Introduction

There are a number of recent texts that draw on psychoanalytic theory as an interpretative approach for understanding architecture or that use the formal and social logics of architecture for understanding the psyche. ¹ But there remains work to be done in bringing what largely amounts to a series of independent voices, into a discourse that is greater than the sum of its parts, in the way that, say, the architect Peter Eisenman was able to do with the architecture of deconstruction or that the historian Manfredo Tafuri was able to do with the Marxist critique of architecture. The present volume focusses for the first time on the subject of the unconscious in relation to the design, perception, and understanding of architecture. The hope is that the volume will make a major contribution to architectural theory, expanding it to an unexplored area, and enriching architecture in relation to the humanities.