CAMOUFLAGE

The desire for camouflage is a desire to feel connected--to find our place in the world and to feel at home. In Camouflage Neil Leach analyzes this desire and its consequences for architectural concerns. Design, Leach argues, can aid the process of assimilation we go through when we adapt to our surroundings. Design can provide a form of connectivity--a mediation between us and our environment--and it can contribute to a sense of belonging. Architecture, and indeed all forms of design and creativity--fashion, art, cinema, and others--can be an effective realm for forging a sense of belonging and establishing an identity. Camouflage offers a range of overlapping and intersecting theoretical perspectives--from an overview of psychoanalytic insights to an account of the magical properties of architectural models--that together suggest a way to rethink our relationship to the world and the role that design plays in that relationship.