"The Eyes of the Skin": Part 1

itslizschlatter
Mar 7, 2019
3 min read

Updated: Apr 21, 2019

My views and opinions on the reading related to part 1.

The book cover of The Eyes of The Skin: Architecture and the Senses by Juhani Pallasmaa — The Eyes of The Skin: Architecture and the Senses by Juhani Pallasmaa

Preface: Thin Ice by Steven Holl

Holl encourages a lot of imagery in his short text. With references to many important works such as:

"Questions of Perception: Phenomenology of Architecture"
"Experiencing Architecture" by Steen Eiler Rasmussen (1952)
The chapters "The Intertwining-The Chiasm" & "Horizon of Things" in "The Visible & the Invisible" by Merleau-Ponty
and obviously Juhani Pallasmaa's "The Eyes of the Skin"

Holl refers to Pallasmaa's "The Eyes of the Skin" to have a clearer and tighter argument since Steen Eiler Rasmussen's text from 1952. I enjoyed how in the beginning of the text Holl gives the imagery of ice over a lake slowly melting til it cracks, and then refers to the same imagery at the end of his text with:

"Today the 'depth of our being' stands on thin ice"

Causing the reader to immediately think of his description in the beginning of the car slowly sinking due to driving on the thin ice. Emitting the thought that in depth thinking in relation to designing a space is heading under the water if we do not encourage

"thoughts that go beyond the horizon and 'beneath the skin'."

Introduction: Touching the World by Juhani Pallasmaa

After reading the introduction, I was hooked. I enjoyed and respected Pallasmaa's view of the world and encouragement of the integration of senses. Pallasmaa says

"I had become increasingly concerned about the bias towards vision, the suppression of other senses in the way architecture was conceived, taught and critiqued, and about the consequent disappearance of sensory and sensual qualities from the arts and architecture"

Pallasmaa goes on to talk about how we can see with our skin. That it is the very essence of the lived experience is moulded by hapticity and peripheral unfocused vision. Touch is what integrates our experience in the world, our body remembers who we are and where we are

"it is evident that life-enhancing architecture has to address all the senses simultaneously and fuse our image of self with our experience of the world."

Pallasmaa expresses that shapes and spaces are to be moulded to be "touched by the eyes". He spoke a lot about how the effects peripheral vision is significant to our peripheral and mental systems.He expresses how

"computer imaging tends to flatten our magnificent, multi sensory, simultaneous and synchronic capacities of imagination by turning the design process into a passive visual manipulation, retinal journey"

That a creator should be drawing or modelling as it helps make the artist be integrated with the design as well as outside.

"Creative work calls for a bodily and mental identification, empathy and compassion... Peripheral vision integrates us with the space while focused vision pushes us out of the space."

I enjoy Pallasmaa's views on architecture and spaces and how the senses are a significant part of design and that our other senses have become neglected due to the sole focus on vision but as Pallasmaa say focused vision is what pushes us out. Therefore I would hope to be more aware of my senses with designs to begin to create works that are not only visually simulating but simultaneously stimulate the other senses to create architecture that is life enhancing.

Part 1

Pallasmaa talks extensively on how sight is considered to be the noblest sense. The highest on the hierarchy and how due to this we have disregarded our other senses. He expresses that we rely too heavily on our senses of sight and due to this we are in "consequent bias in cognition". He goes on to say

"It is thought-provoking that this sense of estrangement and detachment is often evoked by the technologically most advanced settings, such as hospitals and airports. the dominance of the eye and the suppression of the other senses tends to push us into detachment, isolation and exteriority."

I find this extremely fascinating as it sure did provoke my thoughts and as i questioned it the more i felt the understanding of what Pallasmaa meant and how much truth/evidence was behind such a statement. He goes on to talk about the criticisms of ocularcentism, many being french writers.