Architecture as cause: Outlines for a psychoanalytic approach to atmosphere via film noir

Abstract

This paper offers a series of propositions concerning how our affective sensibilities are shaped and unshaped by architectural space. We will examine the connections between our pre-reflective sense of atmospheres and other kinds of apprehension, including the psychoanalytic. The potentiality of spaces to influence feelings is what is meant by atmosphere. Our conceptual framework, then, will center on the question of how felt space can give rise to affectivity, thought and, more controversially, action. References to film noir (especially Fritz Lang's psychoanalytic thriller Secret beyond the Door [1948]), the paradigmatic genre of atmosphere, will frame the contention that our disposition to the world comes first, before any cognitive assessment, and, as such, possesses the force to inspire affective states. It will be suggested that the ways we test and evaluate atmospheres through the imagination are potentially the inspiration for violence, an idea echoed by architects such Bernard Tschumi and psychoanalytic thinkers such as Marcuse. The goal here is to present multiple entry points for a rich discussion concerning if, or the extent to which, notions of atmosphere admit psychoanalytic interrogation, and how or whether analytic assumptions shift as a result of such an investigation.