The Thinking Hand

The Thinking Hand PDF Author: Juhani Pallasmaa
Publisher: Wiley
ISBN: 9780470779286
Category : Architecture
Languages : en
Pages : 160

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Book Description
In our current global networked culture that puts so much emphasis on the virtual and the visual, the mind and the body have become detached and ultimately disconnected. Though physical appearance is idolised for its sexual appeal and its social identity, the role of the body in developing a full understanding of the physical world and the human condition has become neglected. The potential of the human body as a knowing entity – with all our senses as well as our entire bodily functions being structured to produce and maintain silent knowledge together – fails to be recognised. It is only through the unity of mind and body that craftsmanship and artistic work can be fully realised. Even those endeavours that are generally regarded as solely intellectual, such as writing and thinking, depend on this union of mental and manual skills. In The Thinking Hand, Juhani Pallasmaa reveals the miraculous potential of the human hand. He shows how the pencil in the hand of the artist or architect becomes the bridge between the imagining mind and the emerging image. The book surveys the multiple essences of the hand, its biological evolution and its role in the shaping of culture, highlighting how the hand–tool union and eye–hand–mind fusion are essential for dexterity and how ultimately the body and the senses play a crucial role in memory and creative work. Pallasmaa here continues the exploration begun in his classic work The Eyes of the Skin by further investigating the interplay of emotion and imagination, intelligence and making, theory and life, once again redefining the task of art and architecture through well-grounded human truths.

The Thinking Hand

The Thinking Hand PDF Author: Juhani Pallasmaa
Publisher: Wiley
ISBN: 9780470779286
Category : Architecture
Languages : en
Pages : 160

Get Book Here

Book Description
In our current global networked culture that puts so much emphasis on the virtual and the visual, the mind and the body have become detached and ultimately disconnected. Though physical appearance is idolised for its sexual appeal and its social identity, the role of the body in developing a full understanding of the physical world and the human condition has become neglected. The potential of the human body as a knowing entity – with all our senses as well as our entire bodily functions being structured to produce and maintain silent knowledge together – fails to be recognised. It is only through the unity of mind and body that craftsmanship and artistic work can be fully realised. Even those endeavours that are generally regarded as solely intellectual, such as writing and thinking, depend on this union of mental and manual skills. In The Thinking Hand, Juhani Pallasmaa reveals the miraculous potential of the human hand. He shows how the pencil in the hand of the artist or architect becomes the bridge between the imagining mind and the emerging image. The book surveys the multiple essences of the hand, its biological evolution and its role in the shaping of culture, highlighting how the hand–tool union and eye–hand–mind fusion are essential for dexterity and how ultimately the body and the senses play a crucial role in memory and creative work. Pallasmaa here continues the exploration begun in his classic work The Eyes of the Skin by further investigating the interplay of emotion and imagination, intelligence and making, theory and life, once again redefining the task of art and architecture through well-grounded human truths.

Galileo’s Thinking Hand

Galileo’s Thinking Hand PDF Author: Horst Bredekamp
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG
ISBN: 3110539217
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 376

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Book Description
Contemporary biographies of Galilei emphasize, in several places, that he was a masterful draughtsman. In fact, Galilei studied at the art academy, which is where his friendship with Ludovico Cigoli developed, who later became the official court artist. The book focuses on this formative effect – it tracks Galilei’s trust in the epistemological strength of drawings. It also looks at Galilei’s activities in the world of art and his reflections on art theory, ending with an appreciation of his fame; after all, he was revered as a rebirth of Michelangelo. For the first time, this publication collects all aspects of the appreciation of Galilei as an artist, contemplating his art not only as another facet of his activities, but as an essential element of his research.

The Embodied Image

The Embodied Image PDF Author: Juhani Pallasmaa
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
ISBN: 0470711906
Category : Architecture
Languages : en
Pages : 155

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Book Description
The Embodied Image The Embodied Image: Imagination and Imagery in Architecture Juhani Pallasmaa All artistic and architectural effects are evoked, mediated and experienced through poeticised images. These images are embodied and lived experiences that take place in ‘the flesh of the world’, becoming part of us, at the same time that we unconsciously project aspects of ourselves on to a conceived space, object or event. Artistic images have a life and reality of their own and they develop through unexpected associations rather than rational and causal logic. Images are usually thought of as retinal pictures but profound poetic images are multi-sensory and they address us in an embodied and emotive manner. Architecture is usually analysed and taught as a discipline that articulates space and geometry, but the mental impact of architecture arises significantly from its image quality that integrates the various aspects and dimensions of experience into a singular, internalised and remembered entity. The material reality is fused with our mental and imaginative realm. The book is organised into five main parts that look at in turn: the image in contemporary culture; language, thought and the image; the many faces of the image; the poetic image; and finally the architectural image. The Embodied Image is illustrated with over sixty images in pairs, which are diverse in subject. They range from scientific images to historic artistic and architectural masterpieces. Artworks span Michelangelo and Vermeer to Gordon Matta- Clark and architecture takes in Modern Masters such as Mies van der Rohe, Le Corbusier and Alvar Aalto, as well as significant contemporary works by Steven Holl and Daniel Libeskind.

Liminal Thinking

Liminal Thinking PDF Author: Dave Gray
Publisher: Rosenfeld Media
ISBN: 1933820624
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 185

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Book Description
"Why do some people succeed at change while others fail? It's the way they think! Liminal thinking is a way to create change by understanding, shaping, and reframing beliefs. What beliefs are stopping you right now? You have a choice. You can create the world you want to live in, or live in a world created by others. If you are ready to start making changes, read this book."

Why Gesture?

Why Gesture? PDF Author: R. Breckinridge Church
Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing Company
ISBN: 9027265771
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 443

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Book Description
Co-speech gestures are ubiquitous: when people speak, they almost always produce gestures. Gestures reflect content in the mind of the speaker, often under the radar and frequently using rich mental images that complement speech. What are gestures doing? Why do we use them? This book is the first to systematically explore the functions of gesture in speaking, thinking, and communicating – focusing on the variety of purposes served for the gesturer as well as for the viewer of gestures. Chapters in this edited volume present a range of diverse perspectives (including neural, cognitive, social, developmental and educational), consider gestural behavior in multiple contexts (conversation, narration, persuasion, intervention, and instruction), and utilize an array of methodological approaches (including both naturalistic and experimental). The book demonstrates that gesture influences how humans develop ideas, express and share those ideas to create community, and engineer innovative solutions to problems.

A Pattern Language

A Pattern Language PDF Author: Christopher Alexander
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0190050357
Category : Architecture
Languages : en
Pages : 1216

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Book Description
You can use this book to design a house for yourself with your family; you can use it to work with your neighbors to improve your town and neighborhood; you can use it to design an office, or a workshop, or a public building. And you can use it to guide you in the actual process of construction. After a ten-year silence, Christopher Alexander and his colleagues at the Center for Environmental Structure are now publishing a major statement in the form of three books which will, in their words, "lay the basis for an entirely new approach to architecture, building and planning, which will we hope replace existing ideas and practices entirely." The three books are The Timeless Way of Building, The Oregon Experiment, and this book, A Pattern Language. At the core of these books is the idea that people should design for themselves their own houses, streets, and communities. This idea may be radical (it implies a radical transformation of the architectural profession) but it comes simply from the observation that most of the wonderful places of the world were not made by architects but by the people. At the core of the books, too, is the point that in designing their environments people always rely on certain "languages," which, like the languages we speak, allow them to articulate and communicate an infinite variety of designs within a forma system which gives them coherence. This book provides a language of this kind. It will enable a person to make a design for almost any kind of building, or any part of the built environment. "Patterns," the units of this language, are answers to design problems (How high should a window sill be? How many stories should a building have? How much space in a neighborhood should be devoted to grass and trees?). More than 250 of the patterns in this pattern language are given: each consists of a problem statement, a discussion of the problem with an illustration, and a solution. As the authors say in their introduction, many of the patterns are archetypal, so deeply rooted in the nature of things that it seemly likely that they will be a part of human nature, and human action, as much in five hundred years as they are today.

Maya Lin

Maya Lin PDF Author: Susan Goldman Rubin
Publisher: Chronicle Books
ISBN: 1452140898
Category : Juvenile Nonfiction
Languages : en
Pages : 111

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Book Description
The Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington, D.C., is one of the most famous pieces of civic architecture in the world. But most people are not as familiar with the reserved college student who entered and won the design competition to build it. This accessible biography tells the story of Maya Lin, from her struggle to stick with her vision of the memorial to the wide variety of works she has created since then. The carefully researched text, paired with ample photos, crosses multiple interests—American history, civic activism, art history, and cultural diversity—and offers a timely celebration of the memorial's 35th anniversary as well as providing an important contribution to the current discussion of the role of women and minorities in society.

Thinking Bodies – Shaping Hands

Thinking Bodies – Shaping Hands PDF Author: Yannis Hadjinicolaou
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 9004407723
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 377

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Book Description
Thinking Bodies - Shaping Hands focuses on the critical as well as historical dimension of the handling of the brush and of the resulting appearance of colour on the painted surface in art and art theory from the middle of the 17th (above all from 1660) to the dawn of the 18th century in the Netherlands. More specifically, it deals with Rembrandt’s last pupils such as Arent de Gelder. „Handeling” describes an active, embodied process that is connected to the motion of the hand with the brush or with any other kind of tool. This term, up to now not sufficiently appreciated in scholarly literature, seems to be fruitful in this context. It is not so much connected with the term „style”, as with a prior step, which is equivalent to „manner”. At the same time, its meaning in Dutch till today is „action”. „Handeling” is an act that could be described as a „form-act”. It focuses on Formgestaltung, in which these actions themselves are understood as processes. Examining the „Rembrandtist ideology of painting”, this study attempts to reveal the embodied process of painting in the sense of a bodily articulation during the application of colour. This occurs within the productive tension between theory and practice.

Living, Thinking, Looking

Living, Thinking, Looking PDF Author: Siri Hustvedt
Publisher: Picador
ISBN: 1250009588
Category : Literary Collections
Languages : en
Pages : 399

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Book Description
The internationally acclaimed novelist Siri Hustvedt has also produced a growing body of nonfiction. She has published a book of essays on painting (Mysteries of the Rectangle) as well as an interdisciplinary investigation of a neurological disorder (The Shaking Woman or A History of My Nerves). She has given lectures on artists and theories of art at the Prado, the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, and the Academy of Fine Arts in Munich. In 2011, she delivered the thirty-ninth annual Freud Lecture in Vienna. Living, Thinking, Looking brings together thirty-two essays written between 2006 and 2011, in which the author culls insights from philosophy, neuroscience, psychology, psychoanalysis, and literature. The book is divided into three sections: the essays in Living draw directly from Hustvedt's life; those in Thinking explore memory, emotion, and the imagination; and the pieces in Looking are about visual art. And yet, the same questions recur throughout the collection. How do we see, remember, and feel? How do we interact with other people? What does it mean to sleep, dream, and speak? What is "the self"? Hustvedt's unique synthesis of knowledge from many fields reinvigorates the much-needed dialogue between the humanities and the sciences as it deepens our understanding of an age-old riddle: What does it mean to be human?

Thinking Small

Thinking Small PDF Author: Andrea Hiott
Publisher: Ballantine Books
ISBN: 0345521447
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 514

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Book Description
Sometimes achieving big things requires the ability to think small. This simple concept was the driving force that propelled the Volkswagen Beetle to become an avatar of American-style freedom, a household brand, and a global icon. The VW Bug inspired the ad men of Madison Avenue, beguiled Woodstock Nation, and has recently been re-imagined for the hipster generation. And while today it is surely one of the most recognizable cars in the world, few of us know the compelling details of this car’s story. In Thinking Small, journalist and cultural historian Andrea Hiott retraces the improbable journey of this little car that changed the world. Andrea Hiott’s wide-ranging narrative stretches from the factory floors of Weimar Germany to the executive suites of today’s automotive innovators, showing how a succession of artists and engineers shepherded the Beetle to market through periods of privation and war, reconstruction and recovery. Henry Ford’s Model T may have revolutionized the American auto industry, but for years Europe remained a place where only the elite drove cars. That all changed with the advent of the Volkswagen, the product of a Nazi initiative to bring driving to the masses. But Hitler’s concept of “the people’s car” would soon take on new meaning. As Germany rebuilt from the rubble of World War II, a whole generation succumbed to the charms of the world’s most huggable automobile. Indeed, the story of the Volkswagen is a story about people, and Hiott introduces us to the men who believed in it, built it, and sold it: Ferdinand Porsche, the visionary Austrian automobile designer whose futuristic dream of an affordable family vehicle was fatally compromised by his patron Adolf Hitler’s monomaniacal drive toward war; Heinrich Nordhoff, the forward-thinking German industrialist whose management innovations made mass production of the Beetle a reality; and Bill Bernbach, the Jewish American advertising executive whose team of Madison Avenue mavericks dreamed up the legendary ad campaign that transformed the quintessential German compact into an outsize worldwide phenomenon. Thinking Small is the remarkable story of an automobile and an idea. Hatched in an age of darkness, the Beetle emerged into the light of a new era as a symbol of individuality and personal mobility—a triumph not of the will but of the imagination.