dweller or static spaces that suit different uses and expectations in the practical and sensory use of space; furniture encased in architecture or collapsible and portable; dematerialization and alternative media in contemporary art as means of expression. The purpose is to define a joint intervention practice which will allow the contemporary nomad to benefit from a physical but also sensory home, as in a sedentary dweller’s house, whose life remains as a legitime reference to those who need to be on the move.