The eyes of the Skin

Architecture and the Senses, John Wiley&Sos Ltd, The Atrium, Southern Gate,2005

Steven Holl ``The way spaces feel, the sound and smell of these places, has equal weigh to the
way things look. Palllasmaa is not just a theoretician; he is a brilliant architect of
phenomenological insight.`` pg.7

Pg.10 My assumption of the role of the body as the locus of perception, thought and
consciousness, and of the significance of the senses in articulating, storing and processing
sensory responses and thoughts, have been strengthened and confirmed

Pg.11 Touch is the sensory mode that integrates our experience of the world with that of
ourselves …My body is truly the navel of mackinaw world, not in the sense of the viewing point
of the central perspective, but as the very focus of reference, memory, imagination, and
integration.

Pg.12 Ludwig Wittgenstein, whose philosophy tends to be detached from body imagery,
acknowledges, the interaction of both philosophical and architectural work with the image of self

Pg.13 Creative works calls for a bodily and mental identification, empathy and compassion.

P 13. In fact, there is medical evidence that peripheral vision has a higher priority in our
perceptual and mental system – Anton Ehrenzweig, The Psychoanalysis of Artistic Vision and
Hearing: An Introduction to a Theory of Unconscious Perception, Sheldon Press (London), 1975

Pg 14 The hands wants to see, the eyes want to caress – Johan Wolfgang Goethe

The dancer has his ear in his toes – Friederich Nietzche

If the body had been easier to understand, nobody would have thought that we had a mind -
Richard Rorty

Pg 15 Peter Sloterdijk: The eyes re the organic prototype of philosophy. Their enigma is that
they not only can see but are also able to see themselves seeing. This gives them a prominence
among the body`s cognitive organs.- Critique of Cynical Studio, Jay (1994)- pg21

*Discovering Through the Dark Interstice of Touch

pg 20 Merleau-Ponty saw an osmotic relation between the self and the world - they
interpenetrate and mutually define each other - and he emphasised the simultaneity and
interaction of the senses „My perception is not a sum of visual, tactile and audible gives: I
perceive in a total way with my whole being: I grasp a unique structure of the thing, a unique
way of being, which speaks to all my senses at once”MMP- the film and the New Psychology
p.48
pg 21 David Harvey uses the notion of „time-space compression”(pp 261-307), and as a
consequence we are witnessing a distinct reversal of the two dimensions - a temporalisation of
space and spatilisation of time

pg 26 Construction in traditional cultures is quided by the body in the same way that a bird
shapes its nest by movements of its body. Indigenous clay and mud architectures in various parts
of the world seem to be born of the muscular and haptic sense more than the eye. We can
identify the transition of indigenous costruction from the haptic realm into the control of vision
as a loss of plasticity and itimacy, and of the sense of total fusion characteristic in the settings of
indigenous cultures.

pg 40 I confront the city wuth 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
roamns over the mouldings and contours, sensing the size of recesses and projectios (...) Te city
and my body supplement and define each other. I dwell in the city and the city dewlls in me

Merleau Ponty : „Our own body is in the world as the heart is in the organism: it keeps the
visible spectacle constantly alive, it breathes life into it and it sustains it inwardly, and with it
forms a system MMP - Phenomenology of perceptio, Routledge, LOndon, 1992, p 203I
 
body memory and architecture yale paperbound

body memory and architecture yale paperbound

book review title body memory and architecture yale
paperbound

Psychoanalitic theory has introduced the notion of body image or body schema as centre of
integration. 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 oe single continous 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

Kent C Bloomer and Charles W Moore - Body Memory and Architecture „To at least some
extend every place can be remembered, partly because it has affected our bodies and generated
enough associations to hold it in our personal worlds” - p 107
 
pg 41: Every touching experience of architecture is multi-sensory; qualities of space, matter and
scale are measured eqaually by the eyem ear, nose, skin, tongue, and muscle

pg 42 All the senses, including vision, can be regarded as extension of the sense of touch- as
specialisation of the skin/ (...) Even the eye touches; the gaze implies an unconsncious touch,
bodily mimesis and identification
Martin jay „throught vision we touch the sun and the stars” - talking about MMP philosophy

George Berkely related touch with vision and assumed that visua apprehension of materiality,
distance and spatial depth woukd not be possible without the cooperation of the haptic memory.
„sight detached from touch could not have any idea of distance, outness, or profundity, nor
consequently of space or body - Stephen Houlgate Vision, Reflecton and Openness - „The
Hegemony of Vision from Hegelian Point of View,   in levin (1993), p 100
 Hegel claimed that the only sense which can give a sensation of spatial depth is touch, because
touch.

pg 44 Bernard Berenson suggested that when experiencing an artistic work, we imagine a

genuine physical encounter through „ideated sensations”
 
45 the geometry of thought echoes the geometry of the room.

The  Book of tea - Kakuzo Okakura - the body is not a mere physicak entity; it is enriched by
both memory and dream, past and future

Edward S CAsey Remembering: A Phenomenological Study, Indiana University Press (

Bloomington and Indianapolis), 2000, p172 - our capacity of memory would be impossible
without body memory. The world is reflected in the body, and the body is projected pnto the
world. We remember throught out bodies as much as tohrought our nervous system and brains

the art of architecture is also engaged with metaphysical and existential queston concerning
man„s being in the world. 
 
 pg 46 Architecture elaborates and communicated thoughts of man„s incarnate confrontation
with the world through „plastic emotions” le corbusier, p 7. In my view the task of architecture is
„to make visible how the world touches us” as MMP said of the paintings of Cezanne pg19

Mist and twilight awaken the imagination by making visual images unclear and ambiguous

Adrian Stokes Smooth and Rough I in The Critical Writings of Adrian Stokesm Volume II,
Thames&Hudson (lOndon), 1978, p245: „Like mothers of men, the buildings are good listeners.
Long sounds, distinct or seemingly in bundles, appease the orifices of places that lean back
gradually from canal or pavement.A long sound with its echo brings consummation to the stone
 
50: Every building or space has its characteristic sound of intimacy or monumentality, invitation
or rejection, hospitality or hostility. A space is understood and appreciated through its echo as
much as through its visual shape, but the acoustic percept usually remains as an unconscious
background experience
sight is the sense of the solitary observer, whereas hearing creates a sense of connection and
solidarity.

52 A powerful architectural experience silences all external noise; it focuses our attention on our
existence, and as with all art, it makes us aware of our fundamental soitude
Architecture connects us with the dead
 
56: The tactile sense connects us with time and tradition: through impressions of touch we
sheake the hands of coutless generations

60: Arhitectural experience brings the world into a most intimate contact with the body
 
Primitive man used his own body as the dimensioning and proportionsing system of his
constructions. The essential skills of mankind a living in traditional cultures are based on the
wisdom of the body stored in the haptic memory. Architectural meaning derives from archaic
responses and reactions remembered by the body and the senses.

62: ``The objects which surround my body reflect its possible of action upon them`` henri
Bergson –Matter and Memorym Zine Books (New York), 1991, p 21

It is this possibility of action that separates architecture from other forms of art. As a
consequence of this implied action a bodily reaction is an inseparable aspect of the experience
of architecture.

Architecture initiates, directs, and organizes behaivour and movement

Alvar Aalto ``From the Doorsteps to the Comon Roo``, in Goran Schildt, Alvar Aalto>The
Early Years, Rizzoli International Publications (New York), 1984, p214-218 – recognizes the
verb-essence of architectural experience by speaking of the act of entering the room, not of
the formal design of the porch or the door

Gabriel Marcel – I am my body -----I am the space, where I am –Noel Arnaud

Henry Moore ``The Sculptor Speaks``, in Henry Moore on Sculpture, ed Philip James,
MacDonald (London), 1966, p 62 – speaks about the necessity of bodily identification in the
making of art

66 A work of art functiond as another person, with whom one unconsciously converses

67 architecture is communication from the body of the architect directly to the body of the
person who encounters the work, perhaps centuries later.

Understanding architectural scale implies the unconscious measuring of the object or the
building with one`s body, and of preojecting one`s body scheme into the space of question.
We feel pleasure and protection when the body discovers its resonance in space. When
wxperiencing a structure, we unconsciously mimic its configuration with our bones and
muscles
71 Architecture reflects, materializes and eternalizes ideas and images of ideal life.
Architecture enables us to perceive and understand the dialectics of permanence anf change,
to settle ourselves in the world, and to place ourselves in the continuum of culture and time

72 Architecture is the art of reconciliation between ourselves and the world, and this
meditation takes place through the senses.

72 Architecture is the art of reconciliation between ourselves and the world, and this
meditation takes place through the senses.