The Essence of Home: Beyond physical boundaries Part 2 Dissertation 2025 Mishal Ratilal De Montfort University | UK This dissertation explores what makes a house a home by adopting a phenomenological approach, proposing that home is not a fixed architectural object, but a lived, sensory relationship shaped by memory, ritual, and everyday experience. Challenging conventional, visually dominant ideas of domestic space, it draws on personal experience, architectural theory, and cultural geography to argue for a more intimate, emotionally grounded understanding of home.Through a reflective comparison between my childhood home in Lisbon and my current residence in the UK, the research uses sound recordings and personal narrative to explore how home is felt, remembered, and reimagined. The vibrant sounds of Lisbon like the birdsong, distant voices, urban hum, contrast with the acoustic stillness of the UK setting, revealing how sound becomes a powerful emotional anchor.Structured around the themes of movement, memory, and the senses, this piece suggests that home is made not by permanence or ownership, but through repeated sensory encounters and cultural rituals. It proposes that to dwell is to remember, to feel, and to continually recreate place through daily acts.This research offers a renewed lens for domestic design, one that values texture, sound, and emotion alongside form, inviting architects to create spaces that resonate as deeply lived and profoundly human. Tutor(s) Dr. Jamileh Manoochehri