Human Experience: Integrating the Senses Through the Intimacy Between Water and the Urban Fabric

Abstract

During the 20th century, manifestations between water and land have become dissociated from emotional and physical experience, creating a deficiency within our human psyche. The power of water to draw humans has led many civilizations to create permanent settlements along its shores, resulting in over a billion people today living in coastal regions around the world. Over time, the ever-changing coastal environments have caused water to bleed into the urban fabric, resulting in the requirement of fortifications and putting growing pressures on coastal communities. In response, cities must transform and, this project proposes, create interlaced spaces between the two seemingly opposing elements that provide for and focus on the human experience. Nurturing the human experience will provide an improved cultural and spiritual journey through the intimacy between the water’s edge, and the urban fabric. This project explores the human experience of the manmade spaces interlaced between the water’s edge and land. Juhani Pallasmaa writes, in The Geometry of Feeling, “The quality of architecture does not lie in the sense of reality that it expresses, but quite in reverse, in its capacity for awaking our imagination”.1 Architecture is a multi-sensory experience that engages the emotional, physical, and intellectual parts of our being. This human experience is a journey, where structures, the environment, and the person can communicate and connect. Neglecting the human experience within the construction of interlaced spaces will create an incoherent journey for both architecture and culture. This project examines architectural spaces that have been built between the water’s edge and land while seeking to build an understanding of the importance of the human experience of these spaces. The research gathered will then provide a framework for new designs for the transformation of Honolulu’s coastline as the Hawaiian island of O’ahu faces the growing pressures of population growth and water level rise. 1 Juhani Pallasmaa, The Geometry of Feeling: A look at the Phenomenology of Architecture, (New York : Princeton Architectural Press, 1996), 450.During the 20th century, manifestations between water and land have become dissociated from emotional and physical experience, creating a deficiency within our human psyche. The power of water to draw humans has led many civilizations to create permanent settlements along its shores, resulting in over a billion people today living in coastal regions around the world. Over time, the ever-changing coastal environments have caused water to bleed into the urban fabric, resulting in the requirement of fortifications and putting growing pressures on coastal communities. In response, cities must transform and, this project proposes, create interlaced spaces between the two seemingly opposing elements that provide for and focus on the human experience. Nurturing the human experience will provide an improved cultural and spiritual journey through the intimacy between the water’s edge, and the urban fabric. This project explores the human experience of the manmade spaces interlaced between the water’s edge and land. Juhani Pallasmaa writes, in The Geometry of Feeling, “The quality of architecture does not lie in the sense of reality that it expresses, but quite in reverse, in its capacity for awaking our imagination”.1 Architecture is a multi-sensory experience that engages the emotional, physical, and intellectual parts of our being. This human experience is a journey, where structures, the environment, and the person can communicate and connect. Neglecting the human experience within the construction of interlaced spaces will create an incoherent journey for both architecture and culture. This project examines architectural spaces that have been built between the water’s edge and land while seeking to build an understanding of the importance of the human experience of these spaces. The research gathered will then provide a framework for new designs for the transformation of Honolulu’s coastline as the Hawaiian island of O’ahu faces the growing pressures of population growth and water level rise. 1 Juhani Pallasmaa, The Geometry of Feeling: A look at the Phenomenology of Architecture, (New York : Princeton Architectural Press, 1996), 450.During the 20th century, manifestations between water and land have become dissociated from emotional and physical experience, creating a deficiency within our human psyche. The power of water to draw humans has led many civilizations to create permanent settlements along its shores, resulting in over a billion people today living in coastal regions around the world. Over time, the ever-changing coastal environments have caused water to bleed into the urban fabric, resulting in the requirement of fortifications and putting growing pressures on coastal communities. In response, cities must transform and, this project proposes, create interlaced spaces between the two seemingly opposing elements that provide for and focus on the human experience. Nurturing the human experience will provide an improved cultural and spiritual journey through the intimacy between the water’s edge, and the urban fabric. This project explores the human experience of the manmade spaces interlaced between the water’s edge and land. Juhani Pallasmaa writes, in The Geometry of Feeling, “The quality of architecture does not lie in the sense of reality that it expresses, but quite in reverse, in its capacity for awaking our imagination”.1 Architecture is a multi-sensory experience that engages the emotional, physical, and intellectual parts of our being. This human experience is a journey, where structures, the environment, and the person can communicate and connect. Neglecting the human experience within the construction of interlaced spaces will create an incoherent journey for both architecture and culture. This project examines architectural spaces that have been built between the water’s edge and land while seeking to build an understanding of the importance of the human experience of these spaces. The research gathered will then provide a framework for new designs for the transformation of Honolulu’s coastline as the Hawaiian island of O’ahu faces the growing pressures of population growth and water level rise. 1 Juhani Pallasmaa, The Geometry of Feeling: A look at the Phenomenology of Architecture, (New York : Princeton Architectural Press, 1996), 450.