Architecture on the couch: A transdisciplinary exploration of buildings as psychological subjects

The paper introduces the research project ‘Architecture on the Couch: The psychology of buildings’ that radically re-conceptualises architecture as a psychosocial subject, entwined with the psychology of its creators and its inhabitants. Seeking to understand the psychology of architecture, the research develops innovative, transdisciplinary, practice-based methods derived from psychosocial studies, psychoanalysis and conceptual art to explore the consciousness and unconsciousness of architecture. The research then tests those methods on a case study and speculates how its psychological profiling may lead to deeper understanding of the entangled human/non-human relations within the building and reveal potentialities for therapeutic adaptation or re-use, thereby enhancing the wellbeing of inhabitants and the sustaining of the architecture.The principal contribution of the research is in the re-conceptualisation of architecture as having profound and active psychological dimensions, the awareness and management of which potentially impacts the liveability and life term of the architecture; aided by the provision of a set of methods with which to reveal those psychological dimensions. The research is relevant to architectural, psycho-social and psychoanalytic theory, expands the scope of concern of architectural practice processes and contributes to transdisciplinarity within conceptual art.The research is based on transdisciplinary dialogue between conceptual artist Sophie Warren, psychodynamic therapist Nigel Williams, psychosocial researcher Lita Crociani-Windland and conceptual architect/academic Jonathan Mosley