The Eyes of the Skin depicts a classic theory of architecture. The way it is written reflects the author’s inspiration by the Finish National Romanticism movement in the early twentieth century. In this book, the author, Pallasmaa defends the importance of touch in the comprehension of our everyday spaces. He discusses the hegemony of touch and how the other senses are an extension of it. In this book, Pallasmaa expands his arguments in two long essays. The way he organizes his debates, shows his obvious interest in the National Romanticism of Finland, which includes experiencing indigenous art, and mimicking primitive nature.
Showing influence from philosophers such as Merleau-Ponty, Heidegger and Husserl, the first part of the book is aimed both toward criticizing the visual-based thinking of Western culture, and advocating touch. He also argues against visual-based Western architecture. He shows his fascination with traditional architecture, which unlike Western architecture, was based on the wisdom of the body. He writes that “Construction in traditional cultures is guided by the body in the same way that a bird shapes its nest by the movements of its body” (P.26)
Following that the second essay emphasises the importance of multi-sensory perception in architecture. He claims that multi-sensory perception of architectural construct induces a sense of living space, memory and imagination, home, and silence. He believes that an understanding of architecture should be achieved through the conscious experience of looking at an architectural task through the sensory impression it makes, and it is not the result of morphological characteristics or stylistic features.
He explains the significance of Hegel’s notion of touch. Accord...
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...is kind of environment, wearing glasses can shift reality to virtuality and the final perception is nothing except an accumulation of illusion.
Both of those approaches are unbalanced. One with its poetic regrets and sorrow for going back to nature and building with mere natural materials, and the other by concentrating on vision and the illusion of reality and building with virtual technology, which are barely liveable.
Although Pallasmaa’s excessive interest in looking at an object from inside results in his failure to see his own argument clearer from outside, the Eyes of the Skin is still a valuable reference of architectural theory. It is written with a pen of someone who considers architecture as a work of art. Despite its classical context, it is a tasteful work, which tries to apply the critical philosophy of ocularcentrism to the architectural precinct.
This report is an ekphrasis of John Hejduk’s drawing “Study for Wall House.” Ekphrasis writings intend to compare and unite elements that may be physically visible and elements that may be more conceptual. This report will endeavor to visualize Hejduk’s drawing through the views of physical and metaphysical elements, to expose connections through visual and conceptual perspectives.
True architects are needed to create architectural beauty and they do so by using “elements which are capable of affecting our senses, and of rewarding the desire of our eyes...the sight of them affects us immediately” (16). Le Corbusier’s says that we must standardize architecture with respect to function so that we can mass produce it until we perfect its aesthetic through competition and innovation. Le Corbusier believed that Architecture schools weren’t teaching students correctly and that engineers would be the ones who save architecture. Architecture is a thing of plastic emotion. “It should use elements capable of striking our senses, of satisfying our visual desires…arranging them in a way that the sight of them clearly affects
But these contrived differences give rise to esthetic difficulties too. Because inherent differences—those that come from genuinely differing uses—are lacking among the buildings and their settings, the contrivances repre...
In conclusion, the debate between aesthetics and functionalism has been around for a long time. It becomes clear however, through research, that the first thing architects consider is function, and then aesthetics. It is because of this approach that aesthetics becomes somewhat of a by-product of the whole design process. By looking at examples of various buildings, it is apparent that aesthetics is important to structure and in many instances has been successfully coupled with function. But in no circumstance should aesthetics take precedence over the function and practicality of a building. It seems more likely that a happy medium between function and aesthetics can be reached, on a project by project basis, and then applied to the design process of creating the building.
The pavilion is significant figure in the history of modern architecture, regarded to be influential with its open plan and use of exotic material. There is a blurred spatial demarcation where the interior becomes an exterior and exterior becomes the interior. The structure constantly offers new perspectives and experiences, as visitors discover and rediscover in the progress of moving throughout the in’s and out’s, a non directional conforming circulating movement pattern. To facilitate this movement, even though it is a visually simplistic plan, its complexity is derived from the strategic layout of walls with its intimation of an infinite freedom of
People are made of complexities and contradictions. Venturi recognized that buildings should be complex and complicated, too. He theorized and built buildings inspired by this principle, and succeeded because of his emphasis on individual experience and the interaction between humanity and architectural forms. In pursuit of this goal, his pluralist and revolutionary style of architecture embraced difference and ambiguity and rejected the rigid rules of modernism. While undoubtedly influenced by Venturi’s ideas, later postmodern architects failed to live up to his principles by forming their own inflexible rules and not concentrating on the human experience with buildings.
The essence of modern architecture lays in a remarkable strives to reconcile the core principles of architectural design with rapid technological advancement and the modernization of society. However, it took “the form of numerous movements, schools of design, and architectural styles, some in tension with one another, and often equally defying such classification, to establish modernism as a distinctive architectural movement” (Robinson and Foell). Although, the narrower concept of modernism in architecture is broadly characterized by simplification of form and subtraction of ornament from the structure and theme of the building, meaning that the result of design should derive directly from its purpose; the visual expression of the structure, particularly the visual importance of the horizontal and vertical lines typical for the International Style modernism, the use of industrially-produced materials and adaptation of the machine aesthetic, as well as the truth to materials concept, meaning that the true nat...
The book as a description of modern architecture, its styles and influence succeeds but falls short as a prescriptive methodology. His work is still recalled for the need by modernists to categorize everything into neat little boxes, not necessarily for the sake of uniformity, but for sake of some ambiguity. The ambiguity may be the triumph of this book as post modern architecture era is supposed to create more questions than the answers.
In the process of development of human society, architecture and culture are inseparable. Cuthbert (1985) indicates that architecture, with its unique art form, expresses the level of human culture in different historical stages, as well as the yearning towards the future. According to his article, it can be said that architecture has become one of the physical means for human to change the world and to conquer the nature. Consequently, architecture has been an important component of human civilization. Since 1980s when China started the opening and reforming policy, a variety of architectural ideas, schools and styles have sprung up. Accompanying with a momentum of...
Architecture is the concept of bringing structure, materiality, form and space together as a whole, provide people with enclosed atmosphere to experience. Considering this, it is important to identify that materiality and the purpose of details has been a key methodology to bringing architectural intentions into the design in an affective manner, more over producing an architectural expression. However, this position is rather declining in architecture, reducing tectonics and materiality to being secondary to form and space. With the start of modernism, the attempt to achieve minimalistic style has caused detailing to increasingly develop into a decorative aspect of a building, neglecting its individual contribution to architecture.
in our everyday life. It fails to relate human life and needs to the buildings built.
Remarkably, unlike in the description of art or music, the notion of atmosphere remains largely unaddressed in architecture. Atmosphere, can be argued, is the very initial and immediate experience of space and can be understood as a notion that addresses architectural quality, but the discussion of atmosphere in architecture will always entail, by definition, a certain ambiguity. After all, atmosphere is something personal, vague, ephemeral and difficult to capture in text or design, impossible to define or analyse. Atmosphere, Mark Wigley says, “evades analysis, it’s not easily defined, constructed or controlled”.
In conclusion, although the development of modern architecture and the intervention of computer technology to advocate this development, the contemporary architectural outcomes have became more complex and complicated with potential formulation problems. As a result, the new architecture theories came to put boundary lines between being in the range of these problems and producing elegant modern built environment. The seduction of computer-produced form also enhances architects to involve in seeking for new theories to develop the discipline and work to combine formulization with materialization. Finally, some of these theories are accepted and some other still a controversial aspect in architecture.
Buildings reflect the values and ideas of society within periods. The role of architecture in shaping society and vice versa largely depends on the period in question and who or what affects first. The Enlightenment, and the subsequent period the Post-Enlightenment, reflect the biggest change for current ideas regarding architecture and society and current theories. At the same time, individual identities and understanding of society, progress and truth all follow a similar evolving path. It is during this dramatic shift in thinking that the role of architecture to society and the idea of progress and truth becomes a more complex relationship. How this relationship works and its implications is based on the theory that there is a direct link between the two. One cannot develop without the other. Who leads whom and to what extent they influence each other is evident in architectural trends and pioneering works by architects such as Robert Venturi, Frank Gehry amongst others.
This usually entails the manipulation of texture, proportion and the setting pleasant utilization of sunshine with the intention to realize symmetry, harmony and an accurate equilibrium in complete human life. The essential ideas of good design are pure and to an enormous extent innate. When analyzing the universal properties of sunshine, house, colour and supplies, the inside designer appears to be like at the interplay of the natural legal tips that govern them. The precise design of a room works not only on the customarily ignored senses of odor and listening to but additionally on the emotions. Coloration schemes are selected to copy the mood of a room. Understanding how every side of a design contributes to a common look and feel of a room or area constantly takes precise experience and each architects and designers manipulate these to good