News
Architecture's Unconscious Network Launched
In the last decade we have witnessed a return to experience or immediacy in environmental aesthetics and cultural studies, as well as in architectural theory. The idea of ‘experience’ links with several quite different research fields (for instance phenomenology, neurosciences, geography or philosophical aesthetics) which can emphasise experience’s affective sensory aspect.
This series of seminars will study the notion of ‘unconscious’ in relation to architecture and the environment. This will involve opening up questions about what is ‘conscious’ and ‘unconscious’, or ‘preconscious’ -- of what activities or phenomena are we analytically aware, and what do we deal with intuitively and unconsciously. In design processes there are moves which are made more-or-less consciously, or more-or-less instinctively. The question is: how does unconscious ‘thought’ feed into our activities, and maybe design processes? Orientation in an environment feels more secure when it relies on unconscious rather than consciously reasoned moves.
The Architecture's Unconscious network involves academics and researchers from institutions around the globe and is organised by School members of staff Kati Blom, Dr Katie Lloyd-Thomas and Professor Andrew Ballantyne.
Wednesday 10 July 2013 Programme
Second network meeting
The second Architecture's Unconscious network meeting was held 9 May 2014 in Paris, in Pierre Chareau's Maison de Verre. Ten participants from Ireland, UK, US and France spend memorable time together; eight of them gave a short presentation of various topics circumscribing the unconscious in architectural experience. The Maison de Vere proved to be the most inspiring environment for its place in the history of moderns architecture but also of its complex spatial and cultural context.
Read the report of the second network meeting.
Last modified: Mon, 11 Aug 2014 13:17:08 BST