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Juhani Pallasmaa

The celebrated architect, educator and author Juhani Pallasmaa

is well-known for having forged a new understanding of perception
and the experiential in architecture with his seminal book The Eyes
of the Skin: Architecture and the Sensory (3rd edn, Wiley, 2012).
Here he describes how imagining human situations is at the core
of architecture, relying on the interrelationship of physical space,
behaviour and the capacity for mental tuning.

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Why is it that architecture and architects, unlike film and

filmmakers, are so little interested in people during the
design process? Why are they so theoretical, so distant
from life in general?1
Jan Vrijman, Filmmakers, Spacemakers, The Berlage
Papers, 11, January 1994

Henry Moore in his studio,

Hertfordshire, UK, 1972
below top: A sculptor thinks of form,
volume and space in an embodied
and multisensory manner. He even
imagines aspects that are beyond the
grasp of human senses, such as the
insides of solids.

Albrecht Drer, Man Drawing a

Reclining Woman, 1538
previous spread: Perspective projection
makes the viewer an outsider in relation
to the envisioned object or space. This
psychological outsideness and mechanical
nature of the projection also suppresses
the viewers empathic imagination.

As I studied architecture at the Helsinki University of

Technology in the early 1960s, my professor, Aulis Blomstedt
(190679), used to teach us: The talent of imagining human
situations is more important for an architect than the gift
of fantasising spaces.2 The conscious interest of architects
in those years was directed to formal, visually aesthetic and
compositional qualities of design, and I did not quite grasp
the importance of the statement. Through my own design
work and studies in the philosophical essences of architecture,
I have gradually come to appreciate the significance of this
view; qualities of physical space, behaviour and our mental
tuning are interrelated, and when designing physical spaces
we are also designing mental spaces. Architectural space
is not a mere lifeless frame for our activities, as it guides,
choreographs and stimulates our actions, interests and moods.
Even more importantly, it gives our experiences of being
specific contents and meanings. Every space, place
and situation is tuned in a special way, and they project
specific atmospheres.
Images of Form and Emotion
In my view, there are two kinds, or levels, of imagination:
one that projects formal and geometric images, the other
that simulates the actual sensory, emotive and mental
encounter with the imagined entity. In the first case, the
imaginatively projected object remains outside of the
experiencing self, whereas in the latter case it becomes part
of the persons existential experience and sense of self, as in
the real encounter with material reality. The first imagines
the object in isolation, the second as a lived and experienced
reality in ones life world. The formal imagination is primarily
engaged with topological or geometric facts, whereas the
emphatic imagination evokes human embodied and emotive
experiences, judgements and moods. Maurice Merleau-Ponty
introduced the evocative notion of the flesh of the world3
for the lived reality in which we inseparably dwell, and the
empathic imagination evokes such lived, multi-sensory and
integrated experiences.
The sculptor Henry Moore gives a vivid description of
the simultaneous internalising and imaginative power of
artistic imagination:
This is what the sculptor must do. He must strive
continually to think of, and use form in its full spatial
completeness. He gets the solid shape, as it were, inside
his head he thinks of it, whatever its size, as if holding

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it completely enclosed in the hollow of his hand. He

mentally visualizes a complex form from all round itself;
he knows while he looks at one side what the other side
is like; he identifies himself with its center of gravity, its
mass. Its weight; he realizes its volume, and the space that
the shape displaces in the air.4
This precise account suggests that the act of imagining spaces
and objects is not solely a visual endeavour; it is a process
of embodiment and of feeling the entity as an imaginary
extension of ones own body. Imagination is not a quasivisual projection, as we imagine through our entire embodied
existence. Yet, the sculptor adds a crucial comment on the
role of the intellect: The artist works with a concentration
of his whole personality, and the conscious part of it resolves
conflicts, organizes memories, and prevents him from trying
to walk in two directions at the same time.5
Designing Experiences
True qualities of architecture are not geometric and
formal, intellectual or even aesthetic, as they are existential,
embodied and emotional experiences, and they arise from
the individuals existential encounter with the material
work. Architectural qualities are constituted in experience,
as philosopher John Dewey argued of works of art in his

seminal book Art As Experience (1934).6 By common consent,

the Parthenon is a great work of art. Yet it has aesthetic
standing only as the work becomes an experience for a
human being [A]rt is always the product in experience
of an interaction of human beings with their environment,
the philosopher argues.7 Formal structures and qualities
have their significance in the perceptual process, but they
are intellectual scaffoldings for the experiential and sensory
reality. It needs to be pointed out that even unbuilt projects
and architectural propositions from the mind-blowing spaces
of Giovanni Battista Piranesis Carceri [Prisons] illustrations
(174561) to Daniel Libeskinds Micromegas (1979) can well
be imaginatively projected in the flesh of the world just as any
artistic works. All works of art, in fact, exist simultaneously in
two realms, those of physical matter and of mental imagery.
This dual existence and double focus is fundamental to the
mental essence of art.
Architectural ideas are not usually born as clear and
final forms; they arise as diffuse images, often as formless
bodily feelings, and are eventually developed and concretised
in successive sketches and models, refined and specified in
working drawings, turned into material existence through
numerous hands and machines, and finally experienced as
purposefully functioning utilitarian structures in the context
of life. The essential question in the architectural design
process is this: How can architectural ideas and aspirations,
particularly emotive qualities, emerging initially as immaterial
mental feelings in the design process, be translated and
transferred into the actual building, and finally to the person
experiencing it? And how can such vague and weakly
formalised feelings be communicated? It seems crucial that
the designer masters the entire process in order to mediate
and materialise his or her intentions. Even the greatly varying
perceptual conditions and situations have to be sufficiently
anticipated; the reception also depends on the receivers
cultural background and personal attunement. Paul Valry
poetically points out the extreme subtlety required of the
architect in transmitting experiential intentions:
He gave a like care to all the sensitive points of the
building. You would have thought that it was his own
body he was tending But all these delicate devices were
as nothing compared to those which he employed when
he elaborated the emotions and vibrations of the soul of
the future beholder of his work.8
Phaedrus describes the care by which Eupalinos proceeded
in his design process in the poets dialogue Eupalinos, or The
Architect. My temple must move men as they are moved by
their beloved, Eupalinos was heard to say, Valry adds.9
It is usually understood, I believe, that a sensitive designer
imagines the acts, experiences and feelings of the user of the
space, but I do not believe human empathic capacity works
that way. A sensitive designer places him- or herself in the

role of the anonymous user, and tests the validity of the

ideas through this imaginative personal projection. Thus,
the architect is bound to conceive the design for himor herself in the momentary adapted role of the actual
occupant. At the end of the design process, the architect
offers the building to the user as a gift.
The idea of projecting ones self in the process of
empathic imagination evokes the crucial question: How
does the mental projection take place in collective work,
such as teamwork in a design office? In my view it requires
the sensitivity and fused identity of a musical ensemble
to succeed in this demanding and seemingly impossible
task of a collective imagination. However, teamwork rarely
achieves the intensity and integrity of a work conceived
by a single designer. Group work tends to strengthen the
rational and conscious aspects of design, and it is rather
impossible to think how a deeply emotive and subconscious
work, such as the late churches of Sigurd Lewerentz
(195666), could arise from teamwork they have to be a
result of a singular emotive and empathic imagination.
The design process is a vague and alternating process of
internalisation and projection, thinking and feeling, which
becomes eventually increasingly precise and concrete.
The projected reality is internalised, or introjected, to
use a psychoanalytic term, and the self is simultaneously
projected out into the space. A gifted architect feels
and imagines the building, its countless relationships,
and details as if it were his or her own body, as Valry
suggests above. The geometric and formal properties
can usually be rather precisely identified and imagined
through formal imagination, especially by means of
using technical projective aids, such as axonometric and
perspectival constructions, or computer renderings. The
lived characteristics the building as a setting for activities
and interactions of life call for a multisensory and fully
empathic imagination. The strange fact that computer
renderings usually appear lifeless and emotionless probably
arises from the fact that the process itself does not contain
any emotive or empathic component; it is a result of cold
projective mechanics in mathematicised space.

The design process is a vague and

alternating process of internalisation
and projection, thinking and
feeling, which becomes eventually
increasingly precise and concrete.

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Imaging Moods and Atmospheres

The most ephemeral and complex of these subconscious
mental simulations is the simultaneous grasping of the
entire atmosphere of a space or place. Yet, as Peter Zumthor
reports: I enter a building, see a room, and in the fraction
of a second have this feeling about it.10 Zumthor is here
refering to the experiencing of the mood of a materially
existing room. Yet, a talented designer is likewise capable of
entering an imaginary room in his or her imagination and
sensing the atmosphere and tuned-ness of the space. This
imagination of atmospheres is probably the most demanding
task of imagination. It is similar to the composers skill in
imagining an entire musical work, or the writers task of
imagining the characters, spaces and events of a complete
novel and creating a literary score for an atmosphere.
In her book Dreaming by the Book, the literary philosopher
Elaine Scarry deliberates upon the question as to how a
writers text can evoke such vivid images and feelings in the
readers mind, and she assumes that imaginary vivacity comes
about by reproducing the deep structure of perception.11
The notion of deep structure suggests the engagement of
the unconscious and collective primal layers of memory and
mind. Scarry explains her idea of vividness further: In order
to achieve the vivacity of the material world, the verbal
arts must somehow also imitate its persistence and, most
crucially, its quality of givenness. It seems almost certainly
the case that it is the instructional character of the verbal
arts that fulfils this mimetic requirement for givenness.12
In my view, a similar imaginary vivacity is also required
of the architects mental process in his or her creative
imagination; simply, the ideas and forms have to be set in
the flesh of the world.
An extraordinary imaginative capacity is revealed by
Mozart describing the gradual disintegration of temporal
succession in his creative process:
I spread it (the composition) out broader and clearer, and
at last it gets almost finished in my head, even when it is
a long piece, so that I can see the whole of it at a single
glance in my mind, as if it were a beautiful painting or a
handsome human being; in which way I do not hear it in
my imagination at all as a succession that way it must
come later but all at once, as it were the best of all is
the hearing of it all at once.13
No doubt, a building can be similarly sensed all at once, as a
singular feeling by a genius of spatial imagination. It is not
surprising that musical and spatial intelligences have been
suggested among the dozen categories of human intelligence
beyond the intelligence measured by the IQ test.14
Yet another quality of our perceptual and emotive system
was evoked by Heinrich Wlfflin in his dissertation of 1886:
How is it possible that architectural forms are able to invoke
an emotion or a mood?.15 Yes, how does Michelangelos

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architecture and sculpture evoke such deep feelings of

melancholy, and Mozarts music so delightfully energetic
and optimistic moods? Michelangelo himself argued that
everything in art and architecture arises from the human body,
and indeed, his buildings and sculptures are bodies and muscles
of marble that have fallen into deep and poetic melancholia.
Imagination and Mirror Neurons
The capacity of works of art, even completely nonrepresentational forms and colours, to evoke emotional
reactions in the perceiver has remained a mystery ever
since the issue arose to consciousness over a century ago.
Psychoanalytic theories attempted to explain such mysterious
mental experiences through the idea of the unconscious
projection of self, or fragments of self, on the perceived object.
The recent discovery of the mirror neurons, and theoretical
suggestions arising from this discovery, have opened new
interpretations of this enigma. Neuroscience explains this
mental phenomenon by means of our inherent neural systems
that are specialised for this subconscious imitation. Be like
me,16 is the inherent suggestion of every poem according to
Joseph Brodsky, and here the great poet seems to anticipate
the hidden workings of our mirror neurons before science
identified this surprising neural activity. The capacity of great
artists to intuit neural processes is, in fact, the subject matter
of Jonah Lehrers recent book Proust was a Neuroscientist.17
The writer shows how great artists such as Walt Whitman,
Marcel Proust, Paul Czanne, Igor Stravinsky and Gertrude
Stein anticipated certain neurological findings of today in
their artistic imagination, often more than a century ago.
These examples certainly speak for the amazing capacity of
human empathic imagination. What else would ingenuity be
than the capacity to imagine something that no one else has
ever imagined, and bring that vague vision into the context of
the physical and lived reality?
Imagination can rightly be named our most human and
important mental faculty. Neurological and philosophical
investigations have established that imagination is
crucial even for our processes of perception, thinking and
memorising. Altogether, we create the world in which we live
through our imaginative capacity. It is evident that we could
not even have an ethical sense without being able to imagine
the consequences of our alternative choices and actions.
The Gift of Imagination
What I have tried to point out in this condensed essay is the
complexity and amazing capacity of creative imagination in
general, and specifically of empathic imagination.18 While
developing new technical extensions of our mental capacities,
we should not underestimate the significance of our own
imagination fortified by our capacity for empathy and
compassion. Without the gift of empathic imagination, our
buildings would remain mere utilitarian and technical devices,
without the poetic aura that can dignify human life. 1

Notes
1. Jan Vrijman, Filmmakers, Spacemakers,
The Berlage Papers, 11, January 1994.
2. Memorised quote from Professor Aulis
Blomstedts lectures in the early 1960s.
3. Maurice Merleau-Ponty discusses
the notion of the flesh in his essay The
Intertwining The Chiasm, in Claude Lefort
(ed), The Visible and Invisible, Northwestern
University Press (Evanston, IL), 1964, p 9.
4. Henry Moore, The Sculptor Speaks, in
Philip James (ed), Henry Moore on Sculpture,
MacDonald (London), 1966, pp 624.
5. Ibid, p 62.
6. John Dewey, Art As Experience, Berkeley
Publishing Group (New York), 1980.
7. Ibid, p 4.
8. Paul Valry, Dialogues, Pantheon Books
(New York), 1956, p 74.
9. Ibid, p 75.
10. Peter Zumthor, Atmospheres
Architectural Environments Surrounding
Objects, Birkhuser (Basel), 2006, p 13.
11. Elaine Scarry, Dreaming by the Book,
Princeton University Press (Princeton, NJ),
1999, p 9.
12. Ibid, p 30.
13. Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart as quoted in
Anton Ehrenzweig, The Psychonalysis of

Artistic Vision and Hearing: An Introduction to

a Theory of Unconscious Perception, Sheldon
Press (London), 1975, pp 1078.
14. Howard Gardner, Intelligence Reframed:
Multiple Intelligences for the 21st Century,
Basic Books (New York), 1999.
15. Heinrich Wlfflin as quoted in Harry
F Mallgrave, Know Thyself, or what the
designers can learn from the contemporary
biological sciences, unpublished manuscript,
2013, p 5 in Sarah Robinson and Juhani
Pallasmaa (eds), Mind in Architecture:
Neuroscience, Embodiment and the Future
of Design, MIT Press (Cambridge, MA),
forthcoming/201415.
16. Joseph Brodsky, An Immodest Proposal,
On Grief and Reason, Farrar, Straus and
Giroux (New York), 1997, p 206.
17. Jonah Lehrer, Proust Was a
Neuroscientist, Houghton Mifflin Company
(Boston/New York), 2008.
18. For further discussion on the essence
of imagination and embodiment, see Juhani
Pallasmaa, The Embodied Image: Imagination
and Imagery in Architecture, John Wiley &
Sons (Chichester), 2011.

Alvar Aalto, Pencil sketches for

the Church of the Three Crosses,
Vuoksenniska, Finland, 19558
During the design phase, the architects
imagination has obviously kept moving
from large entities, such as the entire floor
plan, to minute details and back again
within the imaginatively projected building.

While developing new technical

extensions of our mental capacities,
we should not underestimate the
significance of our own imagination
fortified by our capacity for empathy
and compassion.

Text 2014 John Wiley & Sons Ltd. Images: pp 80-1 Photo Fine Art Images/Heritage Images/Scala, Florence; p 82 John Swope Collection/CORBIS; p 85 Alvar Aalto Foundation

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