Haptic: Of or relating to the sense of touch.
Greek: haptikos, from haptesthai, to grasp, to touch.
Seeing is believing, but touching is the truth.
Haptics in Philosophy
This essay is an exploration of the notion of the haptic in architecture. It will explore it in architectural design and in experience of architectural space. I will discuss perception as a precursor to haptics. In philosophical terms perception is how we understand our environment via our senses through identification and interpretation. Philosophical approaches in architecture take this perception of the world and apply it to concepts of understanding and designing of spaces for habitation.
In classical philosophy there was a privileging of the sense of sight. Plato proposed the eye as a method of accessing enthusiasmos or divine inspiration. In ‘The cave’ Plato describes a human who has been chained in a certain position and can only see shadows of things. Once released from his bonds he emerges into the light to ‘see’ things as they really are. This Privileging of sight over other senses highlights Plato’s belief that vision was the noblest sense. Plato and other Classical philosophers asserted that true knowledge is independent of bodily perceptions. However, vision, as highlighted by the allegory of ‘The cave’ was sometimes omitted from this denigration of bodily perceptions. One reason for this was that vision offers the possibility of observation from a distance, thus objective analysis is possible. In ‘Symposium’ Plato glorifies the “eye of the mind” the most theoretical of the senses. Unmediated by touch, smell or taste it is nonphysical and thus viewed as the superior sense.
Aristotle in Metaphysics clearly outlines his stance on sight. He speaks of...
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...itute the haptic realm through which a distinct and special spatial character is brought into being. The building is rarely experienced as a whole image, more as a series of moments, experienced through visual and tactile encounters.
Holl puts emphasis on the essence of materials in architecture, what he refers to in his 2000 book ‘Parallax’ as “chemistry of matter”. This is essentially the essence of a material. Material for Holl can have emotive effects and can signify particular “moods” that unfold in their physcological effect. The materiality of Holl’s work becomes the medium through which we are perceptually connected to the world around us. Our haptic experiences in the architectural realm are according to Holl, influential in the way we perceive the world. As we live in the built environment, our lives become configured through materiality of architecture.
In Plato’s “The Allegory of the Cave,” he suggests that there are two different forms of vision, a “mind’s eye” and a “bodily eye.” The “bodily eye” is a metaphor for the senses. While inside the cave, the prisoners function only with this eye. The “mind’s eye” is a higher level of thinking, and is mobilized only when the prisoner is released into the outside world. This eye does not exist within the cave; it only exists in the real, perfect world.
Using the quote by Habermas as a starting point, select up to two buildings designed in the twentieth century and examine what ‘sudden, shocking encounters’ they have encountered, or created. Analyse the building’s meanings as a demonstration of an avant-garde, or potentially arriere-garde, position.
A simple process formed the backbone of most Greek philosophy. The ancients thought that by combining two equally valid but opposite ideas, the thesis and the antithesis, a new, higher truth could be achieved. That truth is called the synthesis. This tactic of integrating two seemingly opposite halves into a greater whole was a tremendous advance in human logic. This practice is illustrated throughout Oedipus at Colonus in regard to Sophocles’ portrayal of vision, sight, and the eye. In Colonus, there are many and varied descriptions of the aspects of the eye, whether the eye be human or divine. To Sophocles, the eye must have been a synthesis, both physical and spiritual, yet something apart from both.
“Form follows function.” Every great Modern architect thought, designed by and breathed these very words. Or at least, their design principles evolved from them. Modern architects Le Corbusier, Mies van der Rohe, Frank Lloyd Wright, Pierre Chareau, and Rudolf Schindler to name a few believed that the function determined the space whether the space was solely for a particular purpose or they overlapped to allow for multiple uses. Form didn’t just follow function, function defined the space. By focusing on the relationship between the architecture and the interior elements, Chareau’s Maison de Verre expanded the idea of functionalism to include not only the architecture but also the space it creates and how people function within that space.
In the Allegory of the Cave, Book VII of Plato’s Socratic dialogue, Republic (ca. 375 B.C.E.), and in his criticism of poetry at the beginning of Book X, Plato’s mouthpiece Socrates critically considers the distinction between the ‘real’ world, that of the Forms, and the world that can be seen through appearances, including the significance regarding education and poetry. Through allegory Plato’s Socrates demonstrates mimesis within language, arguing the signifiers applied to objects are not names of physical objects that can be seen, just as the terms the prisoners applied to the shadows are not, but are names of things that can only be grasped by the mind. For the prisoners, the shadows are the only reality, however Plato’s Socrates hypothesises that if a prisoner were to be released, he’d be educated by his surroundings and realise “the greater reality of the things in front of his eyes” (Republic VII), the allegorical counterpart to normal people grasping the Forms.
But these contrived differences give rise to esthetic difficulties too. Because inherent differences—those that come from genuinely differing uses—are lacking among the buildings and their settings, the contrivances repre...
In the short reading, The Cunning of Cosmetics, by Jeffrey Kipnis, he begins by explaining what architecture is reacting to and how it effects the direction it is going in. As a result from explaining this, he starts to ponder on his job on Herzog & de Meuron and question, “When did my infatuation with HdM’s work begin?”(Kipnis 23) he starts to realize that buildings have the “Ability to insinuate itself into my psyche” without forcing itself upon someone. He is able to analyze this in the magazine he was reading Arch- Plus by Nikolaus Kuhnert and see how he separated the magazine into two sections – Ornament and Minimalism, through this he able to explore prime examples such as Signal Box and Ricola Europ, explaining how the use of their materiality and modern ornamentation can give a “Erotic allure…the sirens of the Odyssey”. Overall he is clarifying that
Maltzer, the doctor behind Deirdre’s robot body, explains sight on page 259, “Sight…is the most highly civilized of the senses…The other senses tie us in closely with the very roots of life…Sight is a cold, intellectual thing compared with the other senses.” Once again, the sense of sight is tied into cool, calculated, and intellectual thought. This comparison was made throughout the Enlightenment Era and even today. Vision is seen as necessary to understand and make rational inferences regarding what is being
The Allegory of the Cave illustrated to us by Socrates has many meanings. The allegory explains the effects of knowledge on a person and understanding reality. Socrates speaks of this dark cave that is filled with people who have never left the cave before. The people are bound in a way that has forced them to look toward a wall of the cave. On this wall they have shadows acting out a seen that are shown by the fire lit behind them. The prisoners watch these stories with belief that this is life. According to Socrates, people in general rely on their bodily senses as their main source of understanding. He believes people rely too much on their sight to interpret the ...
Correspondingly, Katie Llyod Thomas shares similar views on how modernity has increasingly concealed tectonics. She conceptualizes how materiality is secondary to form with hylomorphism in her Architecture and Material Practice. “Hylomorphism, which understands materials as a subset of matter, does not provide a way of positively distinguishing materials, and underscore the architectural tendency to use materials as mere finishes,” says Katie.6 Modernity has instigated materiality and tectonics to become inferior to the architectural form; therefore, concepts and spaces are given more importance and further worked on more attentively, leaving materiality till the end. As Katie mentions, materiality in the design process of a student is in fact consider in the later stages, where it is discussed as a technical issue rather than a conceptual one.6 Materiality and tectonics is a conceptual joint, it is the structure that forms an architectural expression, represents an emotion, and it is what creates a space. Considering all factors, materiality shall not be left to discuss at the end, but worked on as the design is developing, therefore working on form alongside materiality and
The author explains architecture as an identification of place. Architecture starts with establishing a place. We define ‘place’ as a layout of architectural elements that seem to accommodate, or offer the possibility of accommodation to, a person, an activity, a mood, etc. We identify a sofa as a place to sit and relax, and a kitchen as a place to cook food. Architecture is about identifying and organizing ‘places’ for human use.
How do we obtain our knowledge? Do we use our senses of touch, taste, hearing, smell and sight? This is a basic philosophical question that has been asked and elaborated upon by philosophers. Plato and Aristotle have formed their own opinions upon whether or not the senses can be trusted. In order to understand their ideas on the senses, first their philosophy on the connection between the soul and body must be examined. Plato states that the body and soul are separate, while Aristotle says they are one. Concerning the senses, Plato says they cannot be trusted and knowledge cannot be gained through them. Aristotle creates an opposing view, saying that the senses are essential to gaining knowledge and learning about the world.
of their buildings. One of the basic questions that this paper will be seeking to answer is whether architects and critics accepted ...
Haptics is a recent enhancement to virtual environments allowing users to “touch” and feel the simulated objects with which they interact. Haptics is the science of touch. The word derives from the Greek haptikos meaning “being able to come into contact with”. The study of haptics emerged from advances in virtual reality. Virtual reality is a form of human-computer interaction (as opposed to keyboard, mouse and monitor) providing a virtual environment that one can explore through direct interaction with our senses. To be able to interact with an environment, there must be feedback. For example, the user should be able to touch a virtual object and feel a response from it. This type of feedback is called haptic feedback .In human-computer interaction; haptic feedback means both tactile and force feedback.