The Thinking Hand: Existential and Embodied Wisdom in Architecture

Author: Juhani Pallasmaa
Year: 2009
Source type: book
Raw file: raw/books/pallasmaa-2009-thinking-hand.md

Summary

Pallasmaa's sequel to The Eyes of the Skin (1995/2005) argues that the mind–body duality inherited from Western philosophy is wrong, and that the hand — and the body as a whole — is a site of intelligence, knowledge and memory in its own right, not a passive executor of the brain. Through the hand's evolution (tool-making, language), the practice of drawing and craft, and the "workmanship of risk," Pallasmaa develops an account of embodied, multi-sensory thought as the ground of creativity and dwelling. Against this he sets a sustained critique of the "architecture of the eye" and of the computerised hand, which he charges with producing a bodiless, retinal architecture. The book closes with the claim that architecture's task is to defend existential knowledge, tradition, and the autonomy of sensory experience against spectacle and mass culture.

Key Claims

• Embodiment is the ground of existence, not a supplement: "I am my body" (Gabriel Marcel), "I am what is around me" (Stevens), "I am my world" (Wittgenstein). The body is a knowing entity whose senses and entire being "directly structure, produce and store silent existential knowledge." Western consumer culture aestheticises/eroticises the body while still separating it from intelligence and creative capacity; the Cartesian split persists in educational and social practice even where philosophy has abandoned it.
• The hand has its own intelligence: "the hand speaks to the brain as surely as the brain speaks to the hand" (Wilson). The hand has "its own intentionality, knowledge and skills"; Anaxagoras (over Aristotle) is credited with the priority of hand over intelligence — humans are intelligent because they have hands. The evolution of the hand co-evolved with the brain, tool use, and language.
• All the senses think; art is a mode of embodied thought: "All art forms... are specific modes of thinking... sensory and embodied thought." Architecture is "a mode of existential and metaphysical philosophising through the means of space, structure, matter, gravity and light," not mere visual aestheticisation. The hand is a "bridge between the imagining mind and the emerging image."
• The hand-drawn line and the model are haptic, mimetic, and temporal: drawing fuses external space/matter with internal perception into a "temporal image," producing visual, cerebral and muscular records. Sketching is "an act of unconscious thinking through making." Physical models "speak to the hand and the body as powerfully as to the eye."
• The computer is a "device for a bodiless observer": computerised design "flattens our magnificent multi-sensory... capacity of imagination," creates distance between maker and object, presents "false precision" and "apparent finiteness," and is a "mediated construction" rather than a "mimetic moulding." Aalto's Vuoksenniska church (1955–8) is cited as proof that extreme formal complexity need not require CAD. Students should master mental imagery and the hand before the computer.
• Craft involves workmanship of risk vs. certainty (Pye): ambitious work proceeds by "workmanship of risk" (uncertainty, experimentation), the risk borne by the maker's persona; the creative state is "a condition of haptic immersion." Sennett's The Craftsman and its "dialogue between concrete practices and thinking" support the account.
• Tradition, limits and uncertainty, not novelty and freedom, generate meaning: Stravinsky ("everything that remains outside of tradition is plagiarism"), Valéry ("the greatest liberty is born of the greatest rigour"), Doczi ("we have lost sight of the power of limits"). The architect's task is to "transform reality" (Siza), not invent ex nihilo; meaningful architecture "maintains roots and traditions instead of uprooting and inventing."
• Existential vs. operative/instrumental knowledge: the designer needs both instrumental skill and "existential knowledge... moulded by their experiences of life," which "provides the most important context for ethical judgment." Architecture as a "gift" to a "glorified" client and as an idealising of the situation.
• Primacy of touch / hapticity: "the senses are specialisations of skin tissue... all sensory experiences are modes of touching"; touch is "the mother of the senses" (Montagu). The door-pull is "the handshake of the building." Kahn's Salk Institute as a fusion of immensity and intimacy. The unconscious "touch in vision" is neglected by visually biased architecture.
• The task of art and architecture is to defend the existential: against the mass-produced kitsch of consumer culture and the "deluge of images," architecture must "slow down experience, halt time... defend silence," and "defend the autonomy of individual experience" and the "eroticism of the life world."
• Art creates things, not symbols: Sartre's Tintoretto: the yellow rift is "anguish become thing," not a sign of anguish; Tarkovsky: "when it rains in my films, it simply rains." Architecture is an image-condensation entering consciousness directly, not an intellectual riddle or a signifying system.

Connections

Concepts: Embodiment · Atmosphere · Dwelling · Everyday Life · Spectacle
Authors: Juhani Pallasmaa · Christian Norberg-Schulz · Martin Heidegger · Gaston Bachelard
Debates: Spectacle vs. Function
Related source notes: Architectural Atmospheres (Borch ed.) · The Ethical Function of Architecture · Building Dwelling Thinking · Genius Loci

Direct Quotes

"We do not live in our bodies but are ourselves embodied constitutions. Embodiment is not a secondary experience; the human existence is fundamentally an embodied condition." (Introduction)

"The human body is a knowing entity. Our entire being in the world is a sensuous and embodied mode of being, and this very sense of being is the ground of existential knowledge." (Introduction)

"the hand's essence can never be determined, or explained, by its being an organ which can grasp [...] Every motion of the hand in every one of its works carries itself through the element of thinking, every bearing of the hand bears itself in that element [...]" (quoting Heidegger, ch. 2)

"The computer creates a distance between the maker and the object, whereas drawing by hand or building a model puts the designer in skin-contact with the object or space." (ch. 4, The Computerised Hand)

"Fully computer-generated designs may well project a seductive surface appeal, but in fact they take place in a world in which the observer has no skin, hands or body. The designer himself remains an outsider in relation to his/her own design and body. Computer drawings are devices for a bodiless observer." (ch. 4)

"Architecture is not a mere aestheticised object, but a staging and forming of life... The important works of Modernism are images of a living reality... those of our own time are frequently merely self-referential pictures of architecture itself." (ch. 8)

"the task of architecture is to maintain the differentiation and hierarchical and qualitative articulation of existential space... architecture has to slow down experience, halt time, and defend the natural slowness and diversity of experience... the task of architecture is to maintain and defend silence." (ch. 8)

Open Questions

• Is the critique of computerised design a Luddite or conservative position, or a genuine and currently under-weighted counter to the parametric/digital turn (cf. Spencer, Schumacher)? Can "haptic, embodied" design coexist with the computational re-ontologization of architecture (Claypool, parametricism)?
• Does the claim that art "creates things, not symbols" conflict with the wiki's semiotic readings of architecture (Jencks's enigmatic signifier, Loeckx & Heynen)?
• Is Pallasmaa's normative "defence of tradition/silence" an ethical position or a nostalgia that the everyday-critique camp (Colebrook, Heynen) would problematise?