Architecture And The Unconscious

There are a number of recent texts that draw on psychoanalytic theory as an interpretative approach for understanding architecture, or that use the formal and social logics of architecture for understanding the psyche. But there remains work to be done in bringing what largely amounts to a series of independent voices, into a discourse that is greater than the sum of its parts, in the way that, say, the architect Peter Eisenman was able to do with the architecture of deconstruction or that the historian Manfredo Tafuri was able to do with the Marxist critique of architecture. The discourse of the present volume focuses specifically for the first time on the subject of the unconscious in relation to the design, perception, and understanding of architecture. It brings together an international group of contributors, who provide informed and varied points of view on the role of the unconscious in architectural design and theory and, in doing so, expand architectural theory to unexplored areas, enriching architecture in relation to the humanities. The book explores how architecture engages dreams, desires, imagination, memory, and emotions, how architecture can appeal to a broader scope of human experience and identity. Beginning by examining the historical development of the engagement of the unconscious in architectural discourse, and the current and historical, theoretical and practical, intersections of architecture and psychoanalysis, the volume also analyses the city and the urban condition.

Thirty years have passed since eminent cultural and literary critic Fredric Jameson wrote his classic work, The Political Unconscious: Narrative as a Socially Symbolic Act, in which he insisted that 'there is nothing that is not social and historical - indeed, that everything is "in the last analysis" political'. Bringing together a team of leading scholars including Slavoj Zizek, Joan Ockman, Jane Rendell, and Kojin Karatani, this book critically examines the important contribution made by Jameson to the radical critique of architecture over this period, highlighting its continued importance to contemporary architecture discourse. Jameson's notion of the 'political unconscious' represents one of the most powerful notions in the link between aesthetics and politics in contemporary discourse. Taking this, along with other key concepts from Jameson, as the basis for its chapters, this anthology asks questions such as: Is architecture a place to stage 'class struggle'?, How can architecture act against the conditions that 'affirmatively' produce it? What does 'the critical', and 'the negative', mean in the discourse of architecture? and, How do we prevent architecture from participating in the reproduction of the cultural logic of late capitalism? This book breaks new ground in architectural criticism and offers insights into the interrelationships between politics, culture, space, and architecture and, in doing so, it acts as a counter-balast to the current trend in architectural research where a general aestheticization dominates the discourse.

Buildings shape our identity and sense of self in profound ways that are not always evident to architects and town planners, or even to those who think they are intimately familiar with the buildings they inhabit. Architecture and the Mimetic Self provides a useful theoretical guide to our unconscious behaviour in relation to buildings, and explains both how and why we are drawn to specific elements and features of architectural design. It reveals how even the most uninspiring of buildings can be modified to meet our unconscious expectations and requirements of them—and, by the same token, it explores the repercussions for our wellbeing when buildings fail to do so. Criteria for effective architectural design have for a long time been grounded in utilitarian and aesthetic principles of function, efficiency, cost, and visual impact. Although these are important considerations, they often fail to meet the fundamental needs of those who inhabit and use buildings. Misconceptions are rife, not least because our responses to architecture are often difficult to measure, and are in large part unconscious. By bridging psychoanalytic thought and architectural theory, Architecture and the Mimetic Self frees the former from its preoccupations with interpersonal human relations to address the vital relationships that we establish with our nonhuman environments. In addition to providing a guide to the unconscious behaviours that are most relevant for evaluating architectural design, this book explains how our relationships with the built environment inform a more expansive and useful psychoanalytic theory of human relationship and identity. It will appeal to psychoanalysts and analytical psychologists, architects, and all who are interested in the overlaps of psychology, architecture, and the built environment.

Thirty years have passed since eminent cultural and literary critic Fredric Jameson wrote his classic work, The Political Unconscious: Narrative as a Socially Symbolic Act, in which he insisted that 'there is nothing that is not social and historical - indeed, that everything is "in the last analysis" political'. Bringing together a team of leading scholars including Slavoj Zizek, Joan Ockman, Jane Rendell, and Kojin Karatani, this book critically examines the important contribution made by Jameson to the radical critique of architecture over this period, highlighting its continued importance to contemporary architecture discourse. Jameson's notion of the 'political unconscious' represents one of the most powerful notions in the link between aesthetics and politics in contemporary discourse. Taking this, along with other key concepts from Jameson, as the basis for its chapters, this anthology asks questions such as: Is architecture a place to stage 'class struggle'?, How can architecture act against the conditions that 'affirmatively' produce it? What does 'the critical', and 'the negative', mean in the discourse of architecture? and, How do we prevent architecture from participating in the reproduction of the cultural logic of late capitalism? This book breaks new ground in architectural criticism and offers insights into the interrelationships between politics, culture, space, and architecture and, in doing so, it acts as a counter-balast to the current trend in architectural research where a general aestheticization dominates the discourse.

The experience of seeing space in its relationship with matter is inherent in the gap between the visible and invisible in architecture. This book examines architecture where the complexities of chance, atmosphere, situation and circumstance are amalgamated into geometry of the unconscious. From this, new architecture can be realised not only based upon accepted norms of modernity but also upon cultural context and origin. Such geometry is an endpoint that involves a continuity of perception, conception and action. Contents: Counterfeiting the Libido: The Crisis of Architectural Production in a 'Decolonised' Archipelago The Trinity of Creation: Seeing, Doing and Thinking Geometry of the Unconscious and its Phenomenological Position BeingSpace Constellation of the Uncertain AUTHOR: Jyanzi Kong began teaching at the Department of Architecture, Cornell University. Subsequently, he taught at the College of Architecture, University of Houston and Montana State University. Since 1985, he taught at the School of Architecture, National University of Singapore and the Raffles Institute of Design, DongHua University in Shanghai. He has served as Guest Critic at the Graduate School of Design, Harvard University and several American schools of architecture, including SCI-ARC. He has presented papers in various international conferences including the Union of International Architects in Barcelona, 1996. His professional practice covered both sides of the Atlantic. He was Architect-in-Design with the office of O M Angers in Cologne, Germany, while on the American Coast he worked with several architectural firms. Jyanzi conducts architectural explorations in design studios and lectures on contemporary topics related to architecture and its urban determinants.

"Freud for Architects explains what Freud offers to the understanding of architectural creativity and architectural experience, with case examples from early modern architecture to the present. Freud's observations on the human psyche and its influence on culture and social behaviour have generated a great deal of discussion since the 19th century. Yet, what Freud's key ideas offer to the understanding of architectural creativity and experience has received little direct attention. That is partly because Freud opened the door to a place where conventional research in architecture has little traction, the unconscious. Adding to the difficulties, Freud's collection of work is vast and daunting. Freud for Architects navigates Freud's key ideas and bridges a chasm between architecture and psychoanalytic theory. The book highlights Freud's ideas on the foundational developments of childhood, developments on which the adult psyche is based. It explains why and how the developmental stages could influence adult architectural preferences and preoccupations, spatial intuition, and beliefs about what is proper and right for architectural design. As such Freud for Architects will be of great interest to students, practitioners and scholars in a range of disciplines including architecture, psychoanalysis and philosophy"--

"The Architectural Unconscious" brings together two artists with differing but complementary attractions to architecture. James Casebere is known for his photographs of small-scale, tabletop models reminiscent of prisons, monasteries, tunnels or factories, while Glen Seator devises architectural forms from existing office spaces and building facades that provoke a comparable dislocation. Presented alongside one another, their work lucidly extrapolates architecture's unique capacity for disquiet and oppression.

How modern architecture came to embrace the urges and fears of the affective unconscious. "Eight million Americans a year cool their heels in psychiatric waiting rooms. Design can help lower this nervous overhead."—Richard Neutra, 1954 Sylvia Lavin's Form Follows Libido argues that by the 1950s, some architects felt an urge to steer the cool abstraction of high modernism away from a neutral formalism toward the production of more erotic, affective environments. Lavin turns to the architecture of Richard Neutra (1892-1970) to explore the genesis of these new mood-inducing environments. In a series of engaging essays weaving through the designs and writings of this Vienna-born, California-based architect, Lavin discovers in Neutra a sustained and poignant psychoanalytic reflection set in the context of a burgeoning psychoanalytic culture in America. Lavin shows that Neutra's redirection of modernism constituted not a lyrical regression to sentimentality but a deliberate advance of architectural theory and technique to engage the unconscious mind, fueled by the ideas of psychoanalysis that were being rapidly disseminated at the time. In Neutra's responses to a vivid range of issues, from psychoanalysis proper to the popular psychology of tele-evangelical prayer, Lavin uncovers a radical reconstitution of the architectural discipline. Arguing persuasively that the received historical views of both psychoanalysis and architecture have led to a suppression of their compelling coincidences and unorthodoxies, Lavin sets out to unleash midcentury architecture's hidden libido. Neither Neutra nor psychoanalysis emerges unscathed from her investigation of how architecture came to be saturated by the intrigues of affect, often against its will. If Reyner Banham sought to put architecture "on the couch," then Lavin, through Neutra, leaps beyond Banham's ameliorative aim to lure contemporary architecture into the lush and dangerous liaisons of environmental design.