ABSTRACT
The uncanny element is nothing new or strange, but rather it is something that psychic life has been used to for a long time. In fact, it is an affect or an emotion transformed into anxiety by repression. The first cause of the uncanny comes from the return of something that is believed definitively repressed, for example, animistic, magic, or totemic ideas. The second cause of the uncanny comes from the return of repressed childhood complexes such as those related to fantasies of castration or of the maternal womb. Architecture reveals the deep structure of the uncanny in a more than analogical way, demonstrating a disquieting slippage between what seems homely and what is definitively unhomely. The chapter considers the Falkestrasse rooftop remodelling located in Vienna, the Frank Gehry Residence in Santa Monica, the Daniel Libeskind’s collages that will give foundation to the Jewish Museum Berlin, the Eisenmann’s transcripts, the Hadid’s fragmented geometries and the Tschumi’s red enamelled steel follies.
