book: eyes of the skin

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The Eyes Have Skin: Architecture & the Senses
Juhani Pallasmaa
Wiley and Sons, 2005

Two extended essays compiled in a book. Very inspirational for my work, author laments the neglect of the tactile sense in the design of architecture and spaces.

Very poetically written and moving.

Key Arguments:
Express the significance of the tactile sense for our experience and understanding of the world, but I also intended to create a conceptual short circuit between the dominant sense of vision and the suppressed sense modality of touch.

+primary of the tactile sense has become increasingly evident. The role of peripheral and unfocused vision in our lived experience of the world as well as in our experience of interiority in the spaced we inhabit, has also evoked my interest. The very essence of the lived experience is molded by hapticity and peripheral unfocused vision. Peripheral vision envelops us in the flesh of the world.

+all senses, include vision, are extensions of the tactile sense; the senses are specializations of skin tissue, and all sensory experiences are modes of touching and thus related to tactility

+ our contact with the world takes place at the boundary line of the self through specialized parts of our enveloping membrane

+touch is the sensory mode that integrates our experience of the world with that of ourselves. even visual perceptions are fused and integrated into the haptic continuum of the self…my body remembers who I am and where I am located in the world. The body is truly the navel of the world, not in the sense of the viewing point of the central perspective, but as the very locus of reference, memory, imagination and integration.

+a remarkable factor in the experience of envelop in spatiality, interiority and hapticity is the deliberate suppression of sharp, focused vision. This issue has hardly entered the theoretical discourse of architecture as architectural theorizing continues to be interested in focused vision, conscious intentionality and perspectival representation.

+one of the reasons why the architectural and urban spaces of our time make us feel like outsiders, in comparison with the forceful emotional engagement of natural and historical settings, is their poverty in the field of peripheral vision. Unconscious peripheral perception transforms retinal gestalt into spatial and bodily experiences. Peripheral vision integrates us with space, while focused vision pushes us out of the space, making us mere spectators.

+ the defensive and unfocused gaze of our time, burdened by sensory overload, may eventually open up new realms of vision and thought, freed of the implicit desire of ht eye for control and power. The loss of focus can liberate the eye from its historical patriarchal domination.

+humans has not always been dominated by vision. A primordial dominance of hearing has only gradually been replaced by that of vision.

+numerous cultures in which our private senses of smell, taste, and touch continue to have collective importance in behavior and communication

+ the flatness of today’s standard construction is strengthened by a weakened sense of materiality. Natural materials allow our vision to penetrate their surfaces and enable us to become convinced of the veracity of matter.

+natural materials express their age and history, their story of origin and history of human use.

+freed of the implicit desire of the eye for control and power, it is precisely the unfocused vision of our time that is again capable of opening up new realms of vision and thought. The loss of focus brought about by the stream of images may emancipate the eye from its patriarchal domination and give rise to a participatory and empathetic gaze.

+the haptic experience seems to be penetrating the ocular regime again through the tacti8le presence of modern visual imagery. We cannot halt the flow of images from a music video; instead we have to appreciate it as an enhanced haptic sensation.

+although new technologies have strengthened the hegemony of vision, they may also help to re-balance the realms of the sense. Walter Ong: telephone, tv has brought us into the age of “secondary orality”….and has striking resemblances to the old in its participatory mystique, its fostering of communal sense, its concentration on the present moment.

+”We in the Western world are beginning to discover our neglected senses. This growing awareness represents something of an overdue insurgency against the painful deprivation of sensory experience we have suffered in our technologized world” Ashley Montagu