Launch

Jane Rendell: The Architecture of Psychoanalysis

'In this thought-provoking book, Jane Rendell explores how architectural space registers in psychoanalysis. She investigates both the inherently spatial vocabulary of psychoanalysis and ideas around the physical 'setting' of the psychoanalytic encounter, with reference to Sigmund Freud, D.W. Winnicott and Andre Green. Building on the innovative writing methods employed in Art and Architecture and Site-Writing, she also addresses the concept of architecture as 'social condenser' a Russian constructivist notion that connects material space and community relations. Tracing this idea's progress from 1920s Moscow to 1950s Britain, Rendell shows how interior and exterior meet in both psychoanalysis and architectural practice. Illuminating a novel field of interdisciplinary enquiry, this book breathes fresh life into notions of social space.’ IB Tauris.

Jane Rendell will also hold an open lecture “From Critical Spatial Practice to Site-Writing: Genealogies and Trajectories” at the Main Auditorium, 13:00–15:00, 28th of September.
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Jane Rendell is a writer, art critic and architectural historian/theorist/designer, whose work explores interdisciplinary intersections between architecture, art, feminism, history and psychoanalysis, and she has more recently developed critical spatial practice through site-writing, a mode of performative critical engagement that operates through the written and spoken word. Her authored books include Silver (2016), The Architecture of Psychoanalysis (2016), Site-Writing (2010), Art and Architecture (2006), and The Pursuit of Pleasure (2002); and co-edited collections Critical Architecture (2007), Spatial Imagination (2005), The Unknown City (2001), Intersections (2000), Gender, Space, Architecture (1999) and Strangely Familiar (1995). New publications include, ‘Giving an Account of Oneself, Architecturally’, Journal of Visual Culture; and with Michal Murawski, Reactivating the Social Condenser, co-edited special issue of The Journal of Architecture forthcoming 2017). Jane is Professor of Architecture and Art at the Bartlett School of Architecture, UCL, where she is Director of History & Theory and leads the Bartlett’s Ethics Commission. http://www.janerendell.co.uk