The Iron Rose: Mackintosh and the Psychodynamics of Organizational Design

Abstract

Glaswegian born Charles Rennie Mackintosh is perhaps one of the most notable early contributors to modern(ist) architecture and design In this somewhat exploratory paper, it is my intention to open this relationship up to critical consideration with particular reference to the psychodynamics of these two particular movements within art and design, and the effect this had on the shaping of a sample of organized and organizational spaces in the work of Mackintosh. In particular, I want to suggest that Mackintosh's work represented a particular fusing of the competing psychodynamic drives of order and instinct, ego and id, rationality and sensuality which in turn were materialised in a form which represented, and indeed played out some of the broader socio-cultural tensions of a world gripped by an emerging realization of the consequences of modernity and modernization.