Dr Lorens Holm
Contact
Biography
Dr. Lorens Holm is Reader in Architecture and Director of the Geddes Institute for Urban Research at the University of Dundee. At Dundee he runs the Rooms+Cities design research unit, which uses architectural theory to open up a space for designing new forms of city and social life. He has taught at the Architectural Association, the Bartlett, the Mackintosh, and Washington University in St. Louis. He is a registered architect in the UK and the State of Massachusetts.
His teaching/research focuses on the thought threads that link architecture to philosophy, history, psychoanalysis, and machines. Publications include Brunelleschi Lacan Le Corbusier: architecture space and the construction of subjectivity (Routledge 2010) and, with John Hendrix, Architecture and the Unconscious (Routledge 2016). His papers have appeared in The Journal of Architecture, Perspecta, Critical Quarterly, Architecture Theory Review, and Assemblage. He has his PhD in Humanities from the London Consortium Doctoral Program, University of London; his Masters of Architecture from the Harvard University Graduate School of Design; his degree in Philosophy from University College Cardiff.
Research
I have two parallel research trajectories:
Theorisations of architecture and its human subject – the occupant – that draw on psychoanalytic and philosophic thinking and literature. This work draws links between the spatial and linguistic environments. It is interesting and it is important because it has the potential to transform the way we think about our relationship to the world we construct in order to live well in it.
Theoretical design approaches to understanding city centres and city edges, the urban/rural interface and the public/private interface. This trajectory is developed in dialogue with my design-led PhD students and my research-led Masters design students in the Rooms+Cities unit.
Recent projects include an architectural critique of Lacanian psychoanalysis and a critical reboot of the polymathic botanist planner Patrick Geddes for the 21st Century.
We use texts and architecture plans, the close critical reading of texts and architectural plans, and the exhibition format, as research tools.
Media availability
I am available for media commentary on my research.
Contact Corporate Communications for media enquiries.
Areas of expertise
- Architecture and urban planning
PhD Projects
Principal supervisor
Stories
Press release
The best way to understand society is to look at the cities it has created, say organisers of a major architecture conference taking place in Dundee this week