Attic

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This article refers to the area found generally above a house. For other uses see Attic (disambiguation).

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Image:Typical attic.jpg

An attic is an area found directly below the roof of a building <ref>http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/attic</ref> (also called garret, loft, hayloft and sky parlor).<ref>http://thesaurus.reference.com/search?q=attic</ref> As attics fill the space between the ceiling of the top floor of a building and most often a slanted roof, they are known for being awkwardly shaped spaces with exposed rafters and difficult-to-access corners. While some attics are finished as bedrooms or home offices, complete with windows and staircases, most attics remain hard to get to and neglected, and are typically used for storage. Attics can also help control temperature in a house by providing a large mass of unmoving air. Hot air rising from lower floors of a building often gets trapped in the attic, further compounding their reputation for inhospitability.

[edit] Attics in culture

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Portrayed generally as dark, dusty, and filled with forgotten storage items, attics have held a unique place in popular culture as horrifying or wondrous places. The most common theme associated with attics is the discovery of long-lost items that have been covered by dust and forgotten behind other objects. Often, in television shows and movies, the act of moving out of a house will require the cleaning out of the attic, thus giving the characters a chance to discover old objects and reminisce on past events, leading nicely to the flashback technique. Also common is the discovery of something horrifying that had been lost in the attic, such as in the movie Jumanji where a magical board game found in the attic has unforeseen consequences for its players.

In the 19th century, garret rooms began to be associated specifically with young, struggling artists (typically painters and writers) living in Paris. A garret apartment was an uncomfortable place to live, as it usually had few windows, no running water, and was hot in summer and cold in winter--but it had the advantage of being cheap to rent, making it attractive to poor artists. By the end of the century, the concept of the "starving artist in his garret", working away in solitude like an artistic monk, had become a full-fledged cultural myth. The garret artist was immortalized in numerous paintings and sketches, and the story of four such garret artists is the basis for the Puccini opera La bohème.