OBSERVING PARALLAXICAL IDENTITIES OF PLACE IN ARCHITECTURE – ADOPTING ARCHITECTURAL AND PSYCHOANALYTICAL APPROACHES TO URBAN FABRICS

Louis D'Arcy-Reed

doi:10.3846/jau.2019.9296

Abstract

This article analyses the concept of the parallaxical identity within architecture, and its significance in identifying a metaphysical barrier between buildings, urban fabrics, and cognitive understanding. The research focuses and expands upon Slavoj Žižek’s parallax of postmodernist cultural architecture and it’s “zero-institutional” role in marginalising class-struggle and incommensurability between architecture and audience. Interrogating psychoanalytical parallax and architectural concepts of parallax in its history, it explains the determining of a “parallaxical identity of place,” present within cities and as a result of regeneration schemes. Through a design method examining an example of cultural architecture, this article presents a case to integrate psychoanalytical analysis as a useful design methodology within practice. At the end of the article, recommendations are made on how to observe and manage against any potential dissociative or psychological barrier between architecture, environment and community.

Highlights

In 2009, the cultural critic and philosopher Slavoj Žižek entered architectural discourse with a paper1 focused on class-struggle and the concept of zero-institutions within postmodernist cultural architecture
The aim of this paper is to present the parallax as a concept evolved out of psychoanalysis and into the domain of architectural intervention propagating a parallaxical identity of place
In order to develop a coherent framework to observe and identify parallaxical identities, one must acknowledge that all environments will demonstrate parallaxical identity to some degree and some identities are more pronounced than others are

Summary

Introduction

In 2009, the cultural critic and philosopher Slavoj Žižek entered architectural discourse with a paper focused on class-struggle and the concept of zero-institutions within postmodernist cultural architecture. The dislocations, or change in spatial considerations, afford the opportunity to disseminate architecture and the role of the architect in a new light, much like Doherty’s situation, where the parallax can work as a means of rethinking the ways in which contemporary artists respond to, produce and destabilize place and locality The observation is defined by the objective and subjective dimensions of conscious seen interpretations, and the unconscious transference of relationships between architecture and community To consider this further, Holl suggested that “vertical and oblique slippages are key to new spatial perceptions” The seminal Montage and Architecture (Eisenstein, Bois, & Glenny, 1989, p. 113) notes that Eisenstein’s concern regarding the lack of discussion upon the concept of parallax; “I was surprised to see such a concern disappear from the theoretical discussions of architecture almost as rapidly as it had emerged as a fundamental issue.”

The alternative psychoanalytic diagnosis

Applying a methodology to observe parallaxical identities

Observing and recording

Conclusions