Abstract
Building upon the notion of the symptom in psychoanalysis, described by Jacques Lacan as a metaphor, this paper polemically extends this juxtaposition to architecture and urbanism. It does this firstly by questioning the sanity of le Corbusier’s urban plans, which seem so paranoid precisely because of their attempt to erase any symptoms of the city considered as a sick organism. Secondly, the argument proceeds by discussing the protagonist of Frank Capra’s movie IT'S A WONDERFUL LIFE (1946) who accepts the symptoms, revealed through the metaphor of the knob and is considered as an example of a good architect. Metaphors are thus used here to identify the symptoms of architecture and its pathologies.
Binotto, Johannes