CHITKARA SCHOOL OF PLANNING

AND ARCHITECTURE

CONTEMPORARY ARCHITECTURE

SUBMITTED BY; VIKRAM GHATTORA

1615991113
SEC-C
THE EYES OF THE SKIN BY JUHANI
PALLASMAA
"A magical book. . .. The Poetics of Space is a prism through which all
worlds from literary creation to housework to aesthetics to carpentry take
on enhanced-and enchanted-significances. Every reader of it will never
see ordinary spaces in ordinary ways. Instead the reader will see with the
soul of the eye, the glint of Gaston Bachelard."

Probably the best thing I can say about The Poetics of Space is that, in
thinking so hard about what makes a poetic image work, it really becomes
more of a prose poem than a book of philosophy. Bachelard is trying to
understand the "happy mind" - the mind making itself a home
everywhere, no matter how hostile the environment. He calls this a
phenomenology (as opposed to psychology's obsession with neurosis,
damage, the "unhappy mind"), also "daydreaming," "reverie." The terms
get conflated, maybe by the translation (which is beautiful), but the
demonstrations are so powerful and right on that you come away with
this burst of energy.

Talking about what you learned from this book is hard, partially because
that initial transfer of energy and excitement is the main thing. But like
Claude Levi-Strauss or Rene Girard, Bachelard also leaves you with a form,
a process that you can use to think about how you think. He makes you
more conscious of, not just your mind, but your mind's movement, your
mind's happiness. And no matter how unhappy we are, our minds are all
trying to be happy (happy meaning at times, unfortunately, unhappy, but
then maybe the "happiness" Bachelard is talking about is only movement
and life, the happiness of the seed).

This charming and surprisingly readable text, the French philosopher

Gaston Bachelard talks about the intersection between poetry,
imagination, and buildings — and does it in such a way that makes you
want to constantly scope your surroundings for hidden meaning. He
draws inspiration from nature, dreams and his own experience. I am often
intimidated by philosophy, but here Bachelard fashions it into a
welcoming arena. Nothing is too minor or mundane for him. As he says, “I
am moreover convinced that the human psyche contains nothing that is
insignificant.” Images, after all, are simple; we experience them every
second and no weighty scholarship can improve their reception.
Bachelard is concerned with this topic, how the imagination processes
space and transfers it to memory, to art, to awareness.

It’s a beautiful book.

“All memory has to be reimagined. For we have in our memories micro-

films that can only be read if they are lighted by the bright light of the
imagination.”
In this rather slim, easy-to-read volume, Pallasmaa makes a convincing
case for architecture and space as more than just visual treat, but as
something that is inevitably, inherently lived in, experienced with the
whole body of the person inhabiting such spaces. This seems somewhat
obvious when one reads it, and yet it is easy to see how this gets lost in
ideas of visual appeal for physical spaces. Again, and again Pallasmaa
returns to the form and function of space as assisting in providing
metaphors and guiding principles for how human beings live their lives.
This is not a straightforward relationship, mind you, but one of back-and-
forth understanding, in which life influences space and space influences
life.

The prose here is eminently readable, and for such a complex subject,
Pallasmaa does an incredible job of simplifying and synthesizing thinkers
into an easy to read manuscript that will really make you stop and think
about your relationship to the space around you. This will inevitably be a
good thing, particularly as you ponder and understand more fully just
what "home" is to you, as understood through the tactile, sensory world of
your body and memory.

Pallasmaa seems to find exactly the right balance -- he tends to sway

towards a nostalgia, a hankering after the way things once were, but he
never loses his grip on the 'now', providing the solutions to counter the
mind-numbing, dumbing-down of the senses that today's plethora of
mediocre architecture inflicts upon us -- built for the masses and enjoyed
by none. The Eyes of the Skin is the antidote to that unexplainable
malaise, brought about by time spent in shopping centres, hotels, leisure
centres, airports, hospitals, etc, etc. It's positively brimming with
optimism for new ways of experiencing and defining our civic buildings,
and the built world as a whole.

In a world dominated my optical sensations, it becomes clear that

architecture is also trending towards the visual and not the spatial.
Throughout this read Pallasmaa investigates how architecture formally,
currently, and futuristically could use the other senses of sound, taste,
smell, and touch. In doing so, architecture becomes a device to
understand oneself in time and space. Referencing one’s own memories,
architecture and art could have meaning and serve as an evocative trigger
for past experiences. My five-star downgrade comes because Pallasmaa's
poetic tone goes unexplained, and often times is repetitious in idea.

Simply written and providing an understanding of the more visceral

aspects of the design of spaces. Makes you pleased to be a sensory being.
A celebration of the haptic rather than purely visual sense.

https://www.pdfdrive.com/the-eyes-of-the-skin-e54174797.html