Research Information System
Journal of Power, vol.2, no.2, pp.301-315, 2009 (Scopus)
This study provides a socio-psychoanalytic lens by means of the works of psychoanalysts Sigmund Freud and Jacques Lacan together with social theorists Michel Foucault and Pierre Bourdieu in understanding why New York City has been expanding vertically and what this architectonic verticality tells us about power. The study focuses on Manhattan because it is the very place where the skyscraper form was fully exploited. It sets the historical and economic background for the skyscraper form, offers a psychoanalytic lens to the relationship between the subject and the built environment, establishes the workings of diffuse power relations as mediated by the built environment, and examines the relationship between the subject and the skyscraper form as a masked power dispersal as exemplified by the proposed ‘Freedom Tower’ in New York. The conclusion establishes the assertion that the skyscraper form mediates masked power relations, becoming an objectification of the ego ideal. © 2009 Taylor & Francis Group, LLC.