CHAPTER 1: DOMINANCE OF VISION

Figure 2: Zaha Hadid Architects Skyscraper in the Western Hemisphere

Figure 2: Los Angeles' Walt Disney Concert Hall, designed by Frank Gehry. Photo Credits: Alamy

CHAPTER 1: DOMINANCE OF VISION

A deteriorating visual fixation: Instagram-able architecture of the 21st Century

The world is witnessing a massive rise and expansion of technological culture. The development of technological tools that favour screens and visual mediums, lead to the very fact that 75 to 80 percent of information consumed of the surrounding world happens through sight and visual imagery. Quite similarly, is why Architecture has become almost entirely centred around vision. Visual culture has caused architecture to lose its wholistic value, and lead to an architecture whose primary emphasis is placed mostly on its visual appeal, with its value being merely measured by its ability to show, to be shown, photographed, or observed.

With the evolution of social media and social media tools, especially ones that are photo and/or video-based such as Instagram, a lot of architectural projects nowadays are designed deliberately for the primary purpose of being Instagram-able. “The dominance of vision has never been stronger than in our current era of the visual image” Pallasmaa expresses. And since a huge percentage of information consumed of the world comes through sight as mentioned above, this has encouraged architects, planners, and designers to design architecture that appeals only to the eyes, with very little or no consideration to remaining senses or to different ways one can experience architecture.

Architecture’s absence of attention and awareness of utilizing and designing architecture that accommodates other senses besides vision, resulted in the detachment of architecture with the body. In his work, Architecture and the senses, Juhani Pallasmaa talks about sensory design through different and new senses: smell, touch, sight, tongue, hearing, movement, and bodily awareness. He argues that all senses are vital for an authentic

architectural experience. Therefore, for architecture to be more sensitive and holistic it should utilize design strategies that focus on and consider the totality of all different senses.

In addition to that, digital tools further promoted the emphasis on the exterior that minimizes the emphasis on the interior. The shift of emphasis on an exterior engagement in space, or a perception of a whole of a building from the outside, shifted necessarily negatively the emphasis off the interior, which is vital to the mental wellbeing of humans. By giving an immense significance to how a particular building appeals to people from the exterior, with little or no regards to the interior, it disconnects humans with the experience of space within a building. Visual culture has resulted in an architecture that deteriorates the body and isolates the wholesome human experience of space. Communication within a building transforms into a visual journey and a building becomes only measured by it (Shirazi 59). This fact leads to an architecture which decentres the body and isolates it from its surroundings.

The world is a result of collective lived experiences. Experiences are constructed of a series of images and lived emotions. Since architecture constructs a major part of our everyday life, therefore its connection and effect on our awareness and sense of life and existence is vitally significant. Many thinkers talk about the relation of architectural imagery with the body, including Martin Heidegger. According to him, visual fixation leads to a world with endless production of images, the essential event of our modern age is actually the conquest of the world as picture (Sharr 311). The act of designing and creating architecture has become merely aesthetic-oriented rather than wellbeing-promoting or seen as an inseparable part of our very awareness and sense of life. Architecture should be able to mediate between our surrounding and sense of self.