閱讀越悅讀 - The Eyes of The Skin

It is NOT a Christian book. though its cover looks like one!



This is a book I highly recommend to all artists who are seriously interested in creating.
This book is written by Juhani Pallasmaa, one of the most distinguished architects and architectural theorists in Finland.
I have read this book a several times, and have picked up to re-read again very recently. I actually just put down the book one minute ago, and my heart is beating fast because a loud voice in my mind keeps repeating: "IT IS ALL UNFOLDING!"

I got this book back in university, when I was doing my final thesis. I have to say that my thesis was mainly based on and inspired from this wonderful book. It talks about haptic architecture (art), existential experience, and how art and architecture should relate intimately to the centre of the world, to us and to our full body. Reading this book again, I finally understand why I feel so unsatisfied everyday, and more and more disappointed and discouraged everyday working and living in this society.

"The inhumanity of contemporary architecture and cities can be understood as the consequence of the negligence of the body and the senses." (p.17)
(I would add "the inhumanity of modern human")

Sadly, along these almost-6-years working in architectural firms which are heavily depended on and controlled by Canadian developers, I have forgotten what I had been strongly believing in when I was fresh and young in architecture (in life). Thinking back, my thesis centered on the investigation on one’s personal experience with an architectural space, and on how architecture speaks to its users in their own language. I believed that a significant architecture should direct an existential experience in the space thus evoking a sense of belonging and intimacy. At the end of my final thesis presentation, one of my professors told me that this should be a topic to be kept on investigating for the rest of my life. Of course... I did not remember that either...

Today, reading the book again, thinking about it again... I am thinking that maybe it is even something further! Maybe it is not just about art and architecture - it is about relationship - relationship with people around us, relationship with incidents happening around us, or even relationship with God. I cannot forget what my ceramics teacher told me: "Don't look, feel! Communicate with your clay!" When we have our desires and ego over one thing or over a person, the relationship destroys - nothing will turn out well.

"[...] many of the architectural projects of the past 20 years, celebrated by the international architectural press, express both narcissism and nihilism. [...] The narcissistic eye views architecture solely as a means of self- expression, and as an intellectual-artistic game detached from essential mental and societal connections, whereas the nihilistic eye deliberately advances sensory and mental detachment and alienation. [...] It is impossible to think of a nihilistic sense of touch, for instance, because of the unavoidable nearness, intimacy, veracity and identification that the sense of touch carries." (p.22)

"We are inside and outside of the object at the same time. Creative work calls for a bodily and mental identification, empathy and compassion."(p.13)

Isn't relationship the same?
That's why I said: it is all unfolding; it is all related, can't we see now?

I can keep on writing from here - one insight, endless related topics... but I think I should stop and go back to read now!

Last but not least, "how would the painter or poet express anything other than his encounter with the world?" (by Maurice Merleau-Ponty)

Now, think!