16 Quotes by Juhani Pallasmaa

The body knows and remembers. Architectural meaning derives from archaic responses and reactions remembered by the body and the senses.

I dwell in the city and the city dwells in me.

The elements of architecture are not visual units or gestalt; they are encounters, confrontations that interact with memory.

The inhumanity of contemporary architecture and cities can be understood as the consequence of the neglect of the body and the senses, and an imbalance in our sensory system.

Instead of an existentially grounded plastic and spatial experience, architecture has adopted the psychological strategy of advertising and instant persuasion; buildings have turned into image products detached from existential depth and sincerity.

The impact of the sense of vision on philosophy is well summed up by Peter Sloterdijk: ‘The eyes are the organic prototype of philosophy. Their enigma is that they not only can see but are also able to see themselves seeing.

Modernist design at large has housed the intellect and the eye, but it has left the body and the other senses, as well as our memories, imagination and dreams, homeless.