If you are expecting a funny blog, you will be dissapointed!

When I was studying political sciences in Innsbruck, I had to combine my field of study with a second one. I chose media studies, there I learned about Monsieur Jacques Lacan.

Lacan was a French psychoanalyst and psychiatrist. Amongst many things, he developed the theory of the Mirror-stage. As I have it in mind, it states that around the age of 2, children begin to perceive themselves as a single person (before that, they think they are an “extension” of their mothers). Also at this stage, children begin to perceive their fathers (or father figures) as something new, as a stranger who does not belong to his/her “mother-child universe”.

Lacan talks about things like mother, home and paradise and differentiates them from other things as father, the unknown and earth/society. He also talks about doors, things that allow us to switch from the safe indoor to the dangerous outdoor.

In a lesson, I used Lacan for a presentation about “The last tango in Paris”, but right now, I am not in Paris, but in Tbilisi, and here there are beautiful balconies everywhere.

I personally have no idea how architects see balconies. Maybe for Lacan they could have been a way to experience the wild outside and stay safe at the same time. Contrary to doors, which leave you outside on your own and unprotected.

Friends of mine built in 2008 the biggest balcony I ever saw. It was a wooden structure that allowed people to get closer to the dangerous Inn River (people in Innsbruck call it wilder Bach – wild creek).

I will stay with my interpretation à la Lacan. A balcony may be a safe place which gives you enough freedom to hear cars passing by, feel the wind and get wet if it rains, but in Tbilisi, balconies are more than that. They are aesthetic and give character to all houses, the old, the modern, the poor and the rich. Here some pics.