Juhani Pallasmaa, "Architecture as Experience" - Driehaus Symposium 2017

usually I begin by changing the title this time I have a same title on the screen as been in my notes which is rare modern architectural theory education and practice have regarded architecture as visually idealized and aestheticized spaces material structures and forms and have primarily studied the historical functional technical and formal characteristics these analyses have focused on architecture as physical objects and spaces sorry I got lost here as architecture does not possess a comprehensive theory of its own the point of view and method of research have usually been borrowed from other disciplines in accordance with chasing interest some fashions often the applicability of the chosen theoretical frameworks have been highly questionable in the specific embodied reality of architecture for instance in the case of the linguistic and the deconstructionist theories architectures and scientific criteria although I am frequently introduced as a theoretician I dare to question the feasibility of a comprehensive theory of architecture due to the inherent internal come like cities contradictions and irreconcilability of this phenomenon through the relative artistic autonomy and focus the fine arts are fundamentally less complex and contradictory in the ontological grounding than architecture the inherent internal complexity of architectural projects was pointed out by my great countryman Alvarado in 1955 in his inaugural speech as the member of the Academy of Finland when he wrote or said whatever our task whether large or small in every case opposites must be reconciled almost every formal assignment involves dozens often hundreds sometimes thousands of conflicting elements that can be forced into functional harmony only by an act of will this harmony cannot be achieved by any other means than art the final value of individual technical technical and mechanical elements can only be assessed after assessed afterwards the harmonious result cannot be achieved with mathematics statistics or probability calculus and of all the quote out of declaration sixty years ago is rather of the supremacy of art our science was a courageous statement considering that some of the finest scientists and thinkers in our country were in the audience like the famous mathematician of Neverland known all over the world Curtis view of the integrating power of art has recently been supported by Victoria Galileo whose interviewee so a moment ago one of the discoverers of the mirror neurons this is what Alvarado Victoria Galia writes from a certain point of view art is more powerful than science with much less expensive tools and with greater power of synthesis artistic intuitions show us who we are probably in a much more exhaustive way with respect to the objectifying approach of the Natural Sciences being human squares with the ability to ask ourselves who we are since the beginning of the mankind artistic creativity has repeated has expressed such ability in its purest and highest for the inherent scientific nature of architecture the inherently unscientific nature of architecture arises from the fact that its practice uses facts and dreams knowledge and beliefs rationality and intuition as well as the temporal dimensions of past present and future besides it is simultaneously the means and the end the means to achieve its utilitarian and practical purpose and the end as an artistic manifestation that mediates experiential cultural mental and emotional qualities and values in short architecture is conceptually an impure and messy as phenomenon of human activity is to to impure until messy to be logically structured within a single theory the theory of architecture sounds to me as impossible and ultimately useless as a theory of life as a consequence of its complexity architecture is bound to arise from an interactive and embodied action that fuses rationality and feeling knowledge and in human empathy and imagination rather than from an inclusive theory and fully rationalized processes there can well be theory based and fully rational aspects of the design process but in his entirety the process is interactively iteratively synthetic architectural design as a creative process in general is guided by a subjective self piloting action and an immense an immersive embodied identification with the concrete task that uses aspects of in reconcilable categories rather than an application of a theory theory based rational methodical and a predictable procedure the design process is not a rational path as it consists of countless repeated deviations dead ends new beginnings hesitations temporary certainties and gradual and gradual emergence of an acceptable goal as the result of the process itself the structure and positive potential potential essence of the design task is gradually revealed as the design response emerges the questions and answers are formulated simultaneously and both are subject to the creative process simply due to the essential existential content of architecture the design cannot be a smooth rational problem-solving process all buildings that movers are usually closer to personal confessions than problem-solving the poetic and phenomenological approach the phenomenon of architecture has also been approached through subjective and personal encounters in a poetic aphoristic or essay stick manner as in the writings of many of the leading architects from Frank Lloyd Wright and the Corbusier to Alvar Aalto and Louie Kahn and further to Steven Holl and Patterson tour in these writings architecture is approached approached in a poetic and metaphorical manner without any ambitions or qualifications as scientific research these writings usually arise from personal experiences observations and projections of life I must personally confess that these personal and often confessional accounts have valorized the holistic existential and poetic essence of architecture to me more than the theoretical or empirical studies that claim to satisfy the criteria of science historically there are three categories of seeking meaning myth and religion art and science and there's very little interaction between the three categories and these endeavors are fundamentally incomparable with each other the poetic experiential an existential core of art and architecture has to be confronted lived and felt rather than understood and formalized intellectually there are surely numerous aspects in construction in its performance structural reality as well as formal and dimensional properties as well as distinct psychological impacts that can be studied and probably should be studied scientifically but the experiential mental and existential meaning of the entity can only be encountered and experienced during the past few decades an experiential approach based on phenomenological encounters and first-person experiences of buildings and settings has gained ground this thinking is initially based on the philosophies of Edmund Husserl Mark Martin Heidegger maurice merleau-ponty custom Basler and many other philosophers of philosophical thinkers the phenomenological approach which also acknowledges the significant role of embodiment was introduced in architectural contexts by such writers as stained hilar Rasmussen Christian or work Souls Charles Pugh David Seaman Robert Moog are our Karsten Harris and others I also believe that the book entitled questions of perception of 1994 by Steven Holl Alberto Perez Gomez and myself helped to spread this manner of thinking especially in schools of architecture internationally the poetic and existential dimension of architecture is a mental quality and this artistic and mental essence of architecture emerges in the individual encounter with an experience of the work in the beginning of his seminal book art as experience of 1934 John Dewey the visionary American pragmatist philosopher argues in common conception the work of art is often identified with the building book painting or statue unique in its existence apart from human experience since the actual work of art is what the product does with an any experience the result is not favorable to understanding when artistic objects are separated from both conditions of origin and operation in experience a wall is built around them that renders almost opaque their general significance which as which aesthetic theory deals with which aesthetic Theory deals unquote here the philosopher connects the condition of making a piece of art and it's later encounter by someone else as in both cases the mental and experiential reality dominates and the work exists naked ly as a human experience the philosophers exists that the difficulties in understanding artistic phenomena arise from the tradition of studying them as objects outside of human experience and consciousness do we further Dewey writes further by common consent the Parthenon is a great work of art yet is it has aesthetic standing only as the work becomes an experience for a human being art is always the product in experience of an interaction of human beings with their in with their environments architecture is not notable is a notable instance of the reciprocity of the result in this interaction the reshaping of subsequent experience by architectural works is more direct and more extensive than in the case of any other arts they not only influence the future but they wreck or accord and convey the past here do we even assigns an actively conditioning role to Architecture in relation to the nature of experience itself as well as to our understanding of the passing of time and history I have formulated this view with the argument that architecture creates frames and horizons for perception experience and understanding the specific human condition and consequently instead of being the end product it has essentially a mediating role this was also Sarah's point earlier the significance of the time dimension and temporal experience has not usually been sufficiently acknowledged in studies of architecture Karsten Harry's the philosopher his statement on the mental meaning of time in architecture is significance significant when he writes architecture is not only about domesticating space it is also a deep defense against the terror of time the language of beauty is essentially the language of timeless reality for me the notion terror of time has become a very important notion when I think about the task of architecture architecture is one of our strongest means to fight that terror the fall of I cars into the infinity endlessness of time since Siegfried Gilliam's space-time and architecture the art of building has been theorized in terms of the space-time continuum as defined in modern physics but the dimension of time has also its independent mental role in our experience of life and architecture we have a deep existential need to feel rooted in time as much as in space we dwell in both space and time and both dimensions are articulated and domesticated for human purposes by architecture architecture tames the immensity of space and endlessness of time for human to mind to tolerate the significance of experience has been grasped in other art forms such as theater cinema and music but it has not been understood in relation to such material and utilitarian objects as buildings and larger environments encountering architecture the experiential approach focuses on the encounter of the architectural reality and the experiencing person and mind and in accordance with Lewis view this actualizes the architectural dimension the phenomenological method attempts to approach phenomena without preconceptions and to identify with sensitivity the emergence of emotion and meaning in this unique personal encounter beyond its construction in experience sorry beyond its constitution in experience architecture mediates between the outer world and the inner rail realm of the self projecting frames of perception and understanding this interchange is necessarily an exchange as I enter a space the space enters me and changes me my experience and my self understanding mediation is essential in all art and maurice merleau-ponty states firmly we come to see not the work of art but the world according to the work the fellows first view rejects the regrettably common understanding of art and architecture as artistic self-expression this is an essential point the meaning of art and architecture is outside of the work itself and it always reaches beyond itself a fundamental starting point in the experiential approach to art and architecture is the fusion or continuum of the physical and mental the outer and inner arms without categoric boundaries Riley Rainer Maria Rilke in my mind the finest Oh at poet of all time used the beautiful notion built in and round the inner mentally experienced interior space of the world artistic experience creates these inner worlds merleau-ponty tells us enigmatic Lee the world is wholly inside and I am wholly outside of myself this seems to point at the key osmotic intertwining of the outer and the inner realms profound Architects have always intuitively understood that buildings structure reorient and at Hume our mental realities the fact that artists have intuited mental and neural phenomena often decades before psych psychology or neuroscience have identified them is the subject matter of Jonah hilarious thought-provoking book Proust was a neuroscientists in in his pioneering book survival through design which we already heard about earlier public published more than six decades ago ago richard neutra already acknowledges the biological and now neurological realities and makes a suggestion that is surprising for its time when he writes our time is characterized by a systematic rise of the biological sciences and is turning away from oversimplified and mechanistic views of the 18th and 19th centuries an important result of this view this new way of regarding this business of living may be to bear and raise appropriate working principles and criteria for design later he also professed professed today design may exert a far-reaching influence on the nervous makeup of generations Alvar Aalto in heated the biological ground of architecture also in his statement I would like to quote I would like to add my personal emotional view that architecture and its details are in some way all part of biology the direct impact of settings on the human system and brain has been proven by research in today's neuroscience while the brain controls our behavior and genes control the blueprint for the design and structure of the brain the environment can modulate the function of the genes and ultimately the structure of the brain changes in the environment change the brain and therefore they change our behavior in planning the environments in which we live architectural design changes our brain and our behavior the statement by Fred Gage neuroscientist leads to the most crucial realization when designing physical reality we are in fact also designing experiential and mental realities and external structures condition and alter internal structures this realization heightens the human responsibility of in the architects work I myself used to see buildings as aestheticized objects but for three decades now architectural images have been primarily mental images or experiences of the human condition and mind I have also gradually understood the significance of the designers empathic capacity the gift to stimulate to simulate and emphasize and empathize with the experience of the little man to use Alvarado's notion all too often refer to the little man as his final client this interface between the material and the mental worlds he is so fundamental that philosophers and neuroscientists such as Alvin Oy increasingly see the continued to constitute the human consciousness whereas Jew do we argued thought-provoking Lee the mind is a verb I wish to argue that architecture is also a verb as it it's true essence is always an invitation to action and specific guidance or choreography of that action it is this verb like tendency towards active search and exploration that unifies architecture and the human mind architecture is always also a promise a pledge and an offer of human or predictability and security both physical and mental until recently architecture has primarily been seen as a visual art form experienced and judged by vision this view is represented most notably by Le Corbusier in his credo quote architecture is the mastery correct a magnificent play of masses brought together in light unquote the hegemony of vision has been pointed out by a number of contemporary thinkers such as David Michael Levine and Martin Jay I have also written extensively on the often forceful dominance of vision in the Western industrial and consumer East culture and argued that the directional sense of vision makes us observers and Outsiders whereas the omnidirectional impressing st. senses of hearing touch smell and even taste turn us into insiders and participants we can also suspect that the unfocused peripheral vision is more important than focused vision for the experience of being in space or the sense of participation and belonging I wrote this before I listened to your lecture and thank you for the proof on this idea merleau-ponty finally brought all the senses together in his understanding of sensory perception quote my perception is not the sum of visual tactile and audible Gibbons 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 an end of port after having investigated the phenomenon and I'll show just one image of my own designs after having investigated the phenomenon of architecture for 50 years as an architect writer and teacher I have no hesitation in arguing today that our most important sense in architectural experience is not vision but our extended optic sense the existential sense our sense of bodily being and self architecture is primarily an experience of our embodied sense of being our experience of being in the world rather than merely of vision or any other of the five Aristotelian senses in separation in merleau-ponty s statement above his expression I perceive with my whole being seems to suggest such an embodied and unified existential experience it is because it is becoming evident that the encounter and that we encounter and judge environments and architecture through our most synthetic sense our sense of being and self merleau-ponty is notion of the flesh of the world makes this view understandable when merleau-ponty writes quote our own body is in the world as the heart is in the organism it keeps the visible visible spectacle constantly alive it breathes life into it and sustains it inwardly and with it forms a system and yes we exist in this flesh of the world and grasp our existence through being part of that very fresh merleau-ponty sexists poetically that poses ants paintings make us feel how the world touches us I would sorry I wish to add that architecture goes even a step further as it enables us to dwell in the flesh of the world itself not only touching it architecture gives us our domicile in this existential flesh both physically and mentally architecture also activates and strengthens our sense of self as it as the experience is always individual contextual and unique art and architecture seem to be always addressing each one of us individually besides if you notice when you are really struck by a powerful architectural experience it silences the world you are alone in total silence independent of where you are art and architecture yes besides if I am unable to project meaning into my encounter with a place space or building there is really no architecture just the physical construction or setting this is a non place to use the notion of Edward Ralph my the imaginative experience of the spaces and events experienced when reading a novel is the most impressive capacity of the human imagination and mind while reading we keep constructing objects rooms houses cities and entire continents and even more miraculously we create the flesh in which these events are embedded we architects should study how great writers make us not only enter literary realities but construct them in our imaginations there is now a growing interest in at least some European architecture schools about architecture and literature and exactly this fantastic literary capacity of imagination we need to learn to see imagine and feel drawings as experienced and lived but that cause for a capacity of imagination elevated to second power as jean-paul Sartre argues when I'm reading dostoevsky's crime and punishment I project my own sense of frustrated waiting on the character of Raskolnikov this capacity of literary literature to evoke and mediate experience experiences of spaces places and situations has been recently studied by Elaine Scarry and she writes 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 fulfills this mimetic requirement for givenness when I feel deep and moving melancholy in Michelangelo's laurentian library it is my own sense of melancholy that I am confronting released and amplified by the embodied gestural language of the Great Architect I can even say that I feel through the muscles of Michelangelo as his buildings shapes and profiles secretly gesture as if they were parts of the human body the great gift of art is that we can momentarily experience and feel the world and ourselves as articulated through the sensitivity of a great artist we can see with the eyes of Piero della Francesca feel with the muscles of Michelangelo and hear with ears of BA this is the great gift of art to humanity perception experience and imagination perceptions are not experiences as a mere risked registrations of stimuli without contextualization judgment and meaning sense perceptions interact with distinct connections and meanings meanings sorry in architectural design work the most demanding and valuable skill is to Intuit and steer and simulate the experience of the physically non-existent entity again including the experience of a single form or object is relatively easy whereas imagining the entire atmosphere or feeling of a wide and complex spatial entity calls for extraordinary imaginative skills the imaginative and intuitive experience calls for the capacity of empathy the notion of empathy who are introduced in the aesthetic theories of the late 19th century but it has been bypassed during the entire modern era I don't know any architects a school where empathy would be taught but it should be taught in every architecture school the no sorry however along with the current interest in experience also the interest in empathy is now emerging and in my view should be taught in architecture school it is not enough to imagine your own feeling but as you need to imagine the experience and feeling of the other it has taken a long time to realize how we are actually how we actually experience the world an architecture as part of it because we have been misguided by the view of our five separate senses as defined by Aristotle we can point an organic physiological sense organ for each one of our five classical senses whereas we cannot point an organ for our atmospheric experience existential sense or sense of being as they all arise from a synthetic understanding of being in the world even the blind and the deaf are able to experience their fully embodied existence however Stein Aryan philosophy categorizes 12 senses and one of them is the ego sense and a self movement sense and in my view these three non Aristotelian senses together constitute the existential sense through which architecture is primarily experienced besides the received understanding of the functioning of a of the senses seems too simplistic and in the light of recent studies often entirely wrong but discussing this subject would take me too far from the focus of my lecture the cardinal mistake is the prevailing understanding of our experience of the world as a picture this is something that already Heidegger dealt with it suffices here to just mention that philosopher 11 OA presents the dramatic question in the title of his one of his books is the visual world a grand illusion this is a shocking question for us architects to think about how critical we might be of Alva noise thinking relational phenomena and understanding entities I think this is my last chapter this gradual expansion of our understanding of the senses their functioning and interactions and the consequent changes in our understanding of experience reminds me of the problem of localizing human consciousness in another book of his Noah Alva Noah argues that scientists have not succeeded in localizing human consciousness because they have been searching its location in a wrong place inside the brain in Noah's view and I believe he's right conscious the consciousness can not be localized at all because it is not a thing but a relational phenomenon emerging between the human mind and the world I suggest that artistic experience is similarly a relational phenomenon between the poetic object and the experience in mind atmospheric experience is also a difficult phenomenon because it is a relational experience not a definable nameable and miserable object or thing it is a quasi thing to quote the title of Tony no grief aerial cry Pharaohs recent book which is entitled quasi things and the subtitle the paradigm of atmospheres it also arises from relational and interact relations and interactions of numerous irreconcilable factors such as scale materiality tactility illumination temperature humidity sound color smell etc which together constitute the atmosphere or actually our experience of it we must confess now that all artistic and poetic experiences are similarly relational experiences and there is essences meanings and emotive character or characteristics arise from a dynamic interaction of numerous factors and qualities with the human neural system and consciousness to constitute an experience the poetic and artistic experience also always activates our deepest collective and biological memories the experiences our experiences resonate it with our personal and human histories an interest in the phenomena of atmosphere ambience feelings moods and achievements as well as in the understanding of the real multi-sensory and simultaneous nature of perception is emerging this new interest in experience is shifting research from form and formal structures to emotive and dynamic experiences and mental processes and from and from form to processes and becoming it is evident that when the focus shifts from the physical reality and form to the mental reality and emotion also the methodology of the study is bound to change in the study of the experiential essence of art and architecture relevant philosophical perspectives as well as an understanding and intuiting of perceptual and mental phenomena memory and imagination called for in in order to understand human experience we must shift from the quasi-scientific processes of measuring to the courage and desire to live and confront architecture directly through our very act of living thank you [Applause]

Channel: Driehaus Foundation

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Keywords: built environment, architecture, architectural theory, design, juhani pallasmaa, lecture, driehaus foundation, driehaus symposium, john dewey, phenomenology, perception, imagination, geometry, quasi-things, atmosphere, art

Id: HyJbWdQ_hvA

Length: 52min 12sec (3132 seconds)

Published: Mon Oct 09 2017