Juhani Pallasmaa. PHOTO: Manuel Castells.

"Architecture serves man to understand his own existence, to domesticate the world and make it understandable". This was stated at the University of Navarra by the Finnish architect and theorist Juhani Pallasmaa, during the V conference on Accessibility, organized by the association Universal Accessibility and the School of Architecture. According to the expert, "current architecture has focused on sight when, in reality, the existential sense is only visual when we look in a mirror".

Juhani Pallasmaa, author of 'The Eyes of the Skin. Architecture and the senses' -a classic of architectural theory-, was against the competition of cities to have emblematic constructions signed by star architects; "because -he said- it is a reflection of the misunderstanding of culture, of human beings and of architecture". As an example of the opposite, he mentioned Glen Murcutt, award Pritzker in 2002, who "refuses on principle to build outside Australia".

With respect to urban speculation, the former director of the Museum of Architecture of Finland and professor at the Helsinki University of Technology expressed that "when architecture is conceived as a business it enters dangerous terrain, since it loses the reason for its existence; which is a fundamentally human question, of life and solidarity".

The report andthe senses

"The present architectural condition makes us fall back on our historical sense," said Pallasmaa, who affirmed that "the report is much more important than information because it opens the doors to creation . Moreover, we cannot perceive if we do not have report, just as we cannot imagine if we have never seen." For this reason, he stressed that "the educational task must focus on liberating the personality".  

The V Accessibility conference brought together experts from different sectors at the University of Navarra to analyze the relationship between the concept of accessibility and the media, technology and architecture.