What we call Asia has never been much more than a networked region.

The relationship between dwelling, housing, domesticity and architecture remains tenuous. The term ‘dwelling’ necessarily forces one to consider the traffic between these discrete terms, and where one's subject(s) may be firmly, although not exclusively, positioned. Its ambiguity demands critical reflection on how to reposition an architectural discourse on dwelling that will be pertinent to one’s contexts.
This special issue is positioned precisely at the intersection of dwelling's double motives and motivations: between the formative act of building and that of maintenance and/or preservation. The question remains, as Martin Heidegger obtusely states, what does it mean to dwell?Footnote2 Here, the question is posed in a completely different setting, and distinctly removed from the Heideggerian notion of a stable, nostalgic heimat or homeland. If the question of dwelling must ultimately be interrogated through an architectural setting—a home, a house, a homeland, a nest, somewhere to lodge, belong, return to, depart from—then the circumstances of this context become more complex with the onset of globalisation, gentrification, privatisation, immigration, migration, forced and elective dislocation, and self-exile. Consequently, the category we call ‘dwelling’ must be reappraised. ‘What does it mean to dwell?’ takes on completely different implications.

​

​The papers in this special issue examine different yet relational themes on dwelling in Asia driven by specific social, economic and/or political circumstances. Yet a caveat needs to be made about the how the papers might ‘fit’ into the topic of ‘dwelling in Asia’. For a start, none of the papers, which are drawn from Southeast, East and South Asia, were written with the explicit aim of highlighting what it means to dwell in Asia. If anything, the contributors to this volume approach the subject of dwelling in Asia in very much the same way as they would treat the same subject in any other part of the world. Rather than reifying Asia, the contributions lie instead within a diverse Asian milieu in their specificity and attention to contexts, agencies and productive modes of architecture. The collection does not represent the immense reach of Asia’s geo-political contexts. To approximate any venture of such a nature would surely result in a gross oversimplification of the complexities surrounding this vast geo-political entity.