How to Make a Home

Owning a home has become increasingly unattainable for present and future generations. As ownership recedes, home shifts from lived reality into a projection sustained through longing. Through my work, I explore the relationship between the idea of home and the social drive for construction and ownership. New housing developments act as symbols of progress, yet they conceal a tension of exclusion, remaining out of reach for many. This contradiction grounds my research.

I am not concerned with architecture as physical structure, but with home as an emotional and cultural construct. The traditional notion of home as a site of stability no longer holds. It persists instead through images and nostalgia that compensate for a lost sense of permanence. Home appears as a projection—a symbol of an impossible return sustained by longing.

David Bakarić Mihaljević (2001) is a photographer based in Zagreb, Croatia. His work primarily focuses on constructed photography, exploring the space between the real and the imaginary, the documentary and the staged. His projects often stem from personal and generational experience, with an emphasis on questions of home, space, and the ways in which contemporary society shapes the notion of reality.