Architecture and the Mimetic Self

In the architectural theorizing of the past decades the psychoanalytic approach has not been very popular. Architectural writings have predominantly dealt with physical forms, focused vision and conscious perceptions and intentionality, instead of the pre-reflective ground of experience and consciousness. Now that the understanding of architecture as a mental and experiential reality rather than aestheticized objects is gaining strength, Lucy Huskinson's book brings the essential interactions of the self and the setting into the discussion. We are simply not mere observers of architecture, as our very sense of self is molded by our own constructions. Architecture creates the pre-reflective horizons for the experience and understanding of our being in the flesh of the world, to use the beautiful notion of Maurice Merleau-Ponty. This book is a thorough and perceptive survey of the role of the unconsciousness in our interactions with space, place and domicile. --Juhani Pallasmaa, Architect SAFA, HonFAIA, IntFRIBA, Professor Emeritus, Aalto University, International Academy of Architecture, and author of several works on architectural theory, including The Eyes of the Skin: Architecture and the Senses (John Wiley & Sons, 1996) The intimate relationship between building and self is captured by the single word world (old German wer ) which means man. Etymology can provide, however, only an insight. Its detailed unfolding calls for a scholar of philosophical perspicacity and psychoanalytic skill, a rare combination of virtues that very few have. Dr. Lucy Huskinson is one of the very few. For evidence, read Architecture and the Mimetic Self . --Yi-Fu Tuan, J. K. Wright Emeritus Professor of Geography and the Vilas Professor Emeritus of Geography at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, USA; acclaimed author, and winner of the Vautrin-Lud International Geography Prize. Much contemporary architecture is efficient, clean cut and clever but lacks responsiveness to real human needs, with consequences for our wellbeing. Lucy Huskinson in Architecture and the Mimetic Self encourages us to look at these needs, further for authentic sources of enrichment, renewal and integration. In what she calls an Architectural blueprint of being, we become our buildings and they become us in a creative reciprocity balancing surety of containment with freedom to explore the uncertainties of ourselves and our environment. She suggests a place in this Architectural event for a loosening: a playfulness, ambiguity and surprise that can engage support and revivify us, setting in motion a new self-awareness to find the means to keep on recreating ourselves. This is a scholarly and timely contribution to the understanding and possibilities of a more fully human architecture. --Gregory Burgess (AM), award winning architect; recipient of the Sir Zelman Cowen Award for Public Buildings, the Victorian Architecture Medal for the best building of the year, the Australian Institute of Architects Gold Medal, the Robert Mathew Award for the development of architecture in the Commonwealth, and twice awarded the Kenneth F Brown Asia Pacific Culture and Architectural Design Award. He was appointed a Member of the Order of Australia (AM) in the Queen's Birthday 2011 Honours List, for service to architecture in the area of environmentally sensitive building design and community. Arguably architecture has become increasingly commodified, drained as it is of any psychological intent and associated meaning. In Architecture and the Mimetic Self Lucy Huskinson addresses this issue comprehensively, by drawing on an extensive command of psychoanalytical theory, and applying it to our innate and personal experiences of the ways in which buildings affect us --Flora Samuel, Professor of Architecture in the Built Environment, University of Reading, UK.