architecture as a layering device

a house is a machine for living dying (2)

the concept of using architecture as a layering system for social status can be traced in the works of Corb and Andrea Palladio before him. A building becomes a make belief environment, where masters live at top levels looking at a sky lit dome representing the heavens above, while lower level is kept for servants and demeaning jobs. (Unwin's twenty buildings every architect should understand)

Similarly, in his chapter on self-consciousness, Hegel talks about a master-slave dialectics. Once one senses greatness in the other, he sees his salvation in the success of the other. But, they are interchangable. When one decides to become the other, he would realise that what he wished for is not so great after all... echoes of Lacan's diagram of desire and the missed encounters with the Real?