a UCR AZ LeyThe caste of the appleatis in the camact of the fruit with the palate, not in the inte itil im similar way, poctry Les tm the satin of the poem and reader, a! ‘in he lines of symbole printed om the pages of a bok. What is exontial ir the aes the sbrll tbe abmese physical amovon that comes with each reading. thetic a Jorge Lait Borge, Forcard 1 Obra Postica Perbaps thinking, tn, is just something lke building cabinet. At amy rate itis a vaft, a handicaps." and therefore basa ipecialrelasionhip to the hand. In she common view, the band is part of cur bodily arganism. Bt the ands ence cam never be dererimed or explained, by its begin an organ which cam grasp. (..) The ‘hand is imfnitely different from all the grasping organs..diffeent by am abyss of csc. (.) But the craft of the and is vicher than we commonly imagine. (..) The hand raches and extends, rsives and welcomes ~ and not jst thing: the band extends itself, amd resis its own weleome in tbe baad of others. (x) But the hand's gstres rus everyuhere though Language, in their mast pees purity preci 1y shen ma spo by bing silent. (.) Every maton of the hand in every ae of works carves tel rough the alemont of thinking, every buaring of th hard bars itself that element. All the work ofthe band is rected in thinkin “Martin Heidegeor, ‘What Calls for Thinking RETINAL ARCHITECTURE AND LOSS OF PLASTICITY ‘The architecture of our time is curning into the retinal art of the eye. Archireceute at lange has become an arc of the printed image fixed by the hhurtied eye of che camera. The gaze itself tends to flaten into a picture and lose ics plasticity; instead of experiencing ou being in the world, we behold i from outside as spectators of images projected on the susfice of the retina, As buildings lose their plasticity and their connection with the language and wisdom of the body, they become isolared in the cool and distant realm of vision. With the loss of tactilicy and the scale and derail crafted for the ‘human body and hand, our structures become repulsively flat, sharp-edged, immaterial, and unreal. The decachment of construction from the realities of matter and crafe cums archicecture into stage secs for the eye, devoid of the auchenticity of material and tectonic logic. ‘Nacural macerials - stone, brick and wood - allow the gaze to penetrate their surfaces and they enable us co become convinced of the veracity of matter. Natural material expresses is age and history as well as the cle of its birch and human use. The patina of wear adds the enriching experience ‘of time; mater exists in the continuum of time. Bue the materials of today = sheets of glass, enameled metal and synthetic materials - present their unyielding surfaces to che eye without conveying anyching of their material ‘essence or age Beyond architecture, our culeure a large scems to drift cowards a distanc- ing, a kind of chilling, de-sensualization and de-erocicization of the human relation to reality. Painting and sculpeure have also lose their sensuality, snd instead of inviting sensory intimacy, contemporary works of att fre- quently signal a distancing rejeccion of sensuous curiosity ‘The current over-emphasis on the intellectual and conceptual dimensions of architeceure further contributes toa disappearance of the physical, sens- all and embodied essence of archiveccur. ARCHITECTURE OF THE SENSES In Renaissance times, the five senses were understood to form a hierarchical system from the highest sense of vision down to che lowest sense, touch. ‘The syscem of the senses was related to the image of the cosmic body; vision was correlared co fire and light, hearing to ir, smell to vapor, caste to-warer, touch to earth30 Man as not always ben ioleted in the realm of vision; a primordial domi: nance of hearing bas gradually been replaced by that of vision. In his book Orality & Literacy Waler J. Ong points out that “The shife from oral to writen speech is essentially «shife from sound to visual space ..prine replaced the lingering heating - dominance in the world of though and expression with che sighe - dominance which had its beginning in writing ‘This is an insseene world of cold, non-human far Every touching experience of architecture is multi-sensory; qualiies of matter, space, and scale are measured equally by the eye, ear, nose, skin, ‘tongue, skeleton and muscle. Archiceccure involves seven realms of sensory ‘experience which interact and infuse each other. In che words of Merleau ~ Ponty, “We see the depth, speed, sofiness and hardiness of objects - Cézanne says we see even their odor. Ifa painter wis ‘to express the world, his system of color must generate this indivisible complex of impressions, otherwise his painting only hints at possibilities withoue producing the unity, presence and unsurpassable diversity thac governs che experience and which isthe definition of reality for us. [A walk through a forest ot « Japanese garden is invigorating and healing because of the essential interaction of al sense modalicies reinforcing each other; our sense of reality is thus strengthened and articulated. Images of one sensory tealm feed further imagery in another modality. In ‘The Book of Tea Kakuz0 Okakura gives fine description of the multi-sen- sory imagery evoked by the excremely simple situation of the tea ceremony, “quiet reigns with nothing to break the silence save the note of the boil ing water in the icon kettle. ‘The kettle signs well, for pieces of iron are so arranged in the bortom as to produce a peculiar melody in which one may hear the echoes of a cataract muffled by clouds, of a distant sea breaking among the rocks, a rainstorm sweeping through a bamboo forest, or of the soughing of pines on some Faraway bill.” “The senses do not only mediate informacion for the judgment of the intel~ lect: they ae also a means of articulating sensory thought. ACOUSTIC INTIMACY ‘One who has half-risen to the sound of a distant train at night and, through his sleep, experienced the space of che city with ies countless inhabitants scattered around its struccures, knows the power of sound ro the imagination; the nocturnal whistle of a crain makes one conscious of che entire sleeping city. Anyone who has become entranced by che sound of water drops in the darkness of a ruin can attest co the extraordinary capacity of the ear to carve a volume into the void of darkness. ‘The space ‘raced by the ear becomes a cavity sculpted in che interior of the mind. ‘We can recall the acoustic harshness of an uninhabited and unfurnished hhouse as compared to the affability of a lived home in which sound is refracted and softened by che surfaces of numerous objects of personal life. Every building or space has its characteristic sound of intimacy or monu- mentality, rejection ot invitation, hospitality or hostility. Sight makes us solitary, whereas hearing cates 4 sense of connection and solidarcy; the gaze wanders lonesomely in the dack depths of a cathedral, but the sound of the organ makes us realize our afinicy ‘We stare alone atthe suspense of the circus, but the bust of applause after the relaxation of suspense unites us to the crowd. ‘The sound of church bells through the strets makes us aware of us citizenship. The echo of stepson a paved street hasan em off rhe surrounding walls puts us in direct interaction with space; the th the space. al charge because the sound bouncing sound measures space and makes its scale comprehensible. We stroke the cedges of the space wich our ears. But, the contemporary city has lost ies echo. SILENCE, TIME, AND SOLITUDE However, che most essential audiory experience created by architecture is ‘ranguillity. Acchicecture presents the drama of construction silenced into matter and space; architecture is the art of petrified silence. After the clue- ter of building has ceased and the shouting of workers has died away, the building becomes a museum of a waiting, patient silence. In Egypcian ‘emples we encounter the silence ofthe pharaohs, in che silence of a Gothic cathedral we are reminded of the lase dying note of a Gregorian chane, and. the echo of Roman footsteps has just faced on the walls of the Pantheon, ‘An architeccural expesience silences all external noise; ic focuses attention fon one's very existence. Architecture, as all art, makes us aware of our fan damental solitude. At the same time, architecture detaches us ftom the present and allows us to experience the slow, firm flow of time and tradi- tion, Buildings and cities are instruments and muscums of time. They tenable us to sce and understand che passing of history Archiceccure connects us with the dead; chrough buildings we are able co imagine the bustle of the medieval street and fancy a solemn procession approaching the cathedral, The time of architecture is detained time; in the geeatese of buildings time stands firmly scill. Time in the Great Periseyle at Karnak has petrified into a timeless present. Experiencing a work of artis a private dialogue between the work and the viewer chat excludes other interactions. “Arc is made by the alone for the alone,” as Cyrille Connolly wrices in The Unquiet Grave. Melancholy lies beneath moving experiences of ar; this isthe tragedy of beauty’s immaeri= al temporality, Art projects an unactainable idealSPACE OF SCENT ‘The strongest memory of a space is often its odor; I cannoc remember the appearance of the door to my grandfather's farm-house from my carly childhood, but I do remember che resistance ofits weight, che patina of its wood surfice scarred by a half century of use, and I recall especially the scent of home that hit my face as an invisible wall behind the door, A particular smell may make us secretly re-enter a space char has been com pletely erased from the retinal memory; the nostrils project a forgocten image and we are enticed to enter a vivid ds Memory and imagination remain associated," Gaston Bachelard writes. alone in my memories of another cencury can open the deep cupboard ‘hac still retains for me alone that unique odor, the odor of raisins, drying con a wicker criy. The odor of raisins! Te is an odor that is beyond descrip ‘on, one that it cakes a lor of imagination to smell ‘And what a delight to move from one realm of adar to the next in the nar- row streecs of an old town; the scent sphere of a candy stare makes one think of the innocence and curiosity of childhood; the dense smell of « shoemaker's workshop makes one imagine horses and saddles, harness straps and the excitement of riding; the fragrance of « bread shop projects images of health, sustenance and physical strength, whereas the perfume of «pastry shop makes one chink of bourgeois felicity. Why do abandoned houses always have the same hollow smell; is it because ‘he particular smell is caused by che visual emptiness observed by the eye? In his Notebook of Malta Laurids Brigae, Rainer Maria Rilke gives « dea- _matic description of images of past life in an already demolished house con~ veyed by traces imprinted on the wall of its neighboring house. “There were the midday meals and sicknesses and the exhalations and che smoke of years, and the sweat thar breaks out under the armpits and makes the gar- ‘ments heavy, and the stale breath of mouchs, and the oily odour of perspir- ing fees. There were che pungent tang of urine and the stench of burning soot and the grey reek of potatoes, and the heavy, sickly fumes of rancid grease. The sweetish, lingering smell of neglected infants was there, and the smell of frightened children who go to school and the stuffiness of the beds of nubile youths. Contempor images of architecture appear sterile and lifeless as compared ‘othe emotional and associative power of Rilke’s olfactory imagery ‘THE SHAPE OF TOUCH “The skin reads the texture, weight, densiey and cemperacure of matter ‘The surface of an old object, polished co perfection by the tool of the crafts- ‘man and the assiduous hands of is users, seduces the stroking of our hand. Ic is pleasurable ro press a door handle shining from che thousand hands thac have entered the door before us; che clean shimmer of ageless wear has tummed into an image of welcome and hospitality. The door handle is the handshake of che building, The cactile sense connects us with time and tradition; chrough marks of touch we shake the hands of countless genera ‘The skin craces spaces of temperacure with unesring precision; the cool and. invigorating shadow under a tree or the caressing sphere of warmch in a spot of sun. In my childhood-images of the countryside, I can vividly recall walls againse the angle of che sun, walls which intensified the hear of radiation and melted the snow, allowing the first smell of pregnant soil to announce the approach of summer. These pockets of spring were identified by the skin and the nose as much as by the eve We crace the densicy and texture of the ground through our soles. ‘Standing barefoot on a smooth glacial rock by the sea at sunset and sensing through one's soles the warmth of che stone heated by the sun is a healing ‘experience; ic makes one pare of the eternal cycle of nature. One senses the slow breathing of the earth, ‘There isa strong identity between the skin and the sensation of home. The experience of home is essentially an experience of warmth. The space of warmth around a fireplace is che space of ultimate intimacy and comfort. [A sense of homecoming is never stronger than seeing, light in the window of a house in a snow-covered landscape at dusk; the remembrance of iesM warm interior gently warms one’s frozen limbs. Home and skin cutn into a Single sensation Bur the eye also couches; the gaze implies an unconscious bodily mimesis, identification. Pethaps, we should think of touch as the unconscious of vision. Our gaze strokes distant surfaces, concours and edges, and the unconscious tactile sensation determines che agreeableness or unpleasant- fess of the experience. The distant and che near are experienced with the same intensity. Great archicecture offers shapes and surfaces molded for the pleasurable touch of the eye. ‘The eye is che sense of separation and distance, whereas touch is the sense ‘of nearness, intimacy and affection. During overpowering emotional stares ‘we rend to close off the distancing sense of vision; we close our eyes when caressing our loved ones. Deep shadows and darkness are esencial, because they dim the sharpness of vision and im and cactile fancasy. Homogeneous light paralyzes the imagination in the same way thac homogenization eliminates the experience of place. unconscious peripheral vision In his In Praise of Shadows, Jun‘ichito Tanizaki points out that even Japanese cooking depends upon shadows and is inseparable from darkness. “And when yokan is served in a lacquer dish, ic is as ifthe darkness of che ‘oom were melting on your tongue.” In olden times the blackened teeth of the geisha and her green-black lips and white face were also intended t0 ‘emphasize che darkness and shadows of che room. In Tuis Barragan's view ‘most of contemporary houses would be more pleasane with only half of their window surface. In emotional staes, sense stimuli seem to shift from the more refined sens- ces towards che more haic, from vision down co couch and smell. A cul- ture that seeks to control its citizens is likely to value the opposite direc- tion of interface; away from the intimate identification towards the pub- licly distant detachment. A society of surveillance is necessarily a society of a voyeurise eye. IMAGES OF MUSCLE AND BONE Primitive man used his body as the dimensioning and proportioning 5ys- ‘em of his constructions. The builders of traditional societies shaped their buildings with their own bodies in the same way that a bird molds its nest by its body. ‘The essence ofa tradition isthe wisdom of the body stored in the haptic memory. The essential knowledge of the ancient hunter, fisher- ‘man and farmer, as well as of the mason and stone cutter, was an imitation ‘of an embodied tradition of che crade, stored in the muscular and tactile “The word habit is too worn an word to express this passionate liaison of four bodies, which do not forgec, with an unforgectable house,” writes Bachelard ofthe scrength of bodily memory. ‘There is an inherent suggestion of action in images of archiceceure, che moment of active encounter of & ptomise of use and purpose. A bodily reaction is an inseparable aspect ofthe experience of architecture as @ conse- ‘quence of chis implied action. A real architectural experience is no simply a series of retinal images; a building is encountered ~ itis approached, con fronted, encountered, related to one’s body, moved about, utilized as 2 con- dition for other things, ete Stepping stones sec in the grass of a garden are images and imprints of Jmuman seeps. ‘As we open a door, our body weight meets the weight of the door; our legs measure the steps as we ascend a stair, our hand strokes the handrail and ‘our entire body moves diagonally and dramatically through space. ‘A building is noc an end co itself; ic Frames, articulaces, restructures, gives significance, relates, separates and unites, facilicates and prohibits. Consequently, elements of an architectural experience seem ¢o have a verb form rather than being nouns. Authentic architecvural experiences consist then of approaching, of confronting a building rather than the facade; of ‘the act of entering and not simply the frame of the door, of looking in or cout of a window, rather than the window ise. Jn che analysis of Fra Angelico’s Annunciation in his essay “From the Doorstep to the Common Room: (1926) Alvar Aalto recognizes che verb essence of architectural experience; he speaks of entering a room, not of the porch or the door, for instance. ‘The authenticity of architectural experience is grounded in the tectonic language of building and the comprehensibility of che act of construction to the senses. We behold, touch, listen and measure the world with our entire bodily existence and the experiential world is organized and articu- lated around the center of the body. Our domicile is the refuge of ovr body, memory and identity. We are in constant dialogue and interaction with the environment, co the degree that it is impossible to detach the image of the Self from its spatial and situational existence. “I am the space, ‘where I am,” as the poet Noe! Arnaud established. BODILY IDENTIFICATION Henry Moore wrote perceptively of the necessity of a bodily identification in are, “This is what the sculpcor must do, He must strive continually to 3836 think of, and use, form in its full spatial completeness. He gets the solid shape, as ie were, inside his head - he chinks of it, whatever its sie, as if he ‘were holding ic completely enclosed in the hollow of his hand. He mencal- ly visualizes a complex form from all cound icself; he knows while he looks at one side what the other side is like; he identifies himself with its cencer of gravity, its mass, its weight; he realizes its volume, and he space that the shape displaces in the aie." ‘The encounter of any work of arc implies a bodily interaction. A work of are functions as another person, with whom we converse, Melanie Klein's notion of projective identification suggests char, in fac, all human interac: ‘ion implies projection of fragments of the Self to the other person. The painter Graham Sutherland expresses the same view in regards co his own. work, "In a sense the landscape painter must almost look at the landscape 1s if ic were himself - himself as a human being.” In Paul Cézanne’s view the lundscape thinks chrough him and he is the consciousness of the land- scape. Similarly, an architect internalize a building in his body; movement, bal- ance, distance and scale ae felt unconsciously through the body as tension in che muscular system and in the positions of the skeleton and inner ‘organs. As the work interacts with the body of the observer the experience mirrors these bodily sensations of the maker. Consequently, architecture is ‘communication from the body of the architect directly to che body of che inhabitant. Understanding architeccural scale implies the unconscious measuring of an object or @ building with one’s body, and projecting one’s bodily scheme fon the space in question. We feel pleasure and protection when the body discovers its resonance in space. ‘When experiencing 2 structure, we unconsciously mimic its configuration ‘with bones and muscles; the pleasurably animaced flow of a piece of music is subconsciously transformed into bodily sensations, the composition of an abstract painting is experienced as censions to che muscular system ‘The scructures of a building are unconsciously imitated and comprehended through the skeletal system unknowingly, as we petform the task of the column or the vaule with our body. The brick wants to become a vault, as Louis Kahn has said, but chis metamorphosis takes place through the mimesis of our own body ‘The sense of gravity is the essence ofall architectonic structures and great architecture makes us conscious of gravity and earth. Architeccure strengthens verticality of our experience of the world. Ac the same time thac architecrure makes us aware of the depth of earch, it makes us dream of levitation and fight ‘TASTE OF ARCHITECTURE ‘Adrian Scokes waites about the “oral invitation of Veronese marble,” There is a subtle cransference between tactile and taste experiences. Vision also becomes transferred to taste; certain colors as well a delicate decals evoke coral sensations, A delicately colored polished stone sueface is subliminally sensed by the congue. Many years ago I fele compelled ro kneel and couch the white marble threshold of the James residence in Carmel, California designed by Charles and Henry Greene. Carlo Scarpa’s architecture also frequently presents similar experiences of taste ‘Tanizaki gives an impressive description of the subtle interaction of the “With lacquerware there is a beauty in that moment becween removing the Jid and lifting ehe bowl ro che mouth when one gazes atthe stil, silent lig tid in the dark depths of the bowl, its colour hardly differing from the bowl itself. What lies within che darkness one cannot distinguish, but the palm senses the gentle movements of the liquid, vapor rises from within forming droplets on the rim, and a fragrance carried upon the vapor brings a delicate anticipation.” ‘THE TASK OF ARCHITECTURE ‘The timeless task of architecture is co create embodied exiscential metaphors that concretize and structure man’s being in che world. Images ‘of architecture reflect and extetnalize ideas and images of life; architecture materializes our images of ideal life. Buildings and towns enable us to seructure, understand, and remember the shapeless flow of reality and, ulti- imately, 0 recognize and remember who we are, Architecture enables us to place ourselves in the continuum of culeue All experience implies che acts of recollecting, remembering and compar ing. An embodied memory has an essential role as che basis of remember- {ng a space or place. Our home and domicile ate integrated with our self identity; they become pare of our own body and being, In memorable experiences of architeccure, space matter and time fuse into co the basic substance of being, thae penecrates the consciousness. We identify ourselves with this space, this place, this fone single dimension, ‘moment and these dimensions as they become ingredients of our very exis: tence, Architecture isthe arc of mediation and reconciliation.