The Wings of Daedalus, Toward a Relational Architecture
Esther Sperber
May, 2015
[email protected]
DRAFT NOT FOR DISTRIBUTION
Abstract:
Psychoanalysis has been interested in the creative process, yet architecture has only rarely been studied
from a psychoanalytic perspective. This paper examines the architectural creative process in which the
space between an existing problem and a physical, occupyable building is bridged. I follow the story of
Daedalus, the mythic first architect, suggesting that the architect’s creativity depends on the ability to utilize
multiple modalities of the human mind and body, allowing them to converse with one another in what Philip
Bromberg called a moment of “standing in the Spaces.” The notion of sublimation is used to reestablish the
place of the body in the artistic process, reminding us that the physical and the psychic are intertwined and
must jointly participate in the creative process. I will conclude by demonstrating the participation of inner
and outer self, mind and body in my design process for the Czech National Library International
Competition.
Bio:
Esther Sperber is the founder of the New York-based award-winning firm Studio ST Architects
(www.studio-st.com), dedicated to exploring the embedded logic of materials and structures to generate
new spatial experiences. She lectures and writes on the intersection of psychoanalysis and architecture,
two fields that aim to reduce human distress and widen the range of individual and social experiences.
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Opening Vignette
It was late at night and we were exhausted, frustrated and anxious. We had been working on our entry for
the international open competition for the Czech National Library in Prague for ten days and felt as if we
had achieved nothing. We had only two more weeks and needed to produce plans, elevations, diagrams,
renderings and a physical model, not to mention that first we needed to arrive at a design concept.
Entering an open and anonymous competition is one of the most fun times in an architectural practice. It is
a rare opportunity to be judged purely on the merits of one’s design rather than by the size and experience
of the office. It also requires a huge investment of time and resources and we had to juggle this
commitment with our ongoing projects and schedules. But this effort is balanced by a contagious sense of
optimism, knowing that winning, or even being mentioned, is a short cut, like a ladder in the game of
Chutes and Ladders, that can transport a young practice into the big leagues. The finished entry would
also help us expand our portfolio, demonstrating the type and quality of work we are capable of producing,
something we cannot always show in our commissioned work.
But that night everyone in the office agreed that we were stuck. We had spent hours trying to understand
the complex programmatic requirements for the 500,000 square foot building we were designing. We
studied the site conditions, learned the history and looked at numerous images of old and new libraries.
Still, we didn’t have an idea that would guide us through organizing and forming this complex space.
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The Writing Task
In this paper I study the process by which a creative, imagined idea can become a reality, using the
architectural design process as a case study. The architect’s task is to bridge the gap between an existing
problem, a fantasy vision and a physical, occupyable building. Architecture is a profession that transforms
imagined dreams into habitable realities. I suggest that the architect’s creativity depends on the ability to
utilize multiple modalities of the human mind and body, allowing them to converse with one another in what
Philip Bromberg called a moment of “Standing in the Spaces” (2001, p. 274). I argue that the freedom to
utilize a wide range of mental and physical methods in order to elaborate an imagined idea is what allows
these fantasies to become realities.
In the world of geometry, connecting two lines creates a two dimensional surface. However, interpolating
three lines that do not share a planar surface results in a three-dimensional habitable place. In the
construction of this paper I weave three interdisciplinary lines of investigation, allowing them to inform,
question and edit one another. The first line will follow my experience as a practicing architect, illustrating
the design process through our entry for the international competition for the Czech National Library. A
second line will follow the mythical first architect, Daedalus, and his inventive creation of the wings that
carry him over the ocean to freedom. A third line will trace psychoanalytic ideas regarding the relationship
of fantasy and reality and the role of fantasy in the creative artistic process. With these three lines I hope to
sketch a space that is open, permeable, flexible and habitable, a space which will allow others to enter and
further investigate the creative process of transforming fantasy into reality.
Attempting to write an interdisciplinary paper such as this is a risky undertaking. It hopes to tie, compare
and translate ideas from one field into another. Walter Benjamin in his classic paper "The Task of the
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Translator" (1923) suggests that the process of translation reveals the kinship of all languages but also
creates an afterlife for the original text, in which it undergoes change through the translation into another
language. He describes how every languages possesses meanings and structures that cannot be
communicated. "It is the task of the translator to break through the decayed barriers of his own language"
(p. XXX). I am aware that when trying to translate psychoanalytic ideas into architecture, and architectural
concepts into psychoanalysis I will inevitably encounter moments in which these two languages are not
compatible yet I hope that these moments will also revitalize and expand the languages of each of these
fields.
The Architectural Task
Before discussing the mental processes involved in the architectural design, I would like to consider the
architectural task. Architecture, as I understand it, is the art and science of creating physical spaces for
human activity. On the most basic level, buildings create shelter, protecting us from the elements such as
the hot sun, the chilling wind, the wet rain and the constant noise of the urban metropolis (Sperber, 2014b).
But architecture does more, it enables us to discover and experience the world, ourselves and society in
new ways. We build environments in which a multiplicity of human experiences can take place, spaces that
are exciting, calm, predictable and surprising, social or solitary. And we test new ways of being as
individuals and as a culture, within the constructed space and through our interactions with the physical
environment. “Architecture does not merely beautify the setting of dwelling; great buildings articulate the
experiences of our very existence”, writes Juhani Pallasmaa (p. 19). Architecture is the setting in which life
can discover and invent itself; it is the stage for the theater of life.
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We often experience architecture in distraction (Benjamin, 1936) yet the physical and sensual presence is
registered. It is a language (Hendrix, 2006) to be read and understood yet it is also a sensual experience;
we touch, see, smell and hear architecture. Our eye enjoys the façade composition while our fingers brush
over the cool stone sill and the warm rich fabric of the window drapery. Patterns of light and shadows
punctuate and complement the rhythmic sound of our footsteps scaling the space against the size of our
bodies. And the mind participates too, comparing this space to others we have visited, evoking memories
of past places. Therefore, the architect creates a space for human living, she must attend to the entire
spectrum of physical and mental effect, designing an embodied experience which is both thought and felt.
Literature on Psychoanalysis and Architecture
Although the literature on architecture and psychoanalysis is relatively small I will note some of the existing
studies. Psychoanalysis and architecture are generally explored together for one of two purposes. Historian
of art and architectural use psychoanalytic ideas to reveal hidden meanings and effect of buildings. Others,
often from the world of psychoanalysis, study the psycho-biographical histories of particular architects.
Most notable in the first category is Adrian Stokes (1951) who used Kleinian concepts to analyze how
buildings, like surrogate mothers, are both devouring and destructed by the viewer/child. Dreamer (2005)
re-reads Stokes, noting that his writing resembles self analysis in which he works through his fascination
and profound reactions to the built environment. Biatrize Colomina (1992) employs psychoanalytic
concepts in her comparison of the interiors spaces designed by Adolf Loos and Le Cobusier, tracing their
different relationship to domesticity, femininity and sexuality. Vidler (1992) studies the uncanny aspects of
modern architecture and urbanism in his book The Architectural Uncanny and Hendrix (2006) uses a
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linguistic, Lacanian analysis of work by Peter Eisenman to explore architecture as a structural language
and order. Lavin (2007) traces Richard Neutra’s personal connection to psychoanalysis and his belief that
the task of an architect was to expose the client’s fantasies, much like a psychoanalyst, in order to enable a
healthy, new way of living.
Among the studies of architect’s biographies one should note Tutter’s (2011) study Philip Johnson’s glass
house. She suggests that architectural design is produced much like a personal dream, expressing wishes,
fantasies and fears. She therefore interprets the buildings by utilizing analytic dream interpretation
techniques. Frank Lloyd Wright’s childhood and they ways it lead to his creative life is studied by many
(Anderson, Winer, Twombly).
Two notable exceptions to the above methods of unitizing psychoanalysis for interpreting architecture are
the work of Danze and Rendell who both suggest that architectural sensibilities may widen psychoanalytic
thinking rather than vice versa. Danze (2005) studies the phenomenology of the spatial experience,
analyzing the ways the architecture of the analytic consulting room affects the psychoanalytic experience. I
especially admire Jane Rendell’s (2010) book Site Writing, The Architecture of Art Criticism in which she
suggests that at the core of the architectural event is a situated experience which does not repress the
mutual effects of subject and object on one another. Her writing expands the architectural understandings
of spaces and site specificity to art criticism and possibly to the field of psychoanalysis showing the
interdependency of artist, art viewer and art critic and the shared space that this interaction creates.
However, within this literature there is little discussion of how psychoanalytic and architectural theories may
be enriched by a mutual consideration of the design process, a topic I wish to explore here.
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Fantasy and Reality in Psychoanalysis
While the discipline of architecture tends to focus on studying the completed products of the design
process, e.g., the stone and glass finished building, psychoanalysis has been fascinated with the origins of
the desire to create art. Both fields have paid limited attention to the process of transforming a wish into a
reality, a fantasy into a building. But before looking at how fantasy becomes reality lets examine some of
the psychoanalytic literature concerning the relationship between fantasy and reality which I is key to
understanding the design process.
I recently returned to Freud’s essay, “Der Dichter und das Phantasieren” (1908), which we are accustomed
to translating as “Creative Writers and Day Dreaming,” although I prefer Laplanche’s translation: “The Poet
and the Activity of Fantasy” (1999, p. 223). I was surprised by my confusion when trying to sort out Freud’s
understandings of fantasy, day dreams, and play. I assumed Freud would emphasize the need to
renounce the pleasure principle (1911) - the attachment to the regressive pleasures of infantile fantasy - in
order to fully accept the reality principle of mature “love and work” within society. But rather than a clear
distinction, I found Freud’s account of fantasy and reality vague, a vagueness which both perplexed and
excited me. Perhaps fantasy and reality were not such different realms after all? I found support for this
understanding in Freud’s paper, “Formulations of Two Principles on Mental Functioning” (1911), where
Freud states that “art brings about the reconciliations between the two principles” of fantasy and reality. The
artist is able to do so by “making use of the special gifts to mold his phantasies into truths of a new kind,
which are valued by men as precious reflections of reality” (p. 224).
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Susan Isaacs (1948) distinguishes between awake, imaginative processes and less conscious dream-like
fantasies. She proposed using the spelling ‘Fantasy’ for the first type of imaginations and reserving the
spelling “Phantasy” for the latter, primary-process, fantasies. Laplanche and Pontalis strongly opposed this
suggestion, noting that “Freud's principal concern seemed to have been less with establishing such a
differentiation than with emphasizing the links between these different aspects” (1973, p. 316). Freud,
according to them, believed that artistic creativity holds the promise of a reality that is linked and invented
by an internally wished fantasy and that the linking of fantasy and reality are the essence of the creative,
artistic process (Jurist, 2006).
A similar linking of fantasy and reality can be found in Winnicott’s notion of illusion. According to Winnicott,
illusion is the infant’s first encounter with reality. Illusion, is the good-enough moment in which the mother’s
wish to feed and the baby’s hunger join together, a moment that blurs cause and effect, subjective and
objective reality, making it unclear if the baby’s hallucination or external reality had provided the feeding.
“Fantasy,” Winnicott writes “is more primary than reality, and the enrichment of fantasy with the world’s
riches depends on the experience of illusion” (Winnicott, 1958a, p.153, Phillips, 1988, p. 83). As Knafo and
Feiner (2006) contend, reality and fantasy should not be seen as binary opposites rather, they are both
constantly present, fluctuating aspects of our selves that jointly participate in our understanding of the world
and ourselves. 1
1
It might be noted that I have not made a clear distinction between the array of terms used in the psychoanalytic literature for
mental processes that are "less real". We find fantasy, phantasy, illusion, play, psychic reality, imagination, distortion to name a
few. As I see it, the question of the relationship of fantasy and reality is bigger and older than the field of psychoanalysis, a
question that has been contemplated by philosophers, theologians, scientists and poets for thousands of years. What is real?
What is the mind? How does human perception relate to the scientific nature of the universe? What are the limits of our
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Stephen Mitchell’s View of Illusion
In his essay, ‘The Wings of Icarus - Illusion and the Problem of Narcissism’ (1993) Mitchell refers to
fantasies, their legitimacy and their link to reality, suggesting a synthetic approach to reconcile Freud’s and
Winnicott’s understandings of illusion. Freud, according to Mitchell, saw illusion, much like fantasy, as a
regressive defense against the frustrations of reality. Illusions must therefore be interpreted, their un-reality
pointed out and renounced (p. 113). On the other hand, Mitchell understood Winnicott and Kohut to see
illusion as the source of growth, inspiration and creativity (p. 114). Mitchell himself offers a synthetic
approach, in which one can both accept the reality of human limitations and mortality, yet also experience
the excitement of creativity, the space of illusion and the joy of narcissistic play. The inevitable limitations of
reality add a poignancy and sweetness to illusion and fantasy (p. 120).
Mitchell then turns to discuss the myth of the Wings of Icarus, describing the ways in which illusion and
narcissism are learned habits of relating that a child adopts in order to maintain a connection to his parents.
Icarus joins in his father’s grandiose fantasy and agrees to fly with the wings his father created. Despite
Daedalus’s warnings, Icarus gets lost in illusion and flies too high, the sun melts the wax off of the wings
and he falls to his death at sea. With this vivid image, Mitchell illustrates how the child can get trapped in
his parent’s fantasy. But while Mitchell captures beautifully the tragedy of Icarus, I would like to return to the
perception? Knowing that I am unqualified to grapple with this vast corpus of human thinking, I choose to allow these terms to
remain loosely, and poetically, defined and my word choices to be guided by association rather than dictionary definitions.
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myth from the point of view of Daedalus, who was not only Icarus’s father but also the mythological first
architects, a person who, through creative imagination, built new spaces and tools to solve practical
problems. The mythical story tells not only of dangers of fantasy that led to Icarus’s death but also of
Daedalus’s liberation. Let us now follow Daedalus and his creative process of making the wings. Can we
expand our understanding of the architectural design process by exploring the ways Daedalus disregarded
the division between fantasy and reality, using his imagination to make new realities?
The Wings of Daedalus
Let us consider the mythological story of Daedalus2. He is imprisoned by King Minos after building the
labyrinth to hide the Minotaur, the unnatural progeny born of the union of, the King’s wife, and the bull she
had fallen in love with. As told by Ovid in Metamorphosis Daedalus hated Crete and longed to be back in
his homeland Sicily, yet this dream was not very realistic; King Minos controlled the seas and the land and
there seemed to be no escape. Although Daedalus is a mythical figure, perhaps an expression of our wish
for omnipotence (Ferenczi, 1952) I would like to take the playful liberty of imagining him as a real person
and to examine the stories told by Ovid (written 8 AD), Pliny (written after 75 AD) and Homer (7 or 8
century BC).
2
Perez-Gomez(1985) tracks the connection between Daedalus’s name and the verb which appears in the classical literature which
means to make, to manufacture, to forge, to weave, to place on and to see.
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Ovid tells us that “Hating the isle of Crete, and the long years of exile, Daedalus was pining for his native
land, but the seas on every side imprisoned him” (p. 176). We read that Daedalus, being trapped, hates
Crete and wishes to escape. Hanna Segal in her paper “Psycho-Analytic Approaches to Aesthetics” (1952)
following Melanie Klein’s concept of the depressive position, suggests the importance of the artist’s ability
to experience and tolerate feelings of loss and longing. “Depressive phantasies give rise to the wish to
repair and restore” (p.197) Segal writes. These feelings of loss, if tolerated, become the stimulus for the
development of self and art. But the artist must first experience the intensity of her needs, the yearning for
the lost-whole-object of the childhood unit. Only then, when this loss has been acknowledged and
mourned, “re-creation can take place” (p. 199). Following Segal and Klein, one might see Daedalus’s ability
to hate Crete and long for a different place, as the first step on his search for solutions that would enable
him to escape. The ability to experience pain and loss, to see the wrongs of the world, to wish for a better
physical, political and ethical place are the motivational force for creativity and change. Similarly in the
architectural project there must be a discontent, a loss or need which motivates us to search for innovative
solutions.
A Good Fantasy
But experiencing loss and mourning does not always lead to creative solutions. I suggest that it is the ability
to delve into the unreal and imaginary, the space of a good, or good-enough, fantasy that provides the next
step. After acknowledging his yearning to return home, I imagine that Daedalus allowed his mind to
wander. He searches for a solution that would bring him back to where he wanted to be. He realized that he
was trapped and that only the sky was open to him (Ovid, p. 176). For the time being, Daedalus might
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choose to ignore the scientific reality of the gravitational forces and imagines himself flying, a pleasurable
daydream solving his predicament. In Ovid’s words, “Through the sky I will set my course. Minos may own
all else; he does not own the air” (p. 177). Daedalus’s ability to imagine a solution that is not yet possible,
to indulge in a fantasy and suspend the critical voice of reality, provide the next key to inventing new
realities.
Daedalus’s indulgence in the dream of flying, an act that the human body cannot accommodate without an
external apparatus, shares similarities to Loewald’s (1951, 2000) understanding of the necessity for an
ongoing oscillation between the mature consciousness and the infantile unconscious aspects of self in
order to sustain a sense of aliveness:
“In fact it would seem that the more alive people are (though not necessarily more stable), the
broader their range of ego-reality levels is. Perhaps the so-called fully developed, mature ego is not
one that becomes fixated at the presumably highest or latest stage of development, having left the
others behind it, but is an ego that integrates its reality in such a way that the earlier and deeper
levels of ego-reality integration remain alive as dynamic sources of higher organization.”(p. 20)
Loewald (1988) further emphasizes that sublimation, a goal for psychoanalysis and artistic creation, occurs
when a link is recreated between the more mature, rational and differentiated mental process reconnect to
the infantile, less conscious experience prior to self being experienced as separate from the mother and the
world. (More on Loewald and sublimation, Sperber, 2014b.)
Marion Milner (1950) furthers this understanding of fantasy as necessary in order to expand the limits of
reality, pointing to the ways in which unreasonable dreaming advances scientific reality. She writes that at
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first she did not appreciate “how the poet and artist in us, by their unreason…do in fact create the world for
the scientist in us to be curious about and seek to understand” (p. 161). The artist and poet in their
resistance to the dualistic differentiation of real and unreal are able to open a playful fantasy space,
exposing truths that will become scientific reality.
Kris (1952) suggests that artistic creativity is composed of two processes that can be successive or
recurrent: a process of regression and of elaboration. The regression occurs when the artist’s ego relaxes
its hold on reality, allowing the artist to draw from the well of childlike unconsciousness, returning to a time
filled with the pleasure of invention and discovery. The elaborative phase then converts the retrieved
unconscious material into a communicable expression, which is the artistic product. Knafo (2012) updates
Kris’s term “regression in the service of the ego”, considering it “the ability to maintain contact with early
body and self states as with early forms of object relationships, as well as different modes of thinking” (p.
28). A similar understanding is found in Ehrenzweig (1967), who sees the artist as one who preserves a
childlike ability to reveal the ”hidden orders of the unconscious” (p. 5), combining a dream-like ambiguity
with the tension of being fully awake. This “de-differentiation” allows the artist to expose structures and
patterns within unconscious material that rational thinking obscures, thereby preventing us from seeing
reality at its fullest.
Creativity therefore depends on the ability to consider both fantasy and reality as valid ways of
understanding, interacting and experiencing the world and ourselves. Between an initial state of longing
and the final created solution there is a flexible and interactive process that relies upon an ability to
experience fantasy and reality as two constantly present aspects of ourselves, experienced as loosely
delineated territories in a complex field of influences with which we interact throughout life. The creative
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ability of a child, writer, scientist, analyst or architect derives from the power to disregard the imposed
dichotomy of real and possible versus dreamed, imagined and impossible. Creativity is by definition the
moment when that which was previously non-existent, perhaps even impossible, enters and changes our
understanding of reality.
A Dialogue of Multiple Selves
And here I arrive at the place which interest me, the point beyond the infantile desire and need to create
art, to the place in which arts emerges from that need. I use the word “place” in this context because it
avoids one of the prevalent misunderstandings I see in discussions of this topic – the notion of a “creative
moment”, a singular point in time when inventiveness occurs. As I suggest below, design is always a
process which unfolds over time and in between people, a process which zigzags between ideas, images
and solutions. While Winnicott, Loewald and Kris all note the importance of an oscillation between more
and less conscience states, they nevertheless maintain that these are separate mental processes. My
architectural design experience, on the other hand, involves an array of simultaneous mental, physical and
social activities that do not benefit from the categorization as either conscious or unconscious and real or
fantasized. I now turn to a relational model of interacting, multiple self states, not to deny the power and
enigmatic influences of unconscious desire, but to suggest the relevance of these theories to the
understanding of creativity and of the architectural design process.
Philip Bromberg (2001) is his book now well-known passage in Standing in the Spaces suggests that:
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[A] noticeable shift has been taking place with regard to psychoanalytic understanding of the
human mind and the nature of unconscious mental processes – away from the idea of a conscious
/ preconscious / unconscious distinction per se, toward a view of the self as decentered, and the
mind as a configuration of shifting, non-linear, discontinuous states of consciousness in an ongoing
dialectic with the healthy illusion of unitary selfhood (p. 270).
Bromberg (2001) describes the healthy human state as that of being in a constant conversation among
multiple aspects of the person. Bromberg continues to explain that “Health is the ability to stand in the
spaces between realities without losing any of them – the capacity to feel like one self while being many”
(p. 274). This view of the self as composed of many is shared by psychoanalysts associated with the
relational perspective (Aron, 2008, Davies, 1996, Ogden, 2009), who use a variety of terms to describe the
existence of self states that emerge, converge and fluctuate within a person in relation to those around
them. Trauma, in this view, does not result in a repression of content into the unconscious but rather
creates a dissociation or splitting of emotional aspects of the self, resulting in a limited experience of
authentic life (Mitchell, 1993, Bromberg, Stern). The healthy self sates refers to different developmental
levels, such as childlike experiences coexisting with mature self states, it also include aspects of the self
formed by past attachments existing alongside selves that relate authentically to present situations, and a
mixing of the dreaming with more rational and awake selves. The analytic setting is design to facilitate both
analyst and analysand ability to utilize a wider than usual range of consciousness levels to access
experiences that are silenced in everyday life (Aron, Bushera, 1998). 3
3
An interesting foreshadowing of this understanding of creativity can be found in Kleinschmidt (1967) suggesting that ‘regression’
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Can we use this notion of a mental health as an ability to access and tolerate multiple aspects of the self to
further understand artistic creativity and innovation? Let’s return to the story of Daedalus.
Daedalus, not satisfied by replaying the pleasurable fantasy of flying in his own mind, manages in the story
to make his dream come true precisely because he was able to engage a range of human abilities, allowing
them to participate in the analysis, design and construction of his imagined wings. Drawing on my own
design experience, I picture the following scene: Daedalus’s yearning, homesick self quietly complains to
his childlike imaginative self, which playfully suggests the idea of flying as a way to escape this island and
its confinement. They are joined by the investigating-self who, knowledgeable about bird wings and
feathers, presents some aerodynamic forms that exist in nature. The inventor in Daedalus gets very excited
and immediately sketches designs of artificial wings while a cautious voice warns that “flying is an
absolutely crazy idea.” The homesick, protective self answers with anger that “We cannot stay here under
the ruthless rule of King Minos. Something must be done.” The craftsman self, who has been listening
silently to the lively exchange, finally joins in softly by saying “I know we can do it, if we all work together.”
Mixed with these imagined cooperative, collaborative and optimistic selves are, I picture, darker sides of
Daedalus’s ambition: those driven by envy, guilt, hatred and aggression which often fuels artistic work. In
“The Ego and the Id”, Freud points our attention to the paradoxical circularity in the emergence of
aggression from the attempt to suppress aggression (1923, p. 54). Aggression is both what sublimation is
trying to transform and a byproduct of this process "After sublimation the erotic component no longer has
is not sufficient to explain the modalities employed in the creation of art, rather we should view “the complexity of the creative
process as the result of many possible levels of integration lying side by side, which may be the secret of their availability to the
artist”.
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the power to bind the whole of the destructiveness that was combined with it, and this is released in the
form of an inclination to aggression and destruction." (1923, p. 54-55)
We learn of these destructive sides of Daedalus from Ovid (p. 179) who tells us that Daedalus was
responsible not only for the death of Icarus, his son, but also of another young man, his nephew Talus who
was sent to apprentice with Daedalus. Talus was very talented and invented the saw and the compass. “In
jealous rage, his master (Daedalus), hurled him down, headlong form Pallas’ citadel” (p. 179), who claimed
that the boy had fallen. Daedalus eventually also kills King Minos by boiling him to death while he was
taking a bath, “using his knowledge of hydraulics to accomplish this act efficiently” (Perez-Gomez, 1985).
Daedalus’s violence toward Talus and Minos reveals other sides of him, a vengeance and inability to
tolerate competition. Perhaps it is this ambitious and merciless need to succeed which might have
countered the natural fear that would accompany such a daring project and the dangers awaiting his flight.
The process of building Daedalus’ wings, like an architectural design process, involved not only a mental
inventiveness and a collaboration of different mental processes, but a level of practical ingenuity, a haptic
ability and physical giftedness needed to construct the wings. Greenacre (1957) links the artist’s capability
to his heightened sensitivity and unusual control of sensorimotor discharge. Pliny 4 describes Daedalus’s
extraordinary ability to invent tools “Daedalus invented woodworking together with the saw, axe, plumb-line,
gimlet, glue…”(p. 106) With new tools, and his unusual motor skills, Daedalus was able to actualize his
4
Pliny the Elder lived from 23-79AD. After his service in the Roman army he wrote the Natural History, an encyclopedic account of
the state of Roman scientific knowledge in the first century. This same curiosity that allowed him to amass this information,
ultimately led to his death when he lingered too long to observe the Vesuvius’ eruption.
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idea, utilizing imagination and investigation, craftsmanship and inspiration, daring and meticulous
assembling to make the wings that carry him to dry land. Without the longing and fantasy, the wings could
not have been imagined, but without engaging the other aspects of his creative self, the fantasy would have
crashed into the fierce waves of physical reality. Seen in this way, Daedalus’s creativity stems from his
ability to engage the full range of his human physical and mental abilities, allowing them to negotiate,
criticize, applaud and respect what each brings to the creative process. Daedalus is able to achieve his
wish to “stand in the spaces,” to literally and figuratively glide, suspended between heaven and earth to his
desired destination.
A Dialogue with Others – Lessons from an Architectural Practice
The psychoanalytic relational model, which suggests a dialogue of inner multiple selves as quoted in
Bromberg, also points to the ever-present intersubjective field of experiences and the relational matrix
between self and others as a fundamental aspect of the human condition (Mitchell, 1993; Aron, 2001).
Since architecture is always produced in a collaborative process, I turn to this aspect of creativity. We are
often enamored by the image of the lone artist working in his isolated cold attic or run-down basement
studio. Solitude and the ability to tolerate it may be essential to the artist (Knafo, 2012) and an achievement
of maturity (Winnicott, 1958), but in the field of architecture, as with film, theater and many sciences,
innovation depends on the ability to work with others (see also Sperber, 2014b).
The architectural product - the building - is a physical object charged to respond to multiple personal and
social needs. It is probably one of the most complex problems, technical and formal, emotional and cultural,
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that finds a singular physical solution in the form of a concrete structure. The building must shelter us from
the elements, resist the pull of gravity and make a space for living. It must be financially viable,
technologically possible and comply with local legal and zoning codes. As Stan Allen (2009, p. XI) writes:
“The practice of architecture tends to be messy and inconsistent precisely because it has to negotiate a
reality that is itself messy and inconsistent”. Architecture, perhaps not unlike psychoanalysis, is always
performed in dialogue with others and cannot be accomplished alone. It involves clients 5, municipal
approvals, engineering teams and construction crews, all of whom must participate in the design and
construction process.
There have been many instances in my practice in which a unique and unexpected designs emerged from
the interaction with the other participants in the design and construction process. A client kept asking me to
add arches to her foyer. I was reluctant yet despite my hopes, she did not forget the arches. After many
struggles, I finally designed an opening that combined her wish and mine. It was a handsome, black
lacquered square door jamb which framed a thin, floating, bronze arch. This solution maintained the open
view and modern look while incorporating the client’s desired arch, synthesizing two typologies. We were
both not merely satisfied but excited; together we created something that neither of us could have imagined
on our own. This example demonstrates a ubiquitous aspect of the everyday design experience. I share it
precisely because it is not radical or unique but rather to highlight that the architect’s creativity is very often
accomplished within a relational matrix, with and for others. Sawyer (2007) in his book Group Genius,
5
See Alice T. Freidman (2007) who describes the for2zgotten legacy and the pivotal role women clients had on the development of
modern architecture and its most iconic buildings.
19
similarly demonstrates that creativity, across the many fields he studied, stems from collaboration and is a
joint achievement rather than an individual production of a single genius (Sperber, 2013).
Thus, a successful design process occurs when the architect is able to master, negotiate and incorporate
input from these many sources, managing the frustrating aspects of reality that threaten to void the building
of the fantasy that generated it. The architect is challenged to “stand in the space” yet again, between her
dream and the reality that demands practical consideration. The building that emerges from these
negotiations is not a preconceived independent idea, it is a form that embeds within it the memories and
logics of imagined and possible and the traces of design and construction. Its beauty is not a pure, babylike innocence but rather it emerges as an already a weathered structure, reflecting in its newness, the
complexity and contradiction of creation, the scars and traces of the construction battles.
The Body, Returning to Freud
Sublimation, according to Freud, “has the power to replace its immediate aim by other aims which may be
valued more highly and which are not sexual” (1908, p. 452). According to Freud, the creative impulse,
through a process of sublimation, converts and elevated the infantile, sexual and aggressive drives into an
acceptable social and cultural output: art. Sublimation does so by diverting the sexual wish from the original
unattainable oedipal object to a new aim. I was initially suspicious of this understanding of sublimation. It
sounded both moralistic and linear, suggesting a unidirectional transformation from unconscious drive to a
communicable or symbolized art product. I also questioned the hierarchy implicit in this notion of
sublimations, valuing artistic products as better, higher or more mature than the original fantasies. But the
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concept of sublimation, despite sounding old-fashioned to the contemporary ear, embeds within it a truth in
which the physical and the psychic are intertwined in ways that are dependent, fluctuating and inseparable.
With this notion of sublimation, Freud gives our physical body as the location of the forbidden fantasy, a
necessary role in the artistic process: it reunites the mind and the body and ensures that both participate in
the creative process.
Therefore, I return to our corporal center, to the locus from which we experience the world – our body.
“Embodiment is not a secondary experience; the human existence is fundamentally an embodied condition”
writes the architect and architectural theorist Pallasmaa (2009, p. 013) following the phenomenology of
Merleau Ponty. Similarly Peter Fonagy (2008, p. 17) writes that “A fundamental tenet of classical Freudian
theory… is the embodiedness of mental life, the idea that the mind is rooted in physical experience”. Fast
(2006) suggests that for Freud mental processes are always tied to body-based experiences a notion
validated according to Fast by current research in cognition and philosophy that contends there is no mind
separate from the body. Our ability to imagine, invent and craft, like our ability to love, is found in the
intersection of our minds and our physical bodies. “It is evident” continues Pallasmaa, “that the capacity of
imagination does not hide in our brains alone, as our entire bodily constitution has its fantasies, desires and
dreams” (2009, p. 17). Sublimation according to Loewald (1988, 2000) (see also Sperber, 2014) is not
merely a transformation of the erotic forces into a higher cultural product, rather Loewald sees sublimation
as a process of binding and re-unifying the body and the mental process.
The deep link between mind and body in the imaginative process is surly a central feature of the
architectural design. In my work I have found it to be productive to design not only within the interiority of
my mind’s imagination, but to invite my physical abilities, the corporal body-knowledge, to join in the design
21
process. When architects sketch on tracing paper, make wood models, stare at plans, touch materials or
even roam in virtual 3D space, they invite their bodies to participate in the design process. Acting as agent,
their body’s logics and intelligences enrich and refine their work. I suspect that anyone who writes has
experienced the mysterious feeling when thoughts seem to emerge from the typing fingers, dancing on a
keyboard almost independent of the mind which should be conducting them. Similarly, I often discover
formal and spatial possibilities while cutting, folding, tearing and gluing. I discover myself, or perhaps my
selves, through the physical action of thinking with my hands.
Creating therefore occurs not only at the threshold of fantasy and reality, self and other, but of our mind and
body. This probably true for many fields but it is especially true for the architect, who unlike the poet or
philosopher, is challenged to create physical edifices designed to house human bodies. “(A)rchitectural
meaning is neither intellectual nor aesthetic in a formal sense, but originates instead in our embodiment
and its erotic impulse” writes the architectural historian, Perez-Gomez (2008, p. 43).
The Tragedy of Icarus
It appears in the story of Daedalus, that although Icarus and Daedalus used similar wings, the
consequences for each of them were dramatically different. In this myth the fantasy of flying was
successfully transformed (or sublimated) by Daedalus into a scientific, inventive triumph against oppressive
power, but it was a hallucinatory death sentence for his son.
There are multiple ways to understand Icarus's death. One could look at it from a classical perspective,
22
noting the separate motivations and failures of both Daedalus and Icarus. In making a set of wings for
Icarus, Daedalus was perhaps enacting his role in the oedipal struggle, sentencing his son to castration or
death to avoid competition. We can also point to Icarus’s inability to moderate his flight altitude as a sign of
his immaturity, a fragile ego and a refusal to accept the limitations of material reality. From a “two person”
perspective we may suggest that Icarus dies not because of the flaws in either the father or son’s ego
structure, but rather in their flawed relationship, their ways of being with one another. Mitchell (1993), as
we have seen, suggests that Daedalus’s narcissistic need to cast his son into his own fantasy, coupled with
Icarus’s attempt to join his father’s grandiosity as a pattern of their relationship causes his death. One
could also follow Fonagy et. al. (2000) and use the language of metalization to understand the breach in
the father-son relationship. Since the father could not articulate or mentalize the son’s affective reactions to
the proposed flight, the son was not able to experience and speak of his fears and excitement, therefore,
leaving him unable to grasps and regulate his emotions. Pollock and Slavin (1998) articulate yet another
aspect of the parent-child dyad, the child’s need for recognition and agency. This would suggest that it was
Icarus’s undeveloped separate agency, and his inability to influence his father, which caused his death.
But perhaps it is in the nature of fantasy that it cannot be shared. Although father and son used the same
flying apparatus, they could not share the originating fantasy nor did they possess the same physical and
mental abilities needed to operate the wings. While some fantasies are wide spread and culturally shared,
I believe that at their core, fantasies are custom-made, they fit their owners but are hazardous to others.
Daedalus’s fantasy suited him, his maturity, his athletic dexterity and his ability to glide safely at the correct
altitude between the hot sun and the wet sea, in order to reach his destination unharmed. It is an error for
the father to assume that his fantasy would fit his son, for me to impose my dream on you, or to assume
you are dreaming it with me. The wish to fly home came from the inner layers of Daedalus’s psyche but
23
transferring his dream onto the reluctant and less mature son can be a forceful, violent act. As Mitchell
eloquently shows (1993, p. 123), “Like Icarus, therefore, we have all donned Daedalus's wings.” When
Icarus agreed to join in his father’s narcissistic dream as a way to maintain their connection, he had to give
up his own sense of reality and with it the reality of his own life.
Byond the psychodynamic understanding of Daedalus’s failure as a father, he also failed his task as a
product designer. Successful design incorporates and synthesizes the architect’s ideas with those of the
client and future users. Contemporary codes and product safety regulations ensure that spaces and
products are suitable for wide distribution. Daedalus created a magnificent product that was fitting for
masterful flyers, a product that allowed a freedoms too dangerous for the immature or amateur user. In
current day language the wings would be recalled, or limited to licensed professionals, not because they
were not functional for flying, but because they could be used in dangerous ways. The wings therefore,
were a relational – design failure a failure to keep the user in mind. Perhaps, if Icarus had been involved in
the design and production of the wings, his level of maturity and flying abilities would have been considered
and the wings would have better suited him.
Back to the Architect’s Studio
I finally return to our anxious team searching for a design concept for the Czech National Library.
Overwhelmed by the complexity of the functions, the foreign location and the conceptual uncertainty of the
role a physical library should have in the age of accessible digital information, we began by simultaneously
exploring questions, gathering knowledge and collecting intuitive, disconnected suggestions.
24
It has taken me many years to realize the importance of this unstructured phase of search, in which we
wander and gather the background design intelligence (Speaks, 2002) that informs our proposal. In order to
create the moment of “Standing in the Spaces,” an uninhibited conversation of inner and outer selves
collaborating in the design, we need to allow these selves, within us and among our team, to explore their
different suggestions without imposing too much reality onto preliminary, fragile thoughts. Like Daedalus,
we need to be able to dream and fantasize ideas and structures that are yet to have a precedent and then
dare to explore these wished-for buildings with the widest range of our mental and physical capabilities.
Suspending for a while the questions of integration and practicality, we generated a programmatic
organizational diagram, a structural study model and a conceptual idea for the building. We overlaid these
different suggestions, exploring what within them could emerge as a coherent idea. It was through a
synthesis of ideas generated in different modes of investigations – programmatic diagrams, site analysis,
structural systems and lighting models – that we were able to find a new idea for the structuring of the
library. And while our entry did not win this international competition, it has been widely published as an
innovative conceptual understand of the library typology.
Conclusion
I return to Bromberg’s multiple selves and the notion of “Standing in the Spaces” – the ability to be in a live
and responsive relationship with different voices that are “us” as a central part of the design process. What
I have striven for in my practice is precisely this ability to hold onto many voices and ways of seeing and
understanding a problem, and allowing these notions to negotiate, discuss and argue with one another.
25
From experience we learn to create a processes in which these selves can slowly mature, express their
desires and negotiate differences. Like the library, which houses the diversity of knowledge while
maintaining its identity as a unique object, this freedom to be many while also being one, is what I believe
allows an innovative three-dimensional structure of multiplicity to emerge.
As discussed, Stephen Mitchell suggested a synthetic understanding fantasy in which it could be both a
regressive defense and a corrective experience. To this suggestion I would like to add another: that fantasy
and reality can be different modes of engaging with the world within a continuous field of human interaction.
Fantasy and reality complement one another and expose a wider range of truths than either can alone.
Fantasy can become the engine that awakens and activates dormant sides of individuals in the creative
transformational collaborative process.
All too often psychoanalysis has been preoccupied with attempts to differentiate reality and fantasy and the
melancholy value of accepting the limitations of reality, our abilities and mortality. In this paper, I tried to
show that within fantasies, and in the ability to blur the boundary of fantasy and reality, lies a powerful
creative and generative force. I suggests that precisely the willingness to listen carefully to those fantasies
of going beyond where we belong, within the analytic consulting room, in our architectural studios or in our
personal relationships, is what may allow us to construct new wings that enable us to fly high, reach the
impossible and travel to places that were inaccessible, softening the harsh boundaries we constructed
between our wishes and reality, and expanding the repertoire of human experience.
26
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