"A pile of homes"
Sculpture 2014
variable sizes
​From afar, Jonas Vansteenkiste’s A Pile of Homes appears as a mere heap of stones—anonymous, discarded, unremarkable. Yet, as the viewer approaches, architectural fragments reveal themselves: window frames, rooflines, chimneys. These aren’t simply stones, but symbolic remnants of homes—homes that once aspired to permanence, identity, and security. The work functions as a sculptural critique of post-war suburban housing developments, particularly those constructed during the 1960s by speculative building firms. In these developments, the idea of home was reduced to an object of economic profit. Vansteenkiste draws attention to the disjunction between the emotional ideal of a home and its commodified reality. In line with the Swiss philosopher Alain de Botton, who critiques the "pastiche" nature of many suburban houses in The Architecture of Happiness (2006), this work unveils how speculative builders often imposed standardized, superficial aesthetics upon residents. These dwellings—mass-produced and built on unstable grounds, both literally and conceptually—offered not identity or belonging, but a commodified dreamscape of middle-class stability. De Botton argues that architecture affects our sense of self, shaping our moods and aspirations: “Belief in the significance of architecture is premised on the notion that we are, for better or worse, different people in different places.” Yet, Vansteenkiste’s sculptural pile underscores the failure of these houses to support such self-fashioning. The archetypes he references are not nostalgic, but ironic—they evoke the hollow forms that promise domestic bliss but instead reflect systemic indifference to actual human needs. The choice to depict these structures as a crumbling mass furthers the critique. The pile recalls both ruin and residue—what remains when value is extracted, and life has moved on. Echoing Walter Benjamin’s concept of the ruin as a dialectical image—something caught between nature and culture, between construction and decay—A Pile of Homes stages a confrontation with architectural obsolescence. The homes, stripped of context and function, become monuments to disillusionment. Their displacement in space mirrors their displacement in social meaning. Furthermore, the pile form resonates with geological and archaeological metaphors. The layering of architectural debris suggests a palimpsest of failed ideologies: the dream of homeownership, the post-war boom, the rise of neoliberal urbanism. Michel de Certeau’s concept of "space as practiced place" (The Practice of Everyday Life, 1984) is inverted here: these houses no longer host life; they are evidence of how certain forms of space-making were imposed rather than lived. In Vansteenkiste’s work, there is also a quiet empathy. While the critique is sharp, the gesture is not devoid of care. By collecting and reshaping these architectural elements, he performs a kind of symbolic mourning. The pile becomes not only a ruin but a monument—a fragile testimony to how our basic need for shelter was co-opted by market logics. In this way, A Pile of Homes is not only a sculptural object but a philosophical provocation. It asks: What do we want from a home? What values do we embed in the walls we build? And how do we reckon with the ruins of unrealized dreams?
