The critique of the costructions of modern architectural form: hapticity in architecture

Throughout the historical process of architecture, the sense of sight has been valued above other senses and has been identified with other notions such as knowledge, reality, power and ethics. After the Enlightenment vision is accepted as the combination of "the sight" and "the mind". Thus, despite being a part of body, the eye's relation to other senses has been lost and the "eye of the mind" concept, which differs radically from "the eye of the body" is formed. Concepts that sublime the "eye of the mind" such as rationalism, functionalism, and gestalt became the basis of Modern Architectural episteme and set the architecture in the core of Ocular-centrism. In fact, the human is a sentient being and in his experience through the architectural space, not only the mind and the eyes but the whole body, as well as the memories, the movements and the emotions are involved. Having different sensual experiences in spaces which have the same dimensions and forms, shows that, there must be a more comprehensive perspective in architecture than the dimensional expression of right angled Cartesian mind. That's why ocularcentrism which is dominant in architecture should be questioned. The affectivity of the architectural space depends on the depth of the trace left on mind. Architecture that succeeds to take place in our memory is mostly the one that is haptic. The phenomenon of Touch is the interraction between the subject and the architecture during the experiencing of the architectural space. In contrast to visible and measured features, it is more difficult to represent this interraction. But, by including the whole body senses, movement and the time, the phenomenon of Touch makes architecture affective.