Architecture and psychoanalysis: Peter Eisenman and Jacques Lacan

Abstract

Architecture and Psychoanalysis is an analysis of the relation between psychoanalytic theory and compositional strategies in architecture. In psychoanalysis it focuses on the writing of Jacques Lacan as well as theories of the structure of the psyche, linguistics, and perception. In architecture it focuses on the writings and projects of Peter Eisenman. There are extended discussions on the thought of figures such as Sigmund Freud, Ferdinand de Saussure, and Jacques Derrida, and of the architecture of figures such as Leon Battista Alberti, Francesco Borromini, Giuseppe Terragni, and Ludwig Mies van der Rohe. Keywords: architecture, psychoanalysis, Peter Eisenman (Barenholtz Pavilion, Frank House, Falk House, Wexner Center, Columbus Convention Center, Aronoff Center), Jacques Lacan (Écrits, A Selection; The Four Fundamental Concepts of Psycho-Analysis), psyche, linguistics, perception, Plato (Timaeus, Republic, Parmenides, Phaedrus), Proclus (Commentary on the First Book of Euclid’s Elements), Plotinus (Enneads), Nicolas Cusanus (De circuli quadratura, De coniecturis), Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (Phenomenology of Spirit, Reason in History, Philosophy of Mind), Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph von Schelling (The Philosophy of Art, System of Transcendental Idealism), Sigmund Freud (The Interpretation of Dreams, On Dreams, Civilization and Its Discontents, Beyond the Pleasure Principle, An Outline of Psycho-Analysis, Introductory Lectures on Psycho-Analysis, The Ego and the Id), Ferdinand de Saussure (Course in General Linguistics), Structural Linguistics, Noam Chomsky (Language and Mind, Cartesian Linguistics), Jacques Derrida (Writing and Difference, Of Grammatology, Margins of Philosophy), Deconstruction, Claude Lévi-Strauss, Georges Bataille, Roger Caillois, William Empson (Seven Types of Ambiguity), Leon Battista Alberti (Sant’Andrea in Mantua, De pictura), Giulio Romano (Palazzo del Tè), Andrea Palladio, Francesco Borrmomini (San Carlo alle Quattro Fontane), Le Corbusier (Villa Shodhan), Giuseppe Terragni (Casa Giuliani Frigerio, Casa del Fascio), Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, Philip Johnson (Glass House), Colin Rowe, Bernard Tschumi (Parc de la Villette), mirror stage, the Other, Imaginary Ego, Symbolic Ego, dreams, subconscious, manifest content, latent content, Vorstellun