ABSTRACT
The role of intimacy and eroticism remains a largely unwritten dimension of
modern Western architectural culture. Eroticism in particular and the focus
of this essay is an elusive subject, not easily given to academic or scientific
methods of analysis or categorization. Fleeting by nature – an evocation of the
invisible, dynamic, and perpetual state of desire, eroticism eludes fixed defini-
tion. It could be said that the erotic dimension of architecture is the
unconscious, instinctual side of our experience of form and space, implicit, and
virtual. And like the unconscious, it is masked and encoded, characterized by
excess, elaboration, irony, and humor. Eschewing the overtly sexual, the erotic
is a state of phenomenal ambiguity, indirection, tension, and suspension, a
virtual condition engendering feeling through tricks of perception.
