The Inner Studio - Riverside Architectural Press

found in dreams. These stories convey only a small fraction of the
importance of dreams in our lives, but the role of dreams in creativity
has important implications for the built world. Perhaps every
great city should have a place dedicated to the miracle of dreaming.
What is clear is that after centuries in which the dream was
thought to be an outdated occult fragment of the psyche consigned
to uncivilized or unstable peoples, it has re-emerged as a legitimate
and modern part of every human being. We are most fortunate not
to have lost our capacity to dream because working with our
dreams may prove to be uniquely helpful in allowing us to live
more sane lives in the modern world. Freud stated that the dream
was the royal road to the unconscious. Strangely, it also has the
possibility of being a direct and valuable road to the renewal of
the built world. Dreams are rich with architectural artifacts and
settings whose meanings can help cool our reactions to the problems
we live with, and give us hope in the face of those we think
we cannot bear.
The Structure of the Dream
The whole dream-work is essentially subjective, and a dream is a theatre
in which the dreamer is himself the scene, the player, the prompter, the
producer, the author, the public and the critic.
–C.G. JUNG
THE INNER STUDIO
The interpretation of a dream is a spiritual craft. We need to shift
our usual way of looking so that we are more involved in learning
to connect with the mystery and many moods of the dream.
Dreams, no matter how simple or surreal, have a beginning,
middle, and end, just like any other narrative. A dream usually
begins with a very particular description of a place. The purpose of
the “setting” in the dream is literally to “set the scene” for the action
that follows. In dreams, we find the setting being used symbolically
to express the dreamer’s psychological place in the world. It tells us
where the dreamer is, but from the point of view of the unconscious.
For example, I may be sitting in my old kitchen, which may
point toward the need for me to assimilate something from the
past, or I may be walking across a busy street, which may point to
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