an analysis of slow-pace’s mental structure in architecture and cinema from jacques lacan’s point of view*

abstract: focusing on spiritual and mental needs of slow-pace people i.e. mentally retarded people has been always an integral part of designing spaces for them. according to lacan’s way of thinking, real, imaginary and symbolic orders are three ways of expression through human’s reality language and it usually considers reality as a combination of symbolic and imaginary orders. this research analyzes architectural spaces of dodes-ka-den directed by kurosawa in 1970 and it considers lacan’s three principal orders, real, imaginary and symbolic, from the viewpoint of a slow-pace person named rokkuchan who narrates the story. as an appropriate way to create a connection between what rokkuchan assumes and the symbols made in human minds of his society, he visualizes realities existing in poverty, fear and death in shanty-dwelling society in one point and goodness in another, with the contrast between rokkuchan and his society, continuously throughout the film in particular architectural spaces. the research contains an analytical- descriptive method with a combination of quantitative (theory to case) and qualitative (case to theory) methods. lacan’s way of thinking is a deep functional psychoanalytical critique which tries to reveal hidden points of human existence dimensions.  kurosawa creates the same viewpoint when making unconscious feeling of social relations’ precision. explicating mirror stage theory, lacan explains children psychology and social theory as an external image of the child which he himself accepts. he introduces three principal orders which are models for analyzing dodes-ka-den. lacan supposes imaginary order as one which humiliated human in modern era, i.e. it is evident dimension of personality. symbolic order depends on the environment an individual grows in. real order is the same hidden personality which is meaningless and nonsense sometimes.  kurosawa exploits this tool to organize shanty-dwelling society symbolically and from the viewpoint of a slow-pace person named “rokkuchan”. he also reminds the contrast between japan’s modern life, the symbol of which is car, and its traditional society with houses as a symbol, at the beginning of the film and he continues this throughout the film. like a train and a train driver sometimes, rokkuchan drives life in lacan’s three principal orders. he displays shanty-dwellers’ life with its unpleasant dimensions. rokkuchan’s life train passes through all these sorrows and the dwellers, as wagons of this train, are another life train. this research gained a result which shows that spatial sense of slow-paces can be found out through analyzing film spaces and shanty-dwelling society represents facts of slow-paces’ lives, e.g. designing spaces based on sick, crazy and retarded minds among this society in dodes-ka-den. regarding lacanian psychoanalytical orders, kurosawa was influential in designing scenes, inner architecture, landscape and sense of place. he has been successful presenting architectural spaces in this regard except for parts related to imaginary order, since they were formed artificially. he visualizes all unpleasant issues a slow-pace may face with during life.  eventually, providing a method of viewing cinema, architecture and psychoanalytical analysis, hidden concepts of space design regarding a slow-pace teenager are presented from kurosawa and lacan’s viewpoint.