On November 24, Finnish architect, educator and writer Juhani Pallasmaa and Taiwanese architect Sheng-Yuan Huang visited Bilkent University to present a seminar on “Architecture for People,” hosted by the Faculty of Art, Design and Architecture.
Prof. Pallasmaa, a former dean at the Helsinki University of Technology as well as an internationally acclaimed practitioner, delivered a lecture titled “The Veracity of Experience: The Representation of Multisensory Reality in Architecture.” In his talk, he argued that “art and architecture are constituted in human experience, not in the physical object,” and that “the phenomenological view is now shifting our emphasis to the experience and the complex interactions of perception, memory, imagination, emotion and empathic identification.”
The architectural work Mr. Huang described in his presentation, titled “Living With Sky, Water and Mountain: A Path Towards Freedom,” follows the theoretical ground set out by Prof. Pallasmaa, providing a real-life exemplification of the human senses serving as the basis for architectural creation. The award-winning architect’s account of his 25 years of work in Yilan, Taiwan, illuminated the social role of architecture and the innermost ethic of a practitioner who serves the “weakest” people.