We publish more student works selected in the preselection in the competition for press reportage on architecture. We invite you to read the text by Agnieszka Sukienniczak entitled. "Against the pathology of the senses: an analysis of material selection in the context of medical interior architecture".
AgnieszkaSukienniczak - interior designer, currently completing her studies in Curating and Theories of Art. She gained professional experience in architectural offices in Ljubljana and Berlin. In architecture, she is most intrigued by the relationship between people and the environment in which they find themselves.
Against the pathology of the senses: an analysis of material selection in the context of medical interior architecture
Chapter I
The role of the senses and the perception of architecture
According to Juhani Pallasma.
The growing sense of alienation, remoteness and loneliness in today's world can be linked to a certain pathology of the senses. It is thought-provoking to say the least that this sense of alienation is often induced in technological environments such as hospitals and airports. The dominance of sight and the suppression of the other senses pushes us toward isolation and superficiality
Juhani Pallasmaa
Juhani Pallasmaa, a Finnish architect and architectural theorist, subjects the relationship between body and mind, senses and intellect, and physicality and architecture to his reflections. The body is analyzed in the context of visual arts, music, dance or sports. In discussions of intellectual fields, the issue of the body, and therefore the senses, remains successively neglected. They have been separated from the mind, reduced to an automatic activity. Interestingly, the subject of the senses is readily taken up in the case of unusual conditions. A disability, a disorder of one skill results in the sharpening of others - such a capability is readily studied and noted. I find the issues of tools for perceiving the world fascinating, especially in a design context.
In a book titled "Eyes of the Skin" - first published in 1996 - Juhani Pallasmaa analyzes the quality of contemporary architecture. He criticizes oculocentrism and emphasizes what importance the other senses have for the overall perception. In his studies he refers to ancient architecture or that of the Renaissance.
The Renaissance system was linked to the image of the cosmic body: in it, sight was linked to fire and light, hearing to air, smell to vapor, taste to water, and touch to earth1.
Despite favoring sight, however, the other senses were not ignored. Then Pallasmaa, citing the words of the most important modernists, notes that the period was also dominated by ideas led by the sense of sight. At the same time, he notes that the sense of touch was not ignored in modernist thought.
In the next part of his book, Juhani Pallasmaa emphasizes the importance of multisensory perception. He believes that the very sense of reality is built through interaction with the outside world. He reiterates the importance of considering the needs of the viewer in design. He believes that architecture should not be created without considering the human figure, its needs and analysis of movements. In his reflections, he distinguishes between the different senses. In the context of his memories and associations, he considers the importance of shadow, acoustics, time, the space of smell, the shape of touch or taste. The interaction itself should take place with the cooperation of the senses, including the sense of hearing:
(...) our cities have lost any echo. The wide open spaces of modern streets do not reflect sound, while in the interiors of modern buildings sounds are absorbed and censored. Programmed music recordings in shopping malls and public spaces preclude the possibility of acoustically capturing the space2.
Pallasmaa also pays considerable attention to haptics. The architect, citing the words of George Berkeley, notes that the sense of sight would be incomplete without the sense of touch; we would not be able to "discern distance, externality or depth, or consequently space or the body." It is through touch that we have points of reference that sight evaluates. In order to test something we convince ourselves - by touching. As an example, he cites other important artists including Frank Lloyd Wright and Alvar Aalto, who also valued the creation of multi-sensory experiences in his projects,
(...) he was clearly much more interested in the encounter between the object and its user than in the visual aesthetics of the object itself3.
Like facial expressions, hand gestures in many cultures are read in similar ways. Very significant nuances in the way hands are shaken when greeting or saying goodbye have been analyzed by many theorists. The book titled "Thinking Hand" is entirely devoted to the phenomenon of touch. The author conducts a rather bold consideration, starting with an experiment. He asks the question: what would our perception through the sense of touch be if we didn't mean using our hands, but receiving stimuli through the skin? Hands give us the ability to decide what we want to touch. When we consciously give them up, we are left with passive perception through the skin. For example, when pressing on our body, we will receive a signal, but will not be able to act in the other direction.
When we look at paintings, we marvel at the minds of the painters. We ignore the hands, considering them only as a working tool. The theorist states that the movement of the hand, its specificity, is characteristic of a particular artist. In his analyses, Juhani Pallasmaa cites the hands of famous figures such as Le Corbusier and Kazimir Malevich. It is difficult not to agree with the above words, however, I find questionable the statement that hands should lead "an independent life and claim freedoms for themselves. "4 Pallasmaa's considerations, although very accurate, sometimes deviate from reality. The relationship between the hand and the tool is also interesting. The theorist compares it to the words with which we express thoughts5.
Reading about artists' hands, I imagine what they looked like. The distinctive tectonics of the fingerprints reflects the person's experience. The hands of people close to me also come to mind. Important in reflections for Juhani Pallasma are his memories. The reflections are mainly related to the early period of his childhood. While reading the book, it is impossible not to look for my own associations. My grandfather's hands come to mind. The tattoo placed on his and his friends' hands when they were young was to be used in the future as a sign of recognition when saying hello. Hands are a very important tool for perception, thanks to them we recognize not only the shape of objects, but also temperature or texture.
