Architecture: Where Mutual Fantasy May Live

Thesis (Master's)--University of Washington, 2018From the psychoanalytic perspective, fantasy comes from and reflects desires. It is a way that people recognize themselves and establish their own understanding of the world. Architecture is an apparatus, a platform to accommodate fantasies. Mutual fantasy is triggered when two or more individuals happened to have the same fantasy. This thesis demonstrates that architecture should not only allow visitors to explore their own fantasies but it should also trigger mutual fantasy when different individual fantasies incidentally collide. Intimate interactions between individuals occur when their fantasies intertwine. The architecture here is a “culture medium”, which is intentionally designed for facilitating and observing the production of mutual fantasy. Located at Las Vegas Airport, the design project is a Mutual Fantasy Dance Club where participants will be assigned to a stage or a corresponding observation unit, based on their own fantasies of joining the dance group or staying alone. Mutual fantasy would be triggered when participants choose to dance with others. Otherwise, fantasies remain independent as users occupy their individual unit