Far More Than What We See….

Opinion piece on Juhani Pallasmaa’s ‘The Eyes of The Skin’

This book ‘the eyes of the skin’ written by Juhani Pallasmaa inspires us, designers to create
holistic art and architecture. It also enriches our general perception of the world we live in. The
role of the body as the locus of perception and the significance of the senses in articulating our
responses is clearly defined.
The message brought out in this book feels even more urgent and relevant today. What does
architecture do? What do we see and not see? Why do we feel like an outsider in our own world?
The opinion that is brought out here is largely based on these questions that the architect has
enquired in his writing.
Architecture is not to be appreciated through a series of images. It is all about connecting with
far more than what we see. Perception, memory and imagination are constantly involved. But
today, as the writer says, architecture has definitely become an endangered art form. It is
becoming repulsively flat, sharp edged, immaterial and unreal. This is leading towards a sense of
architectural autism.
As quoted by Pallasmaa, “the experience of home is structured by distinct activities cooking,
eating, socializing, reading, storing, sleeping, intimate acts-not by visual elements”. It is the
emotional engagement that makes a house, a ‘home’. Involvement of all our senses is important
for us to experience a space. Likewise, an architect should internalize the context to bring about
such experiences to the user. So, architecture is the communication from the body of the
architect directly to the body of the person who encounters the work, perhaps even centuries
later.
It is through the tactile sense, which is the extension of other senses, that we experience and
understand our world, ‘vision reveals what the touch already knows’. Experiencing the world
merely through our eyes makes us distant observer. It creates a distance between us and the
object. By touching we feel more connected. Watching a movie without sound makes it harder
to understand as there will be loss of emotions involved. Likewise, every building or space is
understood and appreciated through its echo or its characteristic sound that is produced. A
building responds when we hear to it. When we see, touch, hear, smell, and develop a sense of
taste for a space, that is when we understand, experience and connect with it.
The architectural and urban setting of our own world makes us feel like outsiders because of our
focused vision. Whereas, the historical world seems to have more connection with. This is
because of how peripheral vision integrates us with space. Unfocused vision, in a more
meditative state brings the world we are in closer to us. Every city has its own echo, texture,
smell, we just have to feel and experience it.
The consciousness of seeing the world through all our senses is what it makes ourselves to be
connected to it. It allows us to dream, imagine and create what we desire.
Architecture introspects the human existence in time and space. It reconciles between us and
the world and this happens through our senses. Before we start living in an unreal fabricated city,
which already we are, there is an urgent need to see far more than what we see.