The use of geometry is a way to write the law in the real (i.e. without using words).
l aurendeau sees architecture as a geometrical poem made of space. His work can be described as an integration of broad and grand volumes that create a strong impact. He believes definable forms are essential for a building to be imaginable. Architecture is a spatial testimony of each society’s social structure, a cultural necessity that always finds expression. It is because man talks that he builds for reasons other than his survival. Buildings create places, places he gives names to. In speech, words become reality.What the architect receives as his mission is symbolized by a program, a singular representation of this social structure. As a member of a school of psychoanalysis, Paul Laurendeau knows that words build partial truth while sustain misunderstand- ing. When he listens to a client, he never takes things at face value. For him, architecture does not start with words but with forms. It is another language, an imaginary one. Avoiding the initial thought process, he creates volumes, models and drawings until he witnesses the appearance of an object he desires. He does not impose conscious knowledge (an idea) to create form, as according to him, the effects of consciousness are only temporary. To do without thinking does not exclude the production of knowl- edge, as knowledge is unconscious. His work is about repetition: making representations and reworking elements that are prone to symbolization, perfecting the form to make it metaphorical of a lost object. Architecture starts to exist with the emergence of the signifier of its function, when socially it is reintegrated in the discourse that caused it.
Working unilaterally from symbolic to real subordinates perception to thought and leads to a denial of experience in order to preserve a theory unbroken. Any great psychotic, one day, sees the world slip under his feet. To prevent buildings from becoming uneasy intrusions in an otherwise perfect idea, architects should proceed as follows, from real to symbolic : Create a space without thinking and develop the aspects that are prone to symbolization. Start again, and again with what holds your desire, until matter appears united by the laws of the signifier, i.e. poetry. *CAUTION* A model or a drawing is a metonymical object — in other words, a partial representation of another object. The distance between the substitute (the partial object) and the actual building (the representative of the part) is bridged by a mental image. To be as effec- tive as their model, realised buildings must themselves be the model, the metonymy of another object. What this is will not be written.
A possible room for a psychoanalyst with two chairs not quite facing one another (for preliminary inter- views that can last for years in some cases) or the divan facing away from the analyst’s chair (when transference installs itself).This room is divided in two by a black color and illustrates one kind of geometrical proportion.
The following operations order space and make it readable (to the unconscious) after the model:
alignment geometry opening proportion repetition scale specularity symmetry
The occurrence of these properties in nature is highly noticeable and, if organised, becomes unnatural. Structured, these features appear as a sign — a sign of culture.They are the ones architects would use to construct their self-image. Architecture, like human sexuality, is anything but natural, it is purely cultural. Culture is the real ordered by the law of the signifier, i.e. language . Artistically created, human expressions become metaphorical, reminiscent of something beyond their material- ity. Architecture is the art of making geometry (a sublimated word) habitable, the metonymy of a lost object, impossible to recover. For an architect, the making of a building holds more meaning and is closer to truth than any theory he formulates.This is why, since he cannot say the truth, he makes a space out of it.
Paul Laurendeau is an architect, member of the Order of architects of Quebec and member of the Lacan School of Montreal.
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O n S ite review
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I ssue 10 2003
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