Haptic architecture: the eyes versus hearing

Eye. Digital painting by Myriam B. Mahiques

¨In Lucien Febvre´s view: ¨The sixteenth century did not see first: it heard and smelled, it sniffed the air and caught sounds. It was only later that it seriously and actively became engaged in geometry, focusing attention on the world of forms with Kepler (1571-1630) and Desargues of Lyon (1593-1662). It was then than the vision was unleashed in the world of science as it was in the world of physical sensations, and teh world of beauty as well. ´42 Robert Mandrou makes a parallel argument: The hierarchy (of the senses) was not the same (as in the twentieth century) becase teh eye, which rules today, found itself in third place, behind hearing and touch, and fra after them. The eye that organises, classifies and orders was not the favoured organ of the time that preferred hearing.¨

The gradually growing hegemony of the eye seems  to be paralell with the development of Western ego-consciousness...¨

From The Eyes of the Skin. By Juhani Pallasmaa. Page 25.Great Britain, 2005