BACHELOR OF SCIENCE (HONOURS) IN ARCHITECTURE

THEORIES OF ARCHITECTURE AND URBANISM

(ARC61303)
SYNOPSIS: REACTION PAPER (MARCH 2018)
Name: Chang May Chen ID No.: 0322636
Lecturer: Nicholas Ng Tutorial Time:
Reader/Text Title: The eyes go the skin Part II, Synopsis No: 3
Architecture and the senses Author: Juhani Pallasmaa
Part 2 of The eyes go the skin; Juhani Pallasmaa discusses the interaction of the senses and give some
personal impression of the realms of the sense in the expression of architecture. He declares a sensory
architecture in opposition to the prevailing visual understanding of the art of building.
Merleau-Ponty’s philosophy saying that makes the human be the central experiential of the world. He
argued the statement of Richard Kearney, we choose our world and that the world chooses us. Mzerleau-
Ponty trusts that human can experience and have a sense of the space. Humans can choose the space
through their own sensory experiences. The sensory of experiences start to integrate with our body. The
movement is interaction with the environment and primal experience. Firstly, we will experience the space
visually where only single continue existential when we move around the building. The interaction of our
body movement interaction with the environment and bring out the circulation of the space. The experiences
and the sense of the space will come automatically. In my opinion, the environment of the building will bring
out the circulation of the space and our body movement will follow the flow of the space. The primal
experiences will create an imagination of the space due to the environment of the space and start plaza in
our mind and it will be remembered. The process will create different perception and feeling under a same
architecture due to different people has their own architecture sense.
Next, Multi-Sensory Experience discuss about the sense of the space come with all perception thought
the interaction and the experience of the architecture. Architecture not only creates visual sense but also
collaborate with the body and the other senses. Societal institutions deserve the conceptual and the
material structure thought architecture and create every-touching experiences. In my opinion, I agreed
architecture create experience, when a person have a sense of being in a space not only visually observe a
beauty of the building and the space, yet the user must have a feeling and the sense of the space base on
the texture of the material, lighting of the space and smell from surrounding which cannot sense visually.
As a conclusion, Mzerleau-Ponty means architecture must be visible and the senses not only mediate
information for judgment of the intellect but also a means of lighting the imagination and articulation sensory
thought. We need architecture to create sense, memory and imagination of the space. In my perspective,
the poetic architecture will come automatically when the visual and touch senses have found from the
architecture not purposely explain it in word but the feeling and sense of the architecture.
Word Count: 499 Mark Grade
Assessed by: Date Page No.