Phenomenological Quotes

'Thinking Architecture' - Peter Zumthor


- “Buildings that have a strong impact always convey an intense feeling of their spatial quality. They embrace the mysterious void called space in a special way and make it vibrate” p22

- “I try to enhance what seems to be valuable, to correct what is disturbing, and to create anew what we feel in missing” p24

- “To me, buildings can have a beautiful silence that I associate with attributes such as composure, self-evidence, durability, presence and integrity, and with warmth and sensuousness as well” p34


'Questions of Perception' - Steven Holl, Juhani Pallasmaa, Alberto Perez-Gomez


- “The patina of wear adds the enriching experience of time” p29

- “An architectural experience silences all external noise, it focuses experience on one’s very existence”

- “Authentic architectural experiences consist of approaching, or confronting a building rather than the facade; of the act of entering and not simply the frame of the door, of looking in or out of a window, rather than the window itself” 35

- “Architecture holds the power to inspire and transform our day-to-day existence” 40

- “Whilst the emotional power of cinema is indisputable, only architecture can simultaneously awaken all the senses – all the complexities of perception”41

- “Our world is full of mundane tasks from which we must free ourselves...”40

- “The challenge for architecture is to stimulate both inner and outer perception; to heighten phenomenal experience while simultaneously expressing meaning; and to develop this duality in response to the particularities of site and circumstance”