Juhani Pallasmaa > Quotes

“The door handle is the handshake of the building.”
― Juhani Pallasmaa, The Eyes of the Skin: Architecture and the Senses

“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

“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

“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

“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

“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

“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

“Architecture domesticates limitless space and enables us to inhabit it [...]”
― Juhani Pallasmaa, The Eyes of the Skin: Architecture and the Senses

“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

“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

“How much more mysterious and inviting is the street of an old town with its altering realms of darkness and light than are the brightly and evenly lit streets of today! The imagination and daydreaming are stimulated by dim light and shadow. In order to think clearly, the sharpness of vision, has to be suppressed, for thoughts travel with an absent-minded and unfocused gaze. Homogeneous bright light paralyses the imagination in the same way that homogenization of space weakens the experience of being, and wipes away the sense of place. The human eye is most perfectly turned for twilight rather than bright daylight.”
― Juhani Pallasmaa

“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

“When experiencing a work of art, a curious exchange takes place; the work projects its aura, and we project our own emotions and precepts on the work. The melancholy in Michelangelo's architecture is fundamentally the viewer's sense of his/her own melancholy enticed by the authority of the work. Enigmatically, we encounter ourselves in the work.”
― Juhani Pallasmaa

“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

“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

“Bir sanat eseri, bilinçsiz olarak söyleşilen bir başka kişi işlevi görür.”
― Juhani Pallasmaa, The Eyes of the Skin: Architecture and the Senses

“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

“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

“In my view, poetry has the capacity of
bringing us momentarily back to the oral and enveloping world.
The re-oralised word of poetry brings us back to the centre
of an interior world. 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

“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

“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

“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

“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

“Dokunsallık ve odaklanmamış çevrel görme tam da yaşanmış deneyimin özünü biçimlendirir. Odaklanmış görme dünyayla karşılaşmamızı sağlar, çevrel görme ise bizi dünyanın teniyle sarmalar.”
― Juhani Pallasmaa, The Eyes of the Skin: Architecture and the Senses

“Zamanımızın duyusal aşırı yük altında ezilen savunmacı ve odaklanmamış bakışı, belki gözün kontrol ve iktidara yönelik içsel arzusundan özgürleşmiş yeni görme ve düşünme alanları açabilir. Odak kaybı gözü tarihsel ataerkil tahakkümden kurtarabilir.”
― Juhani Pallasmaa, The Eyes of the Skin: Architecture and the Senses

“Sanatsal dışavurum, dünyanın söz-öncesi anlamlarıyla, basitçe entelektüel olarak anlaşılmaktan ziyade bedenle bütünleşmiş ve yaşanmış anlamlarla, iç içedir.”
― Juhani Pallasmaa, The Eyes of the Skin: Architecture and the Senses

“Genel olarak sanat ve mimarlığın görevi de salt birer izleyici olmakla kalmayıp, ayrılmazcasına ait olduğumuz farklılaşmamış bir iç dünya deneyimini yeniden kurmaktır. Sanatsal yapıtlarda varoluşsal anlama yetisi tam da dünyayla karşılaşmamızdan ve dünyada -olmaklığımızdan doğar- kavramsallaştırılamaz ve anlıklaştırılamaz.”
― Juhani Pallasmaa, The Eyes of the Skin: Architecture and the Senses

“Sanatçıların ve mimarların sözel ifadeleri genel olarak itibari değerleriyle ele alınmamalıdır, zira çoğu zaman yüzeydeki bilinçli birer rasyonalizasyon ya da savunmadan ibarettirler ve pekala yapıta bizzat dirimsel gücünü veren derin bilinçdışı niyetlerle keskin bir karşıtlık bir karşıtlık içinde olabilmektedirler.”
― Juhani Pallasmaa, The Eyes of the Skin: Architecture and the Senses

“Beden salt bir fiziksel varlık değildir; bellekle ve düşle, geçmişle ve gelecekle zenginleşir.”
― Juhani Pallasmaa, The Eyes of the Skin: Architecture and the Senses

“Natural materials express their age, as well as the story of their origins and their history of human use. All matter exists in the continuum of time; the patina of wear adds the enriching experience of time to the materials of construction […] Buildings of this technological era usually deliberately aim at ageless perfection, and they do not incorporate the dimension of time, or the unavoidable and mentally significant processes of aging. This fear of the traces of wear and age is related to our fear of death.”
― Juhani Pallasmaa, The Eyes of the Skin: Architecture and the Senses