This research analyses the historically specific formal, signifying structures of architectural conceptualisation through the use of depth models including structuralism and psychoanalysis. As historically specific, the rules of formation of these structures are only variably formulated in their own right. In this context, what has been referred to as a 'positive unconscious' is addressed here as the sine qua non in a discursive formation of architectural knowledge and creative activity. For this reason, this proposal does not concern itself with a meta-methodology or an arborescent structure through which the various elements of its analysis might be seamlessly and uniformly joined and understood. The research coalesces initially on empirical convention: on bUildings, cities, and in a looser sense on the constructed environment; on architecture, that is, which in its own seductive way has sought to encourage us to believe that our understanding of existence is real. What is demonstrated in the constellation of examples chosen for this research is that coherence within the subject's discipline has been established on an enduring conception of architecture as a signifying rather than as an historically developmental, objective, functional, and temporally consistent form of practice.