May mo(u)rn: transitional spaces in architecture and psychoanalysis — a site-writing

Abstract

Addressing the architectural concept of the ‘social condenser of a transitional type’, the research traces this idea’s progress from the Narkomfin Communal House in Moscow (1928–29), to Le Corbusier’s Unité d’Habitation in Marseilles (1947–52), to the Alton West Estate in London (1954–58). At the same time, with reference to the work of Sigmund Freud, D.W. Winnicott, André Green and Jean Laplanche, the research investigates the inherently spatial vocabulary of psychoanalysis, in particular notions of the transitional space of the ‘setting’. This physical and psychic scene of the psychoanalytic encounter is shown to offer new approaches for understanding relationships between subjects, objects, concepts and sites in architectural historical research and practice.