Pallasmma

1. Pallasmma encourages architects to consider architecture as a form of art, and with this attitude they can assess the experience of the users in the same way that they would assess a person’s experience of art.  Finding out how the “imagery” of architecture affects their consciousness with focussing on what do the users emotionally or mentally associate to the architectural imagery? In order to actually assess a person’s experience of architecture, an architect would have to interview that person understanding the import of emotional and historical context of a person’s experience and how it associates to the   architecture in question.

2. ART begins with the body according to Pallasmma because it is the human ability to perceive through our 5 physical senses  and relate to our experience of life as lived through our bodies that makes art meaningful.  It is also generated by the physicality of the artist, and the memories of the artist based upon life/physical experience and feeling.  One creates art because one “feels” inspired and seeks to create that same “feeling” in other via the artistic creation.

MEMORY – Pallasmma states that since certain childhood memories remain significant throughout our lives, they certainly play a large part in forming who we are. We learn about life, through living and remembering.  Remembering is how we collect data as humans.  Memories are our data, and daily we sift through this data, even collected as children, in order to assess experience lived years later.

ART & PLACE – Writers and film-makers create a significant sense of place through their descriptions of the settings, and the characters’ interaction and experience of these settings.  These imaginary settings then take on a life of their own – with the reader/audience mentally filling in the blanks – especially in the case of reading.  The architecture of the novel or the film, may often be more successful, because it has the PR of the writer/film-maker selling its story, giving a particular point of view.  But architecture cannot gain this significance without its user’s being affected in some way, and gathering memories about it – which later tell its story.

LONELINESS in a building is a phenomena of contrast.  In great architecture, one feels, senses the physical participation of all those who created the building.  Great builders leave an imprint of humanity behind, for the inhabitant to discover later.   Is it loneliness, or is it a sense of smallness apprehending something made by many hands?  Perhaps both.