Syneathesia is not an idea, but an experience. Similarly, as Juhani Pallasmaa mentions in the book The Eyes of The Skin, “the task of art and architecture in general is to reconstruct the experience of an undifferentiated interior world in which we are not mere spectators, but to which we inseparably belong”. The expression is engaged with pre-verbal meanings of the world, meanings that are incorporated and lived rather than simply intellectually understood. It is clear that life enhancing architecture has to address all the sense simultaneously and fuse our mage of self with our experience of the world. Significant architecture makes us experience ourselves as complete embodies and spiritual beings. We should be integrated with the space rather than made spectators.

Earlier on I proposed the question whether or not one can rediscover a pure consciousness, which may allows one to be so deeply aware with all of one’s senses that the busy mind basically shuts down. What kind of architecture would allow one to be so deeply engaged in the metaphysical questions of the self and the world, interiority and exteriority, time and duration? My original idea was to investigate some kind of meditative program. However, after the presentation I have realized that the act of meditation is too much of an extreme end in searching for that pure consciousness. And as Dan suggested, to be conscious is just simply to be concentrated on a particular matter and nothing else. It is to focus on the here and now, and experience only what is there.

As of right now, I am interested in the urban condition as my field of operations. Instead of picking a countrified isolated site, I rather want to explore how the complexity of urban condition can call for a bodily and mental identification, empathy, and compassion.

My task now is investigating the urban streets. Streets are where people live. In New York City, for example, streets make up the most of the city. It is even a place for celebration, where large number of people gathered together. People who are familiar with New York City understand the grand experienced of Park Avenue not because they have lived in one of those luxurious apartments, but only because they have walked the avenue. I believe streets express an intriguing kind of vitality and validity and they produce an unexpected approach to unity as well. Streets fuse space, matter, and time into one dimension.


Interaction (the streets) and Distraction (that urge for bodily and mental identification)