Skip to main content

LUP Student Papers

LUND UNIVERSITY LIBRARIES

The Digital Living Room

Welin, Alice LU (2026) ASEM01 20261
Department of Architecture and Built Environment
Abstract
Architecture, as a discipline, is often understood as what is yet to
be built. This thesis shifts attention to what is already lived.
The Digital Living Room studies the domestic interior as a site of
architectural knowledge. Through interviews, photography,
and LiDAR scanning, four living rooms in Southern Sweden are
documented as they were found: occupied, accumulated, and
shaped by the habits and histories of the people who live there.
The thesis foregrounds these spaces, arguing that the interior
holds a sensitivity that architectural practice has largely
overlooked and has much to learn from. The collected material is
investigated through two distinct registers. The first presents each
room through interviews, photographs,... (More)
Architecture, as a discipline, is often understood as what is yet to
be built. This thesis shifts attention to what is already lived.
The Digital Living Room studies the domestic interior as a site of
architectural knowledge. Through interviews, photography,
and LiDAR scanning, four living rooms in Southern Sweden are
documented as they were found: occupied, accumulated, and
shaped by the habits and histories of the people who live there.
The thesis foregrounds these spaces, arguing that the interior
holds a sensitivity that architectural practice has largely
overlooked and has much to learn from. The collected material is
investigated through two distinct registers. The first presents each
room through interviews, photographs, and scan data, treating
the interior as a portrait of its inhabitant. The second processes
the scanned data through a series of digital studies, moving from
standard architectural drawing to point cloud accumulation, and
topoanalysis – a concept drawn from Bachelard’s phenomenology
of domestic space, which treats particular rooms as sites where
memory, imagination, and identity meet.
The digital manipulations are interpretative acts, each
motivated by something specific observed in a room or heard in
conversation. Together, they ask what becomes visible when an
interior is translated into digital form, and where that translation
falls short.
The thesis concludes that this process acts as both an act of care
and a form of inquiry, though always partial and always honest
about its limits. The gaps in the data are not faults of the method.
They mark where the interior exceeds what any representation can
contain. For architecture, that is not a dead end – it is a starting
point. To document space as it is inhabited is to expand what the
discipline can know and, therefore, what it can do. (Less)
Please use this url to cite or link to this publication:
author
Welin, Alice LU
supervisor
organization
course
ASEM01 20261
year
type
H2 - Master's Degree (Two Years)
subject
keywords
Interior, domestic space, topoanalysis, LiDAR scanning, architectural representation, accumulation, memory, inhabitation
language
English
id
9236940
date added to LUP
2026-06-15 08:53:12
date last changed
2026-06-15 08:53:12
@misc{9236940,
  abstract     = {{Architecture, as a discipline, is often understood as what is yet to
be built. This thesis shifts attention to what is already lived.
The Digital Living Room studies the domestic interior as a site of
architectural knowledge. Through interviews, photography,
and LiDAR scanning, four living rooms in Southern Sweden are
documented as they were found: occupied, accumulated, and
shaped by the habits and histories of the people who live there.
The thesis foregrounds these spaces, arguing that the interior
holds a sensitivity that architectural practice has largely
overlooked and has much to learn from. The collected material is
investigated through two distinct registers. The first presents each
room through interviews, photographs, and scan data, treating
the interior as a portrait of its inhabitant. The second processes
the scanned data through a series of digital studies, moving from
standard architectural drawing to point cloud accumulation, and
topoanalysis – a concept drawn from Bachelard’s phenomenology
of domestic space, which treats particular rooms as sites where
memory, imagination, and identity meet.
The digital manipulations are interpretative acts, each
motivated by something specific observed in a room or heard in
conversation. Together, they ask what becomes visible when an
interior is translated into digital form, and where that translation
falls short.
The thesis concludes that this process acts as both an act of care
and a form of inquiry, though always partial and always honest
about its limits. The gaps in the data are not faults of the method.
They mark where the interior exceeds what any representation can
contain. For architecture, that is not a dead end – it is a starting
point. To document space as it is inhabited is to expand what the
discipline can know and, therefore, what it can do.}},
  author       = {{Welin, Alice}},
  language     = {{eng}},
  note         = {{Student Paper}},
  title        = {{The Digital Living Room}},
  year         = {{2026}},
}