Juhani Pallasmaa, Finnish architect and former professor of architecture and dean at the Helsinki University of Technology, will give a lecture on Saturday, November 23 at the Bodrum Architecture Library, Bodrum, a port city in Muğla Province, Turkey. 

The Bodrum Architecture Library includes over 10,000 books and 20,000 documents in the fields of architecture, history, art, urbanism, archeology, engineering - founded by WAC's Founder and President Prof. Suha Ozkan, Hon F AIA. The library also hosts a series of events, workshops and lectures directed by Suha Ozkan. 

Juhani Uolevi Pallasmaa. Image courtesy of 1000kitap.com.

Dr. Juhani Uolevi Pallasmaa's lecture will start at 13:00 pm at the library under the title of "Twelve Themes In My Work". The lecture will be in English. 

Pallasmaa served as a Pritzker Architecture Prize jury between 2008-2014. In addition to his many academic and public roles as the director of the Museum of Finnish Architecture, he has realized many projects in his own architecture office. 

He has taught at the Washington University in St. Petersburg Louis and the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. He has been at Frank Lloyd Wright's Talies. He has given lectures, seminars and conferences mainly in Europe, North and South America, Asia and Africa.

In spite of the many architecture projects he has completed, Pallasmaa may be best-known as a theorist and educator. He has taught at universities all over the world, including Washington University in St. Louis, Missouri. He has written and lectured extensively on cultural philosophy, environmental psychology, and architectural theory. 

His works are read in many architecture classrooms around the world:

Questions of Perception: Phenomenology of Architecture by Steven Holl, Juhani Pallasmaa, and Alberto Perez-Gomez

The Embodied Image: Imagination and Imagery in Architecture by Juhani Pallasmaa, Wiley, 2011 

The Thinking Hand by Juhani Pallasmaa, Wiley, 2009

The Eyes of the Skin: Architecture and the Senses (1996) by Juhani Pallasmaa, Wiley, 2012 

Encounters: Architectural Essays by Juhani Pallasmaa, Peter MacKeith, editor, 2006 

Encounters 2 - Architectural Essays by Juhani Pallasmaa, Peter MacKeith, editor, 2012 

Archipelago: Essays on Architecture by Juhani Pallasmaa, Peter MacKeith, editor 

Understanding Architecture by Robert McCarter and Juhani Pallasmaa, Phaidon, 2012

In Finland, Juhani Pallasmaa is known as a Constructivist. His work has been inspired by the simplicity of Japanese architecture and the abstraction of modern Deconstructivism. His only work in the US is the arrival plaza at Cranbrook Academy of Art (1994).

He promotes a back-to-basics, evolutionary approach to architecture that has become revolutionary in the 21st century. He told interviewer Rachel Hurst that computers have been misused to replace human thought and imagination:

"The computer has no capacity for empathy, for compassion. The computer cannot imagine the use of space. But the most important thing is that the computer cannot hesitate. Working between the mind and the hand we often hesitate, and we reveal our own answers in our hesitations."

Pallasmaa also suggests that architects and designers read novels and poetry to better understand architecture. Juhani Pallasmaa’s Book List is an eclectic mix of unexpected titles:

"In my view, literature and the arts provide deep lessons on the essences of the world and life. Because architecture is fundamentally about life, I find the literary classics, or any fine novels and poems, to be essential books on architecture."

Event details

Date: Saturday, November 23, 2019

Location: Bodrum Architecture Library

Time: 13:00pm

Top image courtesy of Bodrum Architecture Library

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