Thinking Hand Notes

Pallasmaa, Juhani. (2009). The Thinking Hand: Existential and Embodied Wisdom in Architecture (Architectural Design Primer) by Juhani Pallasmaa, Chichester: John Wiley & Sons.

“The title of the book, The Thinking Hand, is a metaphor for the characteristic independent and active roles of all our senses as they constantly scan our life world. The subtitle – Existential and Embodied Wisdom in Architecture – refers to the other knowledge, the silent understanding that lies hidden in the human existential condition and our specific embodied mode of being and experiencing. Many of our existentially most crucial skills are internalised as automatic reactions beyond conscious awareness and intentionality.” (Pallasmaa, 2009, p. 22).

Pallasmaa points out that the division of body and mind has its foundation in the history of western philosophy and that; “Western consumer culture continues to project a dualistic attitude towards the human body. On the one hand we have an obsessively aestheticized and eroticised cult of th3e body, but on the other, intelligence and creative capacity are equally celebrated as totally separate, or even exclusive individual qualities. In either case, the body and the mind are understood as unrelated entities that do not constitute an integrated unity” (Pallasmaa, 2009, p. 11).

He goes onto say that the human body is “undervalued and neglected in its role as the very ground of embodied existence and knowledge as well as the full understanding of the human condition” (Pallasmaa, 2009, p. 11).

 “It is, in fact, reasonable to assume that prior to our current industrial, mechanised and materialist consumer culture, situations in daily life as well as processes of maturation and education provided a more comprehensive experimental ground for human growth and learning… “…the intimate contact with work, production materials and climate and the ever-varying phenomena of nature provided ample sensory interaction with the world of physical causalities.” (Pallasmaa, 2009, p. 12).

 “In our age of massive industrial production, surreal consumption, euphoric communication and fictitious digital environments, we continue to live in our bodies in the same way that we inhabit our houses, because we have sadly forgotten that we do not live in our bodies but are ourselves embodied constitutions.” (Pallasmaa, 2009, p. 13).

He does not want to present a conservative view of cultural development, rather he wants to point out the blind spots in our view of historicity as biological and cultural beings. He points out that the human body is key to everything we do, because it is necessary to our sensory experience. (Pallasmaa, 2009, p. 13).

He argues that architectural ideas come from a deep biological and subconscious understanding of the world.

“Architects don’t invent anything, they transform reality.” (Pallasmaa, 2009, p. 16).

“All artforms – such as sculpture, painting, music, cinema and architecture – are specific modes of thinking. They represent ways of sensory and embodied thought characteristic to the particular artistic medium” (Pallasmaa, 2009, p. 19).

“Profound architecture does not merely beautify the settings of dwelling: great buildings articulate the experiences of our very existence” (Pallasmaa, 2009, p. 19).

“The art form of architecture does not only provide a shelter for the body, it also redefines the contour of our consciousness, and it is a true externalisation of our mind” (Pallasmaa, 2009, p. 20).

“…All profound artworks reinforce the perception and understanding of human bio-cultural historicity and continuity” (Pallasmaa, 2009, p. 20).

“An architectural project is not only a result of a problem-solving process, as it is also a metaphysical proposition that expresses the maker’s mental world and his/her understanding of the human life world” (Pallasmaa, 2009, p. 108).

“…profound architecture is always expected to evoke human, experimental and existential values that cannot be prescribed. Every true piece of architecture relocates man in the world and cats some new light on man’s existential enigma” (Pallasmaa, 2009, p. 109).

“Every artform has its ontology as well as its characteristic field of expression…” (Pallasmaa, 2009, p. 113).

“All significant architecture is the result of serious thinking – or, more precisely of a distinct way of thinking through the medium of architecture. In the same way that cinema is a mode of cinematic thinking, painting a means of articulating painterly ideas… architecture is a means of philosophising about the world and human existence through the embodied material act of constructing. Architecture develops existential and lived metaphors through space, structure, matter, gravity and light. Consequently, architecture does not illustrate or mimic ideas of philosophy, literature, painting or any other art forms; it is a mode of thinking in its own right” (Pallasmaa, 2009, p. 115).

“…architecture is an artistic expression as far as it transcends its purely utilitarian, technical and rational realm, and turns into a metaphoric expression of the lived world and the human conditions” (Pallasmaa, 2009, p. 115).

“Buildings are not abstract, meaningless constructions, or aesthetic compositions, they are extensions and shelters of our bodies, memories, identities and minds” (Pallasmaa, 2009, p. 117).

“The building is a rational object of utility and an artistic/ existential metaphor at the same time” (Pallasmaa, 2009, p. 119).

“We do not live in an objective world of matter and facts, as commonplace naïve realism assumes. The characteristically human mode of existence takes place in the worlds of possibilities, moulded by our capacities of fantasy and imagination. We live in worlds of the mind, in which the materials and the mental, as well as the experienced, remembered and imagined, completely fuse into each other” (Pallasmaa, 2009, p. 127).

 “The artform of architecture mediates and evokes existential feelings and sensations. Architecture of our time, however, has normalised emotions and usually eliminates completely such extreme emotions as sorrow and bliss, melancholy and ecstasy” (Pallasmaa, 2009, p. 136.

“Meaningful buildings arise from tradition and they constitute and continue a tradition” (Pallasmaa, 2009, p. 146).

“As today’s consumer, media and information culture increasingly manipulate the human mind through thematised environments, commercial conditioning and benumbing entertainment, art has the mission to defend the autonomy of individual experience and provide an existential ground for the human condition. One of the primary tasks of art is to safeguard the authenticity and independence of human experience” (Pallasmaa, 2009, p. 148).