The Embodied Image

Author: Juhani Pallasmaa
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
ISBN: 0470711906
Category : Architecture
Languages : en
Pages : 155

Book Description
The Embodied Image The Embodied Image: Imagination and Imagery in Architecture Juhani Pallasmaa All artistic and architectural effects are evoked, mediated and experienced through poeticised images. These images are embodied and lived experiences that take place in ‘the flesh of the world’, becoming part of us, at the same time that we unconsciously project aspects of ourselves on to a conceived space, object or event. Artistic images have a life and reality of their own and they develop through unexpected associations rather than rational and causal logic. Images are usually thought of as retinal pictures but profound poetic images are multi-sensory and they address us in an embodied and emotive manner. Architecture is usually analysed and taught as a discipline that articulates space and geometry, but the mental impact of architecture arises significantly from its image quality that integrates the various aspects and dimensions of experience into a singular, internalised and remembered entity. The material reality is fused with our mental and imaginative realm. The book is organised into five main parts that look at in turn: the image in contemporary culture; language, thought and the image; the many faces of the image; the poetic image; and finally the architectural image. The Embodied Image is illustrated with over sixty images in pairs, which are diverse in subject. They range from scientific images to historic artistic and architectural masterpieces. Artworks span Michelangelo and Vermeer to Gordon Matta- Clark and architecture takes in Modern Masters such as Mies van der Rohe, Le Corbusier and Alvar Aalto, as well as significant contemporary works by Steven Holl and Daniel Libeskind.

The Embodied Image

Author: Juhani Pallasmaa
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
ISBN: 0470711914
Category : Architecture
Languages : en
Pages : 152

The Eyes of the Skin

Author: Juhani Pallasmaa
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
ISBN: 1119941288
Category : Architecture
Languages : en
Pages : 146

Book Description
First published in 1996, The Eyes of the Skin has become a classic of architectural theory. It asks the far-reaching question why, when there are five senses, has one single sense – sight – become so predominant in architectural culture and design? With the ascendancy of the digital and the all-pervasive use of the image electronically, it is a subject that has become all the more pressing and topical since the first edition’s publication in the mid-1990s. Juhani Pallasmaa argues that the suppression of the other four sensory realms has led to the overall impoverishment of our built environment, often diminishing the emphasis on the spatial experience of a building and architecture’s ability to inspire, engage and be wholly life enhancing. For every student studying Pallasmaa’s classic text for the first time, The Eyes of the Skin is a revelation. It compellingly provides a totally fresh insight into architectural culture. This third edition meets readers’ desire for a further understanding of the context of Pallasmaa’s thinking by providing a new essay by architectural author and educator Peter MacKeith. This text combines both a biographical portrait of Pallasmaa and an outline of his architectural thinking, its origins and its relationship to the wider context of Nordic and European thought, past and present. The focus of the essay is on the fundamental humanity, insight and sensitivity of Pallasmaa’s approach to architecture, bringing him closer to the reader. This is illustrated by Pallasmaa’s sketches and photographs of his own work. The new edition also provides a foreword by the internationally renowned architect Steven Holl and a revised introduction by Pallasmaa himself.

The Thinking Hand

Author: Juhani Pallasmaa
Publisher: Wiley
ISBN: 9780470779286
Category : Architecture
Languages : en
Pages : 160

Book Description
In our current global networked culture that puts so much emphasis on the virtual and the visual, the mind and the body have become detached and ultimately disconnected. Though physical appearance is idolised for its sexual appeal and its social identity, the role of the body in developing a full understanding of the physical world and the human condition has become neglected. The potential of the human body as a knowing entity – with all our senses as well as our entire bodily functions being structured to produce and maintain silent knowledge together – fails to be recognised. It is only through the unity of mind and body that craftsmanship and artistic work can be fully realised. Even those endeavours that are generally regarded as solely intellectual, such as writing and thinking, depend on this union of mental and manual skills. In The Thinking Hand, Juhani Pallasmaa reveals the miraculous potential of the human hand. He shows how the pencil in the hand of the artist or architect becomes the bridge between the imagining mind and the emerging image. The book surveys the multiple essences of the hand, its biological evolution and its role in the shaping of culture, highlighting how the hand–tool union and eye–hand–mind fusion are essential for dexterity and how ultimately the body and the senses play a crucial role in memory and creative work. Pallasmaa here continues the exploration begun in his classic work The Eyes of the Skin by further investigating the interplay of emotion and imagination, intelligence and making, theory and life, once again redefining the task of art and architecture through well-grounded human truths.

Inseminations

Author: Juhani Pallasmaa
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
ISBN: 1119622239
Category : Architecture
Languages : en
Pages : 288

Book Description
A collection of the writing of the highly influential architect, Juhani Pallasmaa, presented in short, easily accessible, and condensed ideas ideal for students Juhani Pallasmaa is one of Finland’s most distinguished architects and architectural thinkers, publishing around 60 books and several hundred essays and shorter pieces over his career. His influential works have inspired undergraduate and postgraduate students of architecture and related disciplines for decades. In this compilation of excerpts of his writing, readers can discover his key concepts and thoughts in one easily accessible, comprehensive volume. Inseminations: Seeds for Architectural Thought is a delightful collection of thoughtful ideas and compositions that float between academic essay and philosophical reflection. Wide in scope, it offers entries covering: atmospheres; biophilic beauty; embodied understanding; imperfection; light and shadow; newness and nowness; nostalgia; phenomenology of architecture; sensory thought; silence; time and eternity; uncertainty, and much more. Makes the wider work of Pallasmaa accessible to students across the globe, introducing them to his key concepts and thoughts Exposes students to a broad range of issues on which Pallasmaa has a view Features an alphabetized structure that makes serendipitous discovery or linking of concepts more likely Presents material in short, condensed manner that can be easily digested by students Inseminations: Seeds for Architectural Thought will appeal to undergraduate students in architecture, design, urban studies, and related disciplines worldwide.

Far from Equilibrium

Author: Sanford Kwinter
Publisher: Actarbirkhauser
ISBN: 9788496540644
Category : Architecture
Languages : en
Pages : 191

Book Description
Far From Equilibrium ponders the complex encounters between technology, culture and architecture, offering an extended meditation on infrastructure, war, computation, the mechanical and material intelligence, and other multivariate facets of modernity. In its intensively affiliative method and far-reaching scope, Far from Equilibrium amounts to a performance in writing of what Kwinter describes (in one of the essays included) as radical anamnesis: the imagination's escape from the sterile logic of what is.

Sensory Design

Author: Joy Monice Malnar
Publisher: U of Minnesota Press
ISBN: 9780816639595
Category : Architecture
Languages : en
Pages : 396

Book Description
What if we designed for all of our senses? Suppose for a moment that sound, touch, and odor were treated as the equals of sight, and emotion considered as important as cognition. What would our built environment be like if sensory response, sentiment, and memory were critical design factors, the equals of structure and program? In Sensory Design, Joy Monice Malnar and Frank Vodvarka explore the nature of our responses to spatial constructs--from various sorts of buildings to gardens and outdoor spaces, to constructions of fantasy. To the degree that this response can be calculated, it can serve as a typology for the design of significant spaces, one that would sharply contrast with the Cartesian model that dominates architecture today. In developing this typology, the authors consult the environmental sciences, anthropology, psychology, and architectural theory, as well as the spatial analysis found in literary depiction. Finally, they examine the opportunities that CAVE and other immersive virtual reality technologies present in furthering a new, sensory-oriented design paradigm. The result is a new philosophy of design that both celebrates our sensuous occupation of the built environment and creates more humane design. A revolutionary approach to the built environment that embraces all of our senses and modes of understanding.

The Venice Variations

Author: Sophia Psarra
Publisher: UCL Press
ISBN: 1787352390
Category : Architecture
Languages : en
Pages : 335

Book Description
From the myth of Arcadia through to the twenty-first century, ideas about sustainability – how we imagine better urban environments – remain persistently relevant, and raise recurring questions. How do cities evolve as complex spaces nurturing both urban creativity and the fortuitous art of discovery, and by which mechanisms do they foster imagination and innovation? While past utopias were conceived in terms of an ideal geometry, contemporary exemplary models of urban design seek technological solutions of optimal organisation. The Venice Variations explores Venice as a prototypical city that may hold unique answers to the ancient narrative of utopia. Venice was not the result of a preconceived ideal but the pragmatic outcome of social and economic networks of communication. Its urban creativity, though, came to represent the quintessential combination of place and institutions of its time. Through a discussion of Venice and two other works owing their inspiration to this city – Italo Calvino’s Invisible Cities and Le Corbusier’s Venice Hospital – Sophia Psarra describes Venice as a system that starts to resemble a highly probabilistic ‘algorithm’, that is, a structure with a small number of rules capable of producing a large number of variations. The rapidly escalating processes of urban development around our big cities share many of the motivations for survival, shelter and trade that brought Venice into existence. Rather than seeing these places as problems to be solved, we need to understand how urban complexity can evolve, as happened from its unprepossessing origins in the marshes of the Venetian lagoon to the ‘model city’ that endured a thousand years. This book frees Venice from stereotypical representations, revealing its generative capacity to inform potential other ‘Venices’ for the future.

Becoming Places

Author: Kim Dovey
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1134117361
Category : Architecture
Languages : en
Pages : 214

Book Description
This book is about the practices and politics of place and identity formation - the slippery ways in which who we are becomes wrapped up with where we are. Drawing on the social theories of Deleuze and Bourdieu, the book analyzes the sense of place as socio-spatial assemblage and as embodied habitus, through a broad range of case studies from nationalist monuments and new urbanist suburbs to urban laneways and avant garde interiors.

Hendrik Petrus Berlage

Author: Hendrik Petrus Berlage
Publisher: Getty Publications
ISBN: 0892363339
Category : Architecture
Languages : en
Pages : 350

Book Description
Hendrik Petrus Berlage, the Dutch architect and architectural philosopher, created a series of buildings and a body of writings from 1886 to 1909 that were among the first efforts to probe the problems and possibilities of modernism. Although his Amsterdam Stock Exchange, with its rational mastery of materials and space, has long been celebrated for its seminal influence on the architecture of the 20th century, Berlage's writings are highlighted here. Bringing together Berlage's most important texts, among them "Thoughts on Style in Architecture", "Architecture's Place in Modern Aesthetics", and "Art and Society", this volume presents a chapter in the history of European modernism. In his introduction, Iain Boyd Whyte demonstrates that the substantial contribution of Berlage's designs to modern architecture cannot be fully appreciated without an understanding of the aesthetic principles first laid out in his writings.