This essay focuses on the processes by which social actors transition from words to walls and from walls to words. I begin with a consideration of dialectics of space and society and the position of the house in such dialectics. In the second section, I examine Henri Lefebvre’s meditations on the production of space to argue that although space is subject to certain organising principles, there is always a capacity for individual agency and resistance. In the third and fourth sections, I explore briefly the implications for our study of Roman housing.