Juhani Pallasmaa himself explains this book: "I have given the six lectures a unifying title: 'Touching the World Through Architecture,' derived from a comment by Maurice Merleau-Ponty on the paintings of Paul Cézanne, which 'make visible how the world touches us.'"
In my view, this is also the fundamental task of architecture: to provide us with an existential foothold in this world, and to raise awareness and express how the world touches and embraces us, and vice versa, how we touch the world through our senses and our understanding.
"Through vision, we touch the sun and the stars," writes Merleau-Ponty. The task of architecture is to strengthen our sense of the real by poetizing our experiential reality.
