We all  dream of our perfect home. An apartment or a house, with walls painted in brick-red or off-white, and rooms furnished with teak furniture or white old-school cabinets… we take a cookie-cutter architecture space that we call ‘a house’ and let our dreams run wild inside. But in this series of articles for Financial Times over the past months, writer Edwin Heathcote takes our assumptions of what makes up a home and examines its cultural and symbolic development in history.

The tour of a home begins by admiring its facade, before you make an entrance into the house. Upon entering the hall, make yourself at home and admire the floor while I get you a drink from the kitchen.