Lacan + Architecture

This book seeks to revise and revive architectural theory through psychoanalysis as well as to apply psychoanalytic theory to architecture. Its authors argue for Lacan’s central importance for a comprehensive theory of building and suggest how architectural theory might offer new resources for psychoanalytic theorists. They address both the perceived crisis in the contemporary state of architecture and architectural theory and crises in society at large, including political and economic fracture and instability and threats to mental health and well-being. It offers fresh insights to architects, architectural educators and practitioners, scholars of psychoanalysis, and anyone interested in the human condition in relation to the built environment.

This book is shortlisted for the 2025 Architectural Book Awards — Architectural Theory.

1. Introduction - John Shannon Hendrix and Francesco Proto.- 2. Adam’s House on Earth: Architectural and Libidinal Tensions in Lars von Trier’s The House That Jack Built - Angie Voela.- 3. The Architect in the Clinic of Obsessional Neurosis: From Anamorphosis to Artificial Intelligence - Tim Martin.- 4. The Automatic Writing of the City: Psychosis and Junkspace - Francesco Proto.- 5. Concentricity of Laws of Form - Don Kunze.- 6. My Neighbour My Self in the Ethics of Architecture and Psychoanalysis - Lorens Holm.- 7. Lacan’s Thing with Architecture: Rimming the Void / Petrifying Pain - Andrew Payne.- 8. A Subjectless Architecture - John Shannon Hendrix.- 9. Theorizing Beyond Joan Copjec’s “The Strut of Vision” - Don Kunze.

John Shannon Hendrix is Professor of Art and Architectural History at Cummings School of Architecture, Roger Williams University, United States. He is the author and editor of numerous articles and books including Architecture and the Unconscious (2016, with Lorens Eyan Holm) and Architecture and Psychoanalysis (2006).

Francesco Proto is Senior Lecturer in Architecture at Oxford Brookes University, UK. He is the author of numerous articles and books including Baudrillard for Architects (2019).