A Weekly Dose of Architecture Books

Encounters 1 - Architectural Essays by Juhani Pallasmaa, edited by Peter MacKeith, published by  Rakennustieto Publishing , 2013 (second edition). Paperback, 384 pages. ( Amazon ) Encounters 2 - Architectural Essays by Juhani Pallasmaa, edited by Peter MacKeith, published by  Rakennustieto Publishing , 2013. Paperback, 366 pages. ( Amazon ) Finnish architect, educator, and author Juhani Pallasmaa's most well known book is The Eyes of the Skin , an argument against the privileging of sight over the other senses, and of visual imagery over other ways of experiencing architecture. His case is a strong one that has rightfully made the book a standard text in architecture schools. It is actually the first part of a trilogy of books focused on the "study on the role of the senses, embodiment and imagination in architectural and artistic perception, thought and making"—the other two are The Thinking Hand and The Embodied Image . Students and architects ar...

The Architecture of Image: Existential Space in Cinema by Juhani Pallasmaa, published by  Rakennustieto Publishing , 2008 ( Amazon ) "I am interested in the ways cinema constructs spaces in the mind, creates mind-spaces, thus reflecting the inherent ephemeral architecture of the human mind, thought and emotion. The mental task of buildings and cities is to structure our being-in-the-world and to articulate the surface between the experiencing self and the world. But doesn't the film director do exactly the same with his projected images?" This snippet from Juhani Pallasmaa's introduction to his analyses of five films by four directors ( Rope and Rear Window by Hitchcock, Nostalghia by Tarkovsky, The Shining by Kubrick, and The Passenger by Antonioni) paints a clear picture of the architect/writer's intentions. Much variety comes with each director's unique way of telling a story, th...