Architecture and the sub-conscious mind
‘Now if it were asked: “Do you have the thought before finding the expression?” what would one have to reply? And what, to the question: “What did the thought consist in, as it existed before its expression?”’ – Ludwig Wittgenstein, philosopher
I continue walking on till I reach the escalator. I shift the suitcase from one hand to the other, all the while listening to the constant buzz of the crowd around. I don’t look to see, I merely just glance to assess the number of people around the space. I step onto the escalator – These are actions that I’ve done before, in a mall, in an airport, in a hotel, the same activity in different spaces with the same elements. But what makes this one different is this – The ride doesn’t end. The escalator steps below me keep paving way for more and I’m on a loop. I don’t see an end and at this point, I don’t know how I even got here and now I look around to see and I don’t see the people anymore, it’s just me and the escalator and silence. Around me is a convoluted space, titbits from my past sights and experiences, it doesn’t seem foreign, quite familiar in fact and I look to see and understand over and over again, this sense of familiarity and – I wake up. Almost all of my dreams occur in places that don’t exist in real life, or at least don’t exist as I see them. The interesting thing is that, although my dreams themselves never repeat verbatim, many of the locations do and the loop manifests itself in different ways, spaces and people.
My mind is more open when my eyes are closed. I have realised this again and again over the past few years and I shall try to communicate the same through my words which I know will eventually fall through because each mind conceives this notion in different ways. That perhaps will strengthen the point I’m trying to make.
The design brief was given a week before and that entire day I had spent working on it, trying to understand the site and evolve a process for a design. The entire night, however, my mind spent unravelling all the work I’d done and left me with all that I associated with the site combined together such that there was a familiarity about it. It seems my mind can go beyond what I have seen and experienced and create an architecture entirely on its own with no memory to help with the design. All that I thought the design was, after a night’s sleep- wasn’t. That’s the effect the mind space has on you I suppose.
Not very different from the plot of Inception, is it? The architect in the movie conjures the most complex of labyrinths for the subconscious to fill with his projections, but the crux of her designs is that there is always a sense of intimacy, her designs have the ability to connect with the dreamer, making it comfortable for him to project his subconscious and inhabit that space.
The mind patches up the voids. This is precisely why the subconscious mind has been the source of major discoveries. We see things around us, we observe some more but the mind sees it all and stores it letting a few out now and again, just enough for us to either be inspired or realise something we’ve missed. Just enough to make us continuously learn more from our senses. Just enough and more for us to not just rely on what is tangible, but far beyond.
‘How does one think without language?’ A teacher once posed this question to the class and I was dumbfounded. I didn’t think it was possible. But you don’t need words to think of space or activity for that matter. The realm of our subconscious is the only place where we don’t need words to convey or understand things. Jacques Lacan’s psychoanalytic theory contends that the unconscious is structured like a language. The unconscious, Lacan argued, was not a more primitive or archetypal part of the mind separate from the conscious, linguistic ego, but rather, a formation every bit as complex and linguistically sophisticated as consciousness itself. For Lacan, modernity is the era when humans begin to grasp their essential dependence on language.
The mind does everything to stop the logical sequence of thought. As I walk through the hallways of my school, I recognize some aspects whereas some are alien to me. I move in the direction I know to be the exit and my subconscious mind alters it in such a way that I’m no longer moving to the exit instead to the entrance of my old school and the other doesn’t seem to be in sight anymore. Being in two places at once? Check.
The mind suppresses my every try to be in control and succeeds and at the end of it all, what occurs in my dream I assume to be my reality, even if it is just temporary. This is what every designer and architect dreams of – to supress the inherent human need to be in control and have a logical reason for everything.
Architecture is just as much about the irrational as it is about the rational because there are two parts to a human, the one that perceives and the one that conceives (both miraculously done by the same organ). Given any illogical scenario, we can find some familiarity in it because our mind contrives what we want.
Metaphor in architecture. Architects have lately been employing metaphors grounded in the physical world that we perceive to transform the generic ways of viewing a space by triggering the deepest pockets of our minds. Well aware that our brains are constantly making connections between the corporeal and the conceptual, buildings are designed to evoke emotions and memories.
The texture of the materials I’ve never touched and the sounds, sights and smells of places I’ve never been to, the people I’ve never seen before, find their way and inhabit the insides of my mind, making me a sum of my observations. My designs aren’t direct reflections of my dreams. They are either the start or the end of it and I have the power to bring together two worlds with a world of my own.
I am the master of my thoughts. I think I think I am, there for I am not.
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References and further reading:
https://seanmunger.com/2016/01/10/houses-of-my-dreams-exploring-the-architecture-of-my-subconscious-mind/
https://dreamsthoughtdesign.wordpress.com/
http://www.mysticbanana.com/are-dreams-a-creative-architect-of-our-subconscious-mind.html
https://www.cla.purdue.edu/english/theory/psychoanalysis/lacanstructure.html
namratanarendra.com 
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