The Cleaving of House and Home: A Lacanian Analysis of Architectural Aesthetics

Drawing on Lacanian psychoanalysis and digital media studies, this thesis explores the radical disconnect between the home as a fantasmatic object of desire and the house as the space in which the fantasy of home is staged. By analyzing the house as a prosthetic replacement for our originary home (the womb), the aim is to uncover how architectural aesthetics of the Victorian, modern, and postmodern house respond to this irreconcilable gap, and why each aesthetic necessarily fails to create a more homely home. Considering recent trends in architecture, the thesis then examines the coincidence of the “small house” movement with the transformation of the house into a “media centre.” New digital media technologies have opened up a new virtual world to explore that radically defies and blurs our conventional understanding of interior and exterior spaces. While such technologies open up new possibilities for reimagining our relation to the house, they are also potentially disruptive and dystopic.