(THIS ARTICLE IS MACHINE TRANSLATED by Google from Norwegian)
Juhani Pallasmaa. The architecture and the senses. The publisher's archive, 2014
Finnish architect Juhani Pallasmaa's book: The architecture and the senses, just translated into Danish, is currently inspiring the world's art studios. We meet the cold, transparent box architecture here sanselig architecture that integrates our entire sense apparatus – a prerequisite for a socially-ethical and politically responsible architecture and for the way we design our houses and cities.
Threatened art. Architecture is human situations. Architecture is existential because its task is to create a framework for the ways things appear, and the way we experience them. A phenomenological approach that, according to Finnish architect Juhani Pallasmaa, is to pave the way for "empathy and empathy for what it means to live". Architecture has a social-political responsibility where the ability to imagine human situations is the most important. Pallasmaa's book is part of a long-standing project that criticizes modern construction characterized by either instrumental standardization or aesthetic beautification guided by commercial seduction. Pallasmaa has traveled the world over the last twenty years with his book and his message to make architects become thinking people. The book is a boon to «architecture that is a threatened art form», a subject that lacks resistance to the blind growth of the market. And thus, the glare of the falsehood that belongs to the other side of the economic progress that drives many buildings and initiatives is missing today. Ugly buildings along our coastlines, and large centers that destroy not only something about the landscape, but also something in man. Pallasmaa wants back to the elemental, to the senses, and not least to how the senses work together. A work that began with Steen Eiler Rasmussen's classic work About experiencing architecture. If the quality of a house, a room or a place depends on whether and how it moves me, it will be necessary to focus attention on the interaction of the senses.
The monstrous eye. Pallasmaa expresses great concern about the dominance of the sense of sight, and speaks of an "optical hedonism" that characterizes our time. He writes: “The inhumanity that characterizes today's architecture and cities is because we have neglected the body and the senses and created an imbalance in our sensory apparatus. Among other things, the increasing experience of isolation, distance and loneliness in the modern technological world can be related to a skew in our use of the senses. It is thought-provoking that it is especially in technologically advanced environments such as hospitals and airports that we experience this alienation and distancing. Here, the dominance of the eye and the suppression of the other senses create a sense of separation, isolation and distance. "The art of the eye" has given us many impressive and interesting structures, but it has not promoted our sense of being rooted in the world. "
Digital design tends to accelerate the workflow by triggering one for fast progress. In the acceleration community's use of images, only sight can follow. But the easily digestible rendering and identification has created "a narcissistic and nihilistic eye" which "weakens our capacity for empathy, compassion and participation in the world". Glass facades, transparent homes and smart, smooth surfaces please the eye, but instead of supporting a mental or societal learning process, these contribute to distancing and isolating our senses. Integrating our experience of the world, according to Pallasmaa, requires greater attention to the bodily way of sensing. Our reality is voiced or oral before it is visual. Pallasmaa grasps the language and the lyric – because just as the lyric creates meaning by "voting the world", "the task of architecture is to recreate the experience of an undifferentiated world of which we are not just spectators, but an inseparable part". That's it haptic or tactile character of the sensation which, according to Pallasmaa, is supposed to save the vision from centric vision. Bodily touch and sensual familiarity with the place sharpen the sense of remembrance, reflection and an intensification of everyday life and social responsibility.
"The door handle is the building's handshake, it can be welcoming and polite or dismissive and aggressive." Juhani Pallasmaa
Integrating the senses. «Every breathtaking architectural experience involves many senses: Spatiality, materiality and aspect ratio are measured both with the eyes, ears, nose, skin, tongue, bones and muscles. The architecture confirms our presence; the human experience of being in the world, which is basically an experience of the self. The architectural experience involves not only the sight or the five classic senses, but several sensory areas that interact and blend with each other. ” When we let our fingertips slide over the details of a surface, the patina of the wall, new, rare or old things, it is a sensual touch that both looks and feels. This is the teaching of the French philosopher Merleau-Ponty: To see is to touch. I only know the meaning of a smooth street because my body has felt one. The same with a distance. The sight tells us what the sensation already knows. We are in the world first and foremost with our body. And the task of architecture is to live in our way of being in bodily contact with the place, movement and things. "Our eyes touch distant surfaces, contours and edges, and the unconscious feeling determines whether the experience is pleasant or unpleasant." From the big surfaces to the smallest things: "The door handle is the building's handshake, it can be welcoming and polite or dismissive and aggressive." Alvar Aalto's Villa Mairea (1938–39) or Peter Zumthor: Thermal Bath (1990–96), speaks to movement as well as the sense of touch.
Intimacy. We say that a house, or certain things, or place "speaks to us." A familiarity that throws away meaning and history. We engage in a place when this state of tension is in play. We know a place at the bottom of the garden where thoughts and daydreams are stimulated by the dim light, by the play of the shadows. We retreat to a corner of the house to gather our thoughts. We are looking for a wall heated by the sun's rays. When the architect combines smooth and checkered material, it's an invitation. I need to feel like touching things. Once the architect has ensured that the functional basis is in order, he must familiarize himself with the human situations. A sympathetic project, but Pallasmaa's descriptions tend towards a postulating and poignant style that sometimes goes beyond the content. For example, when he reports on the dim lighting and writes that: “the dark interior of Alvar Aalto's City Hall in Säynätsalo City Hall recreates a mysterious and mythological sense of community; darkness gives a sense of solidarity and highlights the spoken word », he makes it easy for himself. Mexican architect Luis Barraghan, Pallasmaa's great inspiration, was also known for cultivating an authentic spirit architect. Elsewhere in the book, Pallasmaa also jumps into a unique experience. But quite busy, it is a matter of lengthy learning processes that require an ability to be receptive. What he does not get is that learning – architectural perception and presence – is more about receptivity than mastery. He wants to bring architecture back to the most elemental – the proximity of the senses – but exactly this is also the most difficult. In his defense, it can be said that the sublime, for Pallasmaa – unlike the Romans – is accessible to everyone. The sublime requires humility. Faced with the masculine, the heroic, self-celebrating, romantic he puts the vulnerable imagination, the man who tries himself, who draws attention to the detail, the shadow play, the retreat from the demands of performance, production and visibility of late capitalism. He is also more inspired by film people like Hitchcock, painters like Rembrandt, poets like Rilke than modern architects like Le Corbusier. His sentimental surplus is a sensation ordinary life – not the close, understood as the homogeneous family idyll. But something towards the good life where man is able to see reality and his fellow human beings in a selfless way where the ability for attention is crucial. Here the book has its strength. And so I can bear with the tendency of Pallasmaa to seek the authentic in nature and its materials. Because even though I share his concern with digital forcing in work processes, can the support of technical support in digital working methods help create a new, surprising collaboration between the senses.
Carnera is a writer and essayist.
ac.mpp@cbs.dk
