Spanning across 1,114 square kilometres of land where a population of 7.5 million resides, apartments are homes to most Hong Kong people. Having moved to a foreign state that measures up to 12,368 square kilometres, I have encountered the images of ‘house” — individualised roofs, porches, and gardens. As a kindergarten teacher, I often wonder how cultural symbolism of house constituted by a triangle roof and a rectangle body has impacted in the Asian countries. Dollhouse as a gender-neutral toy has paradoxically shaped the idea of home despite my students have only had the experience of living in apartments. 
 

As a newcomer to Australia for only six months’ time, I have witnessed an old house being demolished and replaced by a high-rise apartment. Passing by the house every day, I tenderly built a relationship with its presence. Regardless of the urban renewals and constructions which are an everyday scenery in my hometown, a sense of sentiment that I have never felt before triggered me as the demolition happened. Jung (1961) denoted that ‘house’ is a symbol of ones’ psyche and the most primal collective symbols amongst others. The façade and interior part of a house corresponding the public and private self of a human psyche; in other words, he believed that building a house is a symbol of building oneself (Jung, 1961). 

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In this project, I have collected dust and debris from the constructional site to retrace the presence of the house and created a six-level apartment sculpture in response to the demolition. Debris as material has the psychological qualities that constituted an emotional sustenance in terms of its stories, forms, and symbolic content (Moon, 2010; Robbins, 1994). The symbols of house were manifested through the installation of different furniture in the interior of the apartment, to embody the visceral inner-home in each of us. The absence of the house became present again in the creation, inviting the audiences to rediscover their “home” through such nostalgic childhood toy.