All
Furniture
Product
Architecture
Writing
To understand this, a distinction between Erlebnis and Erfahrung is needed – between an immediate occurrence and a lived experience. The Erlebnis is intense, immediate and transient – it hits us from outside, excites and passes. Erfahrung, by contrast, arises through repetition, friction, and time. It transforms the person who undergoes it. Walter Benjamin defined this distinction in his essay The Storyteller, Reflections on the Works of Nikolai Leskov: Erfahrung is that which accumulates over time and can be passed on – it is the foundation of craft, tradition and storytelling. Erlebnis, on the other hand, is the shock of the moment, that leaves no trace because it is not processed, but only consumed. Objects that bear no traces, that do not change, and that accumulate no history, are occurrences – not experiences. They excite, but they leave nothing behind within us. An object, then, that truly functions turns use itself into an experience – into an act that structures time.
What opposes the lived experience is the loss of ritual. What has replaced it today is the immediate occurrence – the event, permanent novelty, or instant accessibility. A culture that replaces ritual with mere occurrence loses the capacity for depth. Everything remains on the surface. Everything must be immediately consumable.
In this regard, craft is also a form of ritual, that understands repetition not as routine, but as a discipline of attention. Both make use of the sameness of form to render ever smaller deviations legible: hundreds repetitions of the same gesture create a hand that has learned to feel the difference. To put it pointedly, this is how the repetition of the craftsman differs from that of the automated factory: the factory repeats to make attention redundant, the workshop repeats to make it inexhaustible. Ritual and craft, in this way, both resist acceleration and generate depth through time.
Attention and repetition are therefore expressions of the same fundamental attitude, that inseparably links aesthetics, craft, and sustainability: not as a political agenda, but as a lived practice — as a long, slow, collective answer to the question of how one deals with the things around us, and thereby, how one inhabits the world.
Walter Benjamin, Der Erzähler, Betrachtungen zum Werk Nikolai Lesskows, 1936.
Byung-Chul Han, Errettung des Schönen, 2020.
Byung-Chul Han, Vom Verschwinden der Rituale, 2019.
Richard Sennett, Handwerk, 2014.
Martin Heidegger, Bauen Wohnen Denken, 1951.
By pairing and contrasting different objects across cultures and time periods, this analysis demonstrates how different societies have found functionally or morphologically comparable, albeit distinct, solutions to fundamental social and environmental challenges. Rather than viewing sustainability as a single, universally applicable rule, historical evidence shows that sustainable living is always shaped by local contexts. It grows naturally from the specific physical constraints of a landscape and the collective knowledge of a community. Therefore, our planet acts as a flexible space of possibilities, supporting many different stable cultures that fit their own specific local conditions.
The point where these stable societies break down is explained by Næss’s idea that problems begin when humans displace other humans and size their resources. This turning point can be seen in artifacts that show a shift away from local, balanced resource use and toward systems based on conquest, political expansion, or unfair trade dominance.
This series of objects is therefore not intended as a model for a return to the past, but as a proof of existence. It shows that over millennia, radically different, inherently stable material cultures were possible. Connecting these findings with Næss’s idea of the many paths, this study concludes that cultural and ecological diversity itself is the necessary foundation for long-term sustainability.
In short, there is no way back to societies that belong to the past, but there is a way back to ecological sustainability. In fact, there is not just one way but many ways, so that widely different, sustainable cultures are possible.
Of course, there is no way back in general, but it is important to remember that global unsustainability is something very new and that for a wide variety of stable cultures, our planet was a tremendously big, rich, eminently hospitable, and benign world. Difficulties had to arise only when human beings pressed away other human beings from the areas where life was easiest, or at least not a greater challenge than desired.
It is to be hoped that an everincreasing minority will view unsustainability as an undignified, stupid – if not plainly ridiculous – state of affairs. One also hopes that an increasing minority will express this attitude with increasing boldness – but without arrogance, since few activists can avoid making use of the facilities offered in the industrial societies.
Arne Næss, There is No Point of No Return, 2021: p. 98, p. 99.
R: Bead in the form of a daisy, New Kingdom, ca. 1390-1352 BC
R: Beads and pendants, Middle Kingdom, ca. 1981-1640 BC
R: Chlorite spouted carinated cup, Minoan, ca. 2000-1800 BC
R: Cylindrical Vessel, Maya, 1st-2nd century AD
R: Amulet, Fish, Middle Kingdom, Second Intermediate Period, ca. 1981-1550 BC
R: Glass mosaic fragment, Greek, Eastern Mediterranean, ca. 2nd century BC
R: Eye inlay for a statue, Sumerian, ca. 2600-2500 BC
R: Earring, Avar, 3rd century AD
R: Furniture support, lions leg, Old Assyrian Trading Colony, ca. 18th century BC
R: Glass ligula (ear pick), Roman, 1st century AD or later
R: Lock, Byzantine, 11th century AD or later
R: Deep Vessel with Handles, Japan, 3500-2500 BC
R: Jewelry element in the shape of a star, New Kingdom, ca. 1390-1352 BC
R: Heart Amulet, New Kingdom, Ramesside, ca. 1295-1070 BC
R: Knob with an eight-petaled rosette, Assyrian, ca. 883-859 BC
R: Glass ribbed bowl, Roman, 1st-3rd quarter of 1st century AD
R: Goblet, Iran, ca. 3365-3030 BC
R: Gold pendant with granulated ornament, Cypriot, ca. 1400-1050 BC
R: Ox leg dish, New Kingdom, ca. 1550-1295 BC
R: Pin, Late Roman, 3rd-4th century AD
R: Glass stirring rod, Roman, 1st century AD
R: Pitcher, French, 13th century AD
R: Chlorite mortar, Cypriot, ca. 1600-700 BC
How many things have we, in the belief of progress, dismissed as useless or obsolete. River landscapes have been ruthlessly straightened, meadows turned into monotonous wastelands and everyday objects degraded to mute servants.
Gradually, however, we are realising that we have acted short-sightedly in the pursuit of functionality and efficiency. By channelling water in straight concrete channels, its negative impacts are often intensified – and in the process, natural ecosystems are being severely damaged or destroyed. Monocultures lead to soil depletion and a loss of biodiversity: many insects like bees find neither food nor nesting opportunities and suffer massively, as many animals and plants depend on the diversity and untouched nature of their habitats. And ornaments and symbols are more than just aesthetic embellishments: they carry cultural narratives and foster a deeper connection between humans and their environment. By removing these elements from our material culture, we not only lose a part of our cultural identity, but also an important mediator that helps us understand and appreciate our living world.
To understand the depth of Pallasmaa's approach to furniture design, one must look at its philosophical foundation: the phenomenology of Maurice Merleau-Ponty. In his Phenomenology of Perception, Merleau-Ponty breaks radically with the Cartesian dualism of mind and body, res cogitans and res excelsa. Instead, he introduces the concept of the lived body – the body not as an anatomical object, but as the actual medium through which we experience the world in the first place. Merleau-Ponty argues that the subject does not possess a body, but is a body.
Applied to furniture design, this means: an armchair or a table does not present itself to us as a geometric abstraction, but addresses our body's pre-rational, motor potential. When we look at a piece of furniture, our lived body already drafts the movement of sitting or grasping. Pallasmaa's dictum that the eye touches is rooted directly in Merleau-Ponty's concept of synesthesia. The senses do not operate in isolation; the sight of a rough wood texture or a cool stone slab immediately activates the body's tactile memory. A design that addresses the senses, therefore, does not target a detached, cognitive consciousness, but rather this inherent, bodily dialogue.
In his late work, Merleau-Ponty develops the concept of the flesh of the world, la chair du monde. With this, he describes a fundamental interweaving and community of being between the perceiving subject and the perceived world. Human beings do not confront matter as detached observers; rather, an ontological kinship exists. The body is made of the very same substance as the world.
A sensitive approach to furniture design harnesses this interweaving. It conceives the piece of furniture as a relational membrane where the flesh of the body and the flesh of the world touch. When a carpenter leaves a wooden surface untreated, or a stonemason preserves the irregularities inherent to the stone, this is not a decorative choice; rather, it offers the lived body a surface through which it can enter into an exchange with the world. In contrast, sterile, high-gloss, artificial surfaces function as phenomenological barriers. They deny the exchange of warmth, moisture, and texture – they separate the subject from the flesh of the world.
A crucial aspect of this phenomenology concerns the relationship between design and time. Industrial standardization favors artificial, uniform materials that appear immune to aging, in order to simulate an eternal, static present. Pallasmaa recognizes in this an attempt to banish human transience from everyday life. A multisensory design, on the other hand, integrates the factor of time through materiality. Solid wood, natural stone, and vegetable-tanned leather possess what Merleau-Ponty calls temporal depth. They accumulate signs of use and develop a patina. The patina is the physical inscription of bodily interaction. It bears witness to repeated touch, the pressure of the hand, and the warmth of the body. As the piece of furniture ages, it documents the lived experience of its user. This emotional longevity forms the foundation of a natural, material-based sustainability: the vulnerable, aging object is not discarded, but cherished as a repository of memory and lived time.
The synthesis of Pallasmaa's sensory approach and Merleau-Ponty's philosophy of the lived body demands absolute constructive honesty in practical manufacturing. For if the body is the primary tool for understanding the world, any faked or concealed material undermines human bodily orientation and pre-rational judgment. For Merleau-Ponty, the body is not a passive recipient of stimuli, but rather interrogates the world through movement and resistance. It anticipates the weight, density, and temperature of a material before we even think about it. Constructive honesty ensures that bodily expectation and physical reality align. Pallasmaa describes the encounter with objects as profound, intimate experiences: »The door handle is the handshake of the building.« Transposed to furniture design, every armrest, every table edge, and every wood joint is this handshake.
A design that appeals to the senses dispenses with synthetic surface treatments. The way a piece of furniture is joined must be legible to the eye and tangible to the hand. This honesty explicitly includes the invisible dimensions of space – sound and smell. The acoustic feedback of a closing wooden door, or the scent of natural wax, are structural components that constitute the atmospheric stillness of a room. In manufacturing, this leads to a re-evaluation of what is perceived as a defect. In contrast to automated industry, the natural irregularity or non-standardized nature of raw materials is not a problem in craftsmanship; rather, it is the very essence that dictates the object's form. The natural swelling and shrinking of wood, or texture irregularities in stone, are deliberately deployed as sensory intensifications to counteract the lifeless smoothing of our living environment.
Juhani Pallasmaa, The eyes of the skin: Architecture and the senses, 1996.
Maurice Marleau-Ponty, Phänomenologie der Wahrnehmung, 1966.
Maurice Marleau-Ponty, Das Sichtabe und das Unsichtbare, 1966.
Intimacy implies simplicity,
Understanding creates solidarity.
The list is a manifesto in its own right: given the immense lengths of time required for these materials to form, the brevity of our consumption becomes a measure of our responsibility – towards our planet, its raw materials, and future generations.
Updated with the latest available data (2026).