Architecture is meant to be experienced rather than merely visioned. When I enter a new space, whether a restaurant or a museum, I unconsciously generate an estimated time of my physical staying in that space. In another word, some spaces are designed and constructed for shorter stays, while others for longer ones. And this concept corresponds to what Juhani Pallasmaa writes in The Eyes of The Skin about architecture involves all being senses and sometimes our senses actively seek the opportunities of interacting with the environment.
In The Body in the Centre, architecture does not exist without human bodies or sensory experience. Very much like the idealism, creating an architectural space is usually a designer projecting one’s own personalities and emotions to the whole world by presenting some forms of solidity and empty. Then this form influences others, ideally creating the same or similar emotions. In traditional Chinese idealism philosophy, a saying goes, “I am here for I am thinking,” which is so vague that surprisingly illustrates the point that “the world and the self inform and redefine each other constantly.”
Emerging from last project concerning with transferring a harmonic feeling embodied in a music piece to an architectural volume, my thought upon how emotions can be produced or counteracting, enhanced or weakened, effected or isolated by architectural shapes (linear, planner, three-dimensional), volumes and light (color, quality, shadow) is slowly and firmly developing over the time. In a psychological counseling room, everything is designed or decorated in round shapes and hairy surfaces, not because the mentor, Sigmund Freud, did so, but because avoiding sharpness, especially pointing dots to humans, can significantly reduce the nerve and calm down all visitors coming through the door. And psychoanalysis requires one to quickly calm down for an easier access to the unconsciousness. This is one of the reasons why I enveloped all my previous models in smooth curvy shapes.
Acoustic Intimacy, the auditory experience within the space also has a strong potential to and in fact does change being emotions and determine the time of one’s stay. You will certainly not anticipate any electronic music in a solemn church and not church bells in a bar in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. Though this could be too superficial to exemplify sounds in space, the point of the singularity of the architecture, participants and both their sounds can still be grounded. Meanwhile, timbre plays a role of a symphony conductor. The quality of a sound might not be accurate but timbre is everything else except pitch. Thus, timbre in the architectural world can simply be demonstrated as everything else except the concrete and steels. Furthermore, elements, including but more restricted by the light and sound, all can be interpreted into timbre, the quality of architecture.