Empathic Imagination

A Talk by Juhani Pallasmaa at Bengal Architecture Symposium

A former coworker turned me on to the writing of Juhani Pallasmaa several years ago. Since then, Eyes of the Skin has been one of my first recommendations to fellow designers who are looking for new ways to think about the practice. I was delighted to stumble upon a lecture Pallasmaa gave a few years back at the 2016 Bengal Architecture Symposium. While the presentation platform is a bit dry to watch, I feel compelled to outline a few important observations that have really influenced my design practice.

Situational Personality

In the 1960s, psychologists observed that the behavior of an individual in different settings differed more than the behavior of different subjects in a single setting. This lead to the concept of Situational Personality. The notion that our personality is not constant due to the relationship between our mental world and the environment strongly supports our efforts to design experiences rather than objects.

Consciousness is not at all located in the brain, as it is a relational experience deriving from the dialectics of the human neural-system and the world.

Science has since verified that architectural spaces are not just lifeless stages for our activities. They guide, tune, stimulate, and choreograph actions, interests and moods. They give our everyday experiences of being, specific perceptual frames and horizons of understanding both the world and ourselves. We live in resonance with our world, and architecture mediates that very resonance.

Two Qualities of Imagination

Pallasmaa proposes there are two layers of imagination. The first layer projects a material object in isolation from life; the second understands the object as a lived or experienced reality in our life.

There is no perception without interaction with memory and imagination. There is no seeing, hearing nor smelling without these dimensions interacting.

Every sensation includes an imaginative component that needs to be projected back to the world in order to be contextualized and understood. The neurological affinity between what is actually perceived and what is imagined has been well established in studies that show these actions take place in the same area of the brain. This implies a slight difference in truth value of a perceived reality.

Designing Experiences

We imagine in the context of our embodied existence. Through this imagination, we expand our realm of being. Perception has a distinct imaginative component and therefore, is not an automatic process. Imagination is always a creative act. We create what we see and in particular, what it means.

All thinking has a component of embodiment.

Thinking is actually a way of molding one's world as if it were a sculptor's clay. The intellect provides the grounds and control for the process, but the poetic image cannot arise from reason.

The true qualities of architecture are not formal, geometric, intellectual, or even aesthetic. They are existential and poetic. These qualities are archetypal, embodied and emotive experiences which reconnect us with the deep human qualities of occupying space.

Poetic images are always new and ancient at the same time. They evoke recollections, feelings and associations.

It is not possible to invent meaning. Meaning, by philosophical definition, has to be grounded in cultural and biological heritage. This doesn't dictate that our works exist as symbols or metaphors of something else. Rather, they are authentic experiential realities themselves. All art, in fact, exist in two realms. That of physical matter and execution, and that of mental imagery.

We come not to see the art, but the world according to the work.

Feedback

I hope these words resonated with you as they did with me. If you enjoyed reading these highlights of Pallasmaa's lecture, please like and share for others to enjoy. I'm always looking for new readings or lectures to expand my understanding of both professional and personal life. If you have any suggestions, please leave them in the comment section below.