The Finnish architect and theoretician Juhani Pallasmaa
writes in The Geometry of Feeling that “the quality of
architecture does not lie in the sense of reality that it expresses,
but quite the reverse, in its capacity for awakening our
imagination.” Architecture is a multi-sensory experience that
draws upon the physical, emotional, and intellectual parts of our
being. Yet beginning in the mid part of the 20th century much of
architectural theory gravitated towards the intellectual and
abstract. Exceedingly academic, categorized, and frequently
dissociated from emotional and physical experience, architecture
as commonly practiced has not only contributed to the alienation
of the architect and much of his work from the understanding of
the common man, but to our estrangement from an authentic
experience of place and being.
In opposition to this and established in theory informed
by Martin Heidegger, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Juhani Pallasmaa,
and Peter Zumthor it is argued that design rooted in the holistic
and sensuous experience of architecture, tuned to the particular
needs of site and context, solidly grounds us to a genuine
connection of place and being. Centered on concrete human
experience and architecture’s holistic ability to connect with us
on a physical, emotional, and intellectual level, this research is
applied to the design case study of an art museum presenting
the work of the late Italian-American artist, sculptor, and
furniture designer Harry Bertoia.