Architectural Perception Through The Lens of Haptic Plasticity
Isabella Gil–Steen Eiler Rasmussen, Experiencing Architecture
Our contact with the world takes place at the boundary line of the self through specialized parts of our enveloping membrane. The view of Ashley Montagu, the anthropologist, based on medical evidence, confirms the primacy of the haptic realm: [The skin] is the oldest and the most sensitive of our organs, our first medium of communication, and our most efficient protector... Even the transparent cornea of the eye is overlain by a layer of modified skin... Touch is the parent of our eyes, ears, nose, and mouth. It is the sense which became differentiated into the others, a fact that seems to be recognized in the age-old evaluation of touch as “the mother of the senses.”
–Juhani Pallasmaa, The Eyes of the Skin
We can think of Architecture as the translation of an architect's thought process into physical, tangible matter through materials. “Plasticity” derives from the inherent and given qualities of a material that allows a designer to transform ideas into a spatial experience. When Architecture is designed around the human body, the quality of spaces is not only functional but also allows the user to to be informed by the design choices. The aim of focusing primarily on perception through the sense of touch is to explore architecture as much more than a visual aesthetic experience, a position substantially informed by what philosopher Gaston Bachelard calls the “polyphony of senses” and his theories rooted in the idea that perception is a collaboration of what the eye, body, and senses perceive, which is an essential part of thinking,1 and too often ignored in architectural production. Architecture, as a discipline and a pedagogy, needs to re-embrace physical material exploration to re-engage with the sense of touch.
Materiality and touch are closely associated, given that the sense of touch informs all others. In understanding architecture through a haptic2 lens, the sense of touch, perception, and the capacity of the body to sense its movement and location in space (proprioception), principally mediated through the skin, can expand the mind’s perception of the world. Touch can register mass or its absence (void), scale, texture, temperature, humidity, sound, and movement. The body’s ability to read the physicality of an environment shapes our understanding of it as well as our self-reflected philosophies and thoughts.
Tactile architecture is often understood as buildings that are accessible and inclusive for everyone, especially the visually impaired, with careful attention to material changes that aid wayfinding. An example is the tactile bricks or extrusions in sidewalks that indicate a transition to the street, where a pedestrian needs to be aware of vehicles. However, haptic architectural perception is focused on how materiality can influence a person’s physical, emotional, and mental capacities through the experience of space. With materials as the main source of information, textures, and surfaces have a much more profound meaning.
This concept, explored by architects such as Alvar Aalto, focuses on the experimentation with materiality to convey the idea. Aalto dedicated his studies and career to sensory realism, intending his architecture to be about how the inhabitant occupies and communicates with the space, instead of its visual aesthetic, with the intentional specification of textures possessing a “muscular and haptic plasticity”.3 Materials’ intrinsic capacities and properties intensify behavior. With natural materials, these capacities are the desired qualities that create an architectural experience in a space. There is communication in the encounter of user and space; The user exists and experiences the qualities of the space while its materiality expresses history and aging over time.
Human interaction with architecture is associated with immersive experiences, like Massimiliano Saccardi’s Interactive Van Gogh exhibitions and art inaugurations. Often, these installations stimulate the mind during a single encounter but do not make space for a relationship that continues over time, unlike the buildings we live in, the streets we walk on, and what we see in our day-to-day lives. The rapidly emerging and evolving technologies applied in this type of perceptual experience flattened a multi-sensorial involvement in space as the sense of sight tries to keep pace with the speed of technology. In many cases, it connects to the user as a display of changing colors and images focusing on the visual rather than opening room for unconscious understanding and reflection. In these encounters of user and space, haptics take a secondary place, and space becomes immaterial, with experiences being able to take place anywhere.
Technology has also changed the way we encounter the architectural thought process. With the use of software and technology, sketching by hand and experimenting with the plasticity of materials through physical modeling have been lost. Transmitting the feeling of space from design to physical matter has faded with the embrace of computing, as a screen only displays the visual, taking away the stimulation of the other senses4. Often, computer software standardizes the design idea to available asset libraries, while designing by hand can produce more intentional design decisions. This is not to dismiss the potential of digital tools. However, the exploration of plasticity through physical contact–in sketching, materials, and space–must take place when consolidating an idea into building software. There is a need for an understanding of intentions and purpose that consider an occupant’s body and mind.
In the early years of architecture school, physical modeling is emphasized as part of discovering an individual design process. Such a focus vanishes in the following ones, as well as in the profession. This article argues for a greater focus on the haptic perception of architecture through space. An emphasis on experiencing architecture through the senses and its understanding through body and mind, makes the profession socially and culturally responsible for how we occupy spaces and how that translates into our being. The Bauhaus and its unique pedagogical method emphasized teaching students to think of the act of designing in unconventional ways so that architecture could have different meanings and impacts5. Close contact with materiality and its potential to inform space needs to have a greater presence in architecture schools because architecture is principally perceived through hapticity.
Isabella Gil is a fifth-year undergraduate student pursuing a Bachelor of Architecture from the Hillier College of Architecture & Design at NJIT. She is interested in innovation of new materials and technologies, and how design affects the quality of spaces, focusing on human perception. This essay was originally prepared for ARCH 583 taught by Thomas Ogorzalek.
This essay was published as part of Transect Volume 5: Pedagogy (2024), Jacob Swanson, Daniel Girgis, Dhruvi Rajpopat, Fatima Fardos, Jimenna Alcantar, Elizabeth Kowalchuk, eds.
Footnotes
1: Gaston Bachelard, The Poetics of Space: The Classic Look at How We Experience Intimate Places, trans. Maria Jolas (Boston: Beacon Press, 1994).
2: Juhani Pallasmaa, The Thinking Hand: Existential and Embodied Wisdom in Architecture (Hoboken: Wiley, 2009).
3: Juhani Pallasmaa, The Eyes of the Skin (Hoboken: Wiley, 2005).
4: Pallasmaa, The Eyes of the Skin.
5: Steen Eiler Rasmussen, Experiencing Architecture (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1964).