Disciplining sensation: the architectural thinking of Reima Pietilae

摘要

Gilles Deleuze sought an ontology that did not, according to Todd May, 'reduce being to the knowable'. Instead he sought a widening of thought that would allow one 'to palpate the unknowable'. Key to this expanded field of thought is an ability to think the 'material synthetic unity' of 'sensation'. Deleuze drew upon art in general, and painting in particular, to describe both the nuances of sensation and how to think sensation. Although there is no evidence that Finnish architect Reima Pietila ever read Deleuze's work, they certainly shared sympathies. In particular, both saw sensation as a unique and powerful mode of encounter with the world around us. However, unlike Deleuze, Pietila pursued the question of sensation via the thinking of design. Pietila once claimed 'an architect doesn't create, he sketches'. At first blush this sounds like a fairly obvious statement about a typical architectural process. However, to glean the true import of this comment one should read it quite literally: the architect does not think of what to make and then proceed to make it; rather the architect draws architecture into existence. In this way, Pietila thought of design like Deleuze thought of being - being is not there first; it is something produced. Pietila's designs were produced via a mutually informing process of figural expression (used to modulate formations of intensity) and rehearsals of construction (used to sharpen the architectural force of these formations). Simply, Pietila produced architectures of sensation by disciplining sensation through the processes of architecture.