Surrealism and Architecture

This is a historically informed examination of architecture's perceived absence in surrealist thought, surrealist tendencies in the theories and projects of modern architecture, and the place of surrealist thought in contemporary design. This book represents current insights into surrealism in the thought and practice of modern architecture. In these essays, the role of the subconscious, the techniques of defamiliarization, aesthetic and social forces affecting the objects, interiors, cities and landscapes of the twentieth century are revealed. The book contains a diversity of voices from across modern art and architecture to bring into focus what is often overlooked in the histories of the modernist avant-garde. This collection examines the practices of writers, artists, architects, and urbanists with emphasis on a critique of the everyday world-view, offering alternative models of subjectivity, artistic effect, and the production of meanings in the built world.

Thomas Mical completed his doctorate on Niezschean thought in De Chirico's metaphysical paintings. He completed his professional architecture degree at Harvard, and he has worked as a designer in Tokyo and Chicago, and does work in architectural theory. He has taught and lectured on surrealism in the US, UK, Europe, and the Middle East. Currently he is the Presidential (Assistant) Professor of Architecture at the University of Oklahoma, where his is affiliate faculty in Film Studies, Art History and International Studies.

1. Introduction 2. "Un Salon au Fond d'un Lac": The Domestic Spaces of Surrealism 3. Aragon's Armoire 4. "Home Poor Heart": The Architecture of Cornell's Desire 5. Matta's Lucid Landscap 6. Menace: Surrealist Interference of Space 7. Daphne's Legacy: Architecture, Psychoanalysis and Petrification in Spyros 8. The Ghost in the Machine 9. "The Gift of Time": Le Corbusier Reading Bataille 10. Introjection and Projection: Frederick Kiesler and his Dream-Machine 11. Invernizzi's Exquisite Corpse - The Villa Girasole 12. The Casa Malaparte: A Metaphysical Architecture 13. Modernist Urbanism and its Monsters 14. Surrealism and the Irrational Embellishment of Paris 15. Re-Enchanting the City: The Utopian Practices of the Paris Group of the Jill Fenton Surrealist Movement 16. Landscape Surrealism 17. Surreal City: The Case of Brasília 18. Latencies and Imago: Blanchot and the Shadow City of Surrealism 19. Surrealism's Unexplored Possibilities in Architecture 20. The Most Architectural Thing 21. Acropolis, Now!