ABSTRACT

In this chapter, authors propose that instead of understanding the atrium solely through a Foucauldian lens, Lacanian psychoanalysis can provide an alternative – or complementary – tool to explore a variety of aspects of atrium culture. The Royal Albert Memorial Museum in Exeter provides an interesting case showing both the disciplinary and hysterical atria. Within a web of relations based on brand-patronage and museum marketing, the hyper-crowd of the museum is, for S. Zukin, the commercial crowd of the mall brought into the museum. Zukin questioned whether Fredric Jameson's hyper-crowd was in fact so original. For Architect Rem Koolhaas, Jameson's 'hyper-crowd' is the 'delirious masses'. The 'hyper' aspect of the hyper-crowd is in its not being a homogeneous mass, but rather an assemblage of individuals in eurphoric pursuit of their own self-directed enjoyments and developments in a looser form of individual diversity.