In a time when architecture risks becoming increasingly spectacular, virtual, and self-referential, the voice of Finnish architect and philosopher Juhani Pallasmaa stands out as one of the clearest, most poetic, and most necessary we can encounter.
Reading Pallasmaa is not just for those who design spaces. It’s for anyone who inhabits the world with awareness, who seeks meaning in places, who believes that space shapes our identity and inner life. He’s an author worth reading because he helps us rediscover the value of material, silence, light, and time.
His most renowned book—The Eyes of the Skin—is a small cult classic. In less than 100 pages, it challenges everything we take for granted in how we perceive architecture: it reminds us that inhabiting space is a sensory act, not merely a visual one, and that the beauty of a place lies also in its sounds, its smells, the roughness of its surfaces, the way light vibrates on walls.
Another must-read is The Thinking Hand, a treatise on the importance of the body, manual work, and memory in the creative process. It’s an illuminating read for anyone involved in craftsmanship, design, or education, as it tells us that thinking doesn’t reside only in the mind—it extends to the hands, the gestures, the space we inhabit.
Pallasmaa is a writer to be read slowly—perhaps early in the morning or late at night—when there’s time to listen to words with the body. In his writing, every detail—a threshold, a window, a material—becomes a pretext to talk about time, identity, memory.
For us at Raremood, reading Pallasmaa means returning to the core of what we do: selecting objects that speak to the senses, that endure through time, that build relationships between people and spaces. It means remembering that a home is never just a container, but an emotional, tactile, and affective ecosystem.
Other recommended titles by Pallasmaa:
📘 Encounters – Architectural Essays

📘 The Embodied Image. Imagination and Imagery in Architecture

📘 Animal Architecture

📘 The Architecture of Image. Existential Space in Cinema
Reading him is like taking a slow, deep, silent journey. A journey that brings us back home—but to a new home, more aware, more truly ours.
Highly recommended. For those who design. But also for those who dream, walk, remember, listen.

Photo credits: shorturl.at