ABSTRACT
This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book addresses key aspects of the formation and construction of personal identity in relationship to the built environment, and provides a framework for considering our need of specific architectural design features. It deals with a survey of the buildings of psyche that are employed in psychoanalytic discourse as architectural blueprints of being. The book explains an idea that is pivotal to our investigation, and that is the manner in which identity is shaped by a dynamic exchange between two contrasting tendencies or innate behaviours that are triggered in our response to the environment. It examines a second process that underpins the architectural event. The book addresses the nature of the insights that are disclosed in the event, in terms of both the type of information it brings to light and the feelings it arouses.
