Reading Architecture with Freud and Lacan

Lorens Holm teaches Architecture at the University of Dundee, where he runs a design research unit called rooms+cities. His published work focuses on reconciling Lacanian thought on subjectivity with contemporary architectural/urban practice. He recently organised the international conference Architecture & Collective Life.

"It is with a sense of urgency, but also a lightness of touch, that Holm draws on his intimate knowledge of Lacan’s work to address architecture in this time of climate crisis. Aiming to ‘reboot’ architecture’s ethical potential, Holm takes us through some of most challenging theoretical twists of psychoanalysis. Erudite and witty, ‘wreck[ing] havoc with linear arguments, clear categories, and objective forms of research,’ Holm dedicates his precise – and kind – intelligence to flagging our urgent need for Lacan’s understanding of the unconscious as a space of inter-subjectivity. Holm argues that via Lacan we can change our culture – as one that values individuality above all else – ‘all fantasies of the ego’ – and instead grasp architecture’s capacity for articulating the relation between individual and collective. This is Holms best book on architecture and Lacan yet, and makes for some gripping, yet vital reading."Professor Jane Rendell, author of The Architecture of Psychoanalysis (2017), the Bartlett School of Architecture"Lorens Holm’s highly informative primer on the relation between architecture and psychoanalysis will be much welcomed. The two disciplines have recently entered a productive dialogue and in this respect Reading Architecture with Freud and Lacan in its rigour and cogency is a major contribution to both."Nadir Lahiji, author of the most recent Architecture in the Age of Pornography: Reading Alain Badiou

• Acknowledgements Preface on entitlement 1. Introduction to psychoanalysis [the unconscious] 2. Reading Giedion reading history through Lacan [symbolic, imaginary, & real space] 3. Brunelleschi and the visual field [desire & space] 4. Rossi and the field of the Other [planning or the unconscious] 5. Frampton and Scott Brown/Venturi [the social institution of the city or the death drive] 6. To conclude with climate change [discourse & the ethics of psychoanalysis] Postscript: Subjective theory and practice [rooms+cities] Bibliography Figure Credits Figure Notes Index