Filters of Gaze and Light
New book by Miguel Guitart explores the architectural skin and human experiences within
Published September 2, 2015 This content is archived.
Miguel Guitart, visiting associate professor of architecture, recently published The Depth of the Skin, an exploration of filters that encompasses the basic issues of authentic architecture: matter, light, structure and emotion.
Published by Asimetricas, an independent publisher focused on architecture, contemporary art, new media, photography, graphic design and criticism, The Depth of the Skin is also published in Spanish as La piel profunda.
The Depth of the Skin offers a contemporary perspective on the architectural skin and the human experience therein. Filters of gaze and light may be found in many cultures and under many guises, but they are always designed for an array of functions and made to measure for each region and for each person. Guitart’s review of architectural filters presupposes the experience of the deep spatial emotion that they determine, the ascertainment and registering of the aforementioned invariants.
Miguel Guitart, PhD, is visiting associate professor of architecture and comes to the School of Architecture and Planning from Madrid.
His approach focuses on the filter as tension between geometry, structure, gaze and light, whose aim is to activate the architectural space in a profound and reflective way. Ultimately, the text is an invitation to reintegrate the ideas of filtering, porosity and osmosis from timeless architecture into the theory and practice of current architecture, as an analytical tool and a creative mechanism inherent to architectural design.
As a visiting associate professor at the School of Architecture and Planning, Guitart focuses his research on the most basic issues taking place in the perception of space, from the way filters manipulate light and gaze to approaches to material and visual composition that distill timeless wisdom and materiality.
An architect and scholar based in Madrid, Spain, Guitart is principal of Gimeno Guitart and has held professorships with EINA University of Zaragoza UNIZAR and UPSAM University. Guitart obtained his Doctorate of Architecture at the Escuela Técnica Superior de Arquitectura de Madrid ETSAM, Polytechnic University of Madrid UPM, and his Master of Architecture from Harvard University's Graduate School of Design as a J.W. Fulbright Scholar.