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The Eyes of the Skin: Architecture and the Senses QUOTES

The Eyes of the Skin: Architecture and the Senses QUOTES

1 " The impact of the sense of vision on philosophy is well summed up by Peter Sloterdijk: 'The eyes are the organic prototype of philosophy. Their enigma is that they not only can see but are also able to see themselves seeing. "

― Juhani Pallasmaa , The Eyes of the Skin: Architecture and the Senses

2 " It is pleasurable to press a door handle shining from the thousands of hands that have entered the door before us; the clean shimmer of ageless wear has turned into an image of welcome and hospitality. The door handle is the handshake of the building. The tactile sense connects us with time and tradition: through impressions of touch we shake the hands of countless generations. "

― Juhani Pallasmaa , The Eyes of the Skin: Architecture and the Senses

3 " The door handle is the handshake of the building. "

― Juhani Pallasmaa , The Eyes of the Skin: Architecture and the Senses

4 " I confront the city with my body; my legs measure the length of the arcade and the width of the square; my gaze unconsciously projects my body onto the facade of the cathedral, where it roams over the mouldings and contours, sensing the size of recesses and projections; my body weight meets the mass of the cathedral door, and my hand grasps the door pull as I enter the dark void behind. I experience myself in the city, and the city exists through my embodied experience. The city and my body supplement and define each other. I dwell in the city and the city dwells in me. "

― Juhani Pallasmaa , The Eyes of the Skin: Architecture and the Senses

5 " The computer is usually seen as a solely beneficial invention, which liberates human fantasy and facilitates efficient design work. I wish to express my serious concern in this respect, at least considering the current role of the computer in education and the design process. 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, a retinal journey. The computer creates a distance between the maker and the object, whereas drawing by hand as well as working with models put the designer in a haptic contact with the object, or space. In our imagination, the object is simultaneously held in the hand and inside the head, and the imagined and projected physical image is modelled by our embodied imagination. We are inside and outside of the conceived object at the same time. "

― Juhani Pallasmaa , The Eyes of the Skin: Architecture and the Senses

6 " The elements of architecture are not visual units or gestalt; they are encounters, confrontations that interact with memory. "

― Juhani Pallasmaa , The Eyes of the Skin: Architecture and the Senses

7 " Architecture domesticates limitless space and enables us to inhabit it [...] "

― Juhani Pallasmaa , The Eyes of the Skin: Architecture and the Senses

8 " Our bodies and movements are in constant interaction with the environment; the world and the self inform and redefine each other constantly. The percept of the body and the image of the world turn into one single continuous existential experience; there is no body separate from its domicile in space, and there is no space unrelated to the unconscious image of the perceiving self. "

― Juhani Pallasmaa , The Eyes of the Skin: Architecture and the Senses

9 " The gradually growing hegemony of the eye seems to be parallel with the development of Western ego-consciousness and the gradually increasing separation of the self and the world; vision separates us from the world whereas the other senses unite us with it. "

― Juhani Pallasmaa , The Eyes of the Skin: Architecture and the Senses

10 " Architecture is essentially an extension of nature into the man-made realm, providing the ground for perception and the horizon of experiencing and understanding the world. It is not an isolated and self-sufficient artifact; it directs our attention and existential experience to wider horizons. Architecture also gives a conceptual and material structure to societal institutions, as well as to the conditions of daily life. It concretises the cycle of the year, the course of the sun and the passing of the hours of the day. "

― Juhani Pallasmaa , The Eyes of the Skin: Architecture and the Senses

11 " Modernist design at large has housed the intellect and the eye, but it has left the body and the other senses, as well as our memories, imagination and dreams, homeless. "

― Juhani Pallasmaa , The Eyes of the Skin: Architecture and the Senses

12 " Instead of an existentially grounded plastic and spatial experience, architecture has adopted the psychological strategy of advertising and instant persuasion; buildings have turned into image products detached from existential depth and sincerity. "

― Juhani Pallasmaa , The Eyes of the Skin: Architecture and the Senses

13 " Bir sanat eseri, bilinçsiz olarak söyleşilen bir başka kişi işlevi görür. "

― Juhani Pallasmaa , The Eyes of the Skin: Architecture and the Senses

14 " the poet speaks not only ‘on the threshold of being’, as Gaston Bachelard notes,43 but also on the threshold of language. Equally, the task of art and architecture in general is to reconstruct the experience of an undifferentiated interior world, in which we are not mere spectators, but to which we inseparably belong. "

― Juhani Pallasmaa , The Eyes of the Skin: Architecture and the Senses

15 " The inhumanity of contemporary architecture and cities can be understood as the consequence of the neglect of the body and the senses, and an imbalance in our sensory system. "

― Juhani Pallasmaa , The Eyes of the Skin: Architecture and the Senses

16 " The body knows and remembers. Architectural meaning derives from archaic responses and reactions remembered by the body and the senses. "

― Juhani Pallasmaa , The Eyes of the Skin: Architecture and the Senses

17 " vision separates us from the world whereas the other senses unite us with it "

― Juhani Pallasmaa , The Eyes of the Skin: Architecture and the Senses

18 " But the world of the eye is causing us to live increasingly in a perpetual present, flattened by speed and simultaneity. Visual images have become commodities, as Harvey points out: ‘a rush of images from different spaces almost simultaneously, collapsing the world’s spaces into a series of images on a television screen […] the image of places and spaces becomes as open to production and ephemeral use as any other [commodity]. "

― Juhani Pallasmaa , The Eyes of the Skin: Architecture and the Senses

19 " arhitecture domesticates limitless space and enable us to inhabit it, but it should likewise domesticate endless time and enable us to inhabit the continum of time "

― Juhani Pallasmaa , The Eyes of the Skin: Architecture and the Senses

20 " Mimari imgelerde eyleme yönelik, eylemsel karşılaşma anına yönelik bir ima ya da bir amaç ve "işlev vaadi" vardır. "

― Juhani Pallasmaa , The Eyes of the Skin: Architecture and the Senses