John Pawson

This small collection of images represents
a very partial inventory of the surfaces
touched over the course of a day in
Florence. Jean-Paul Sartre recalls stopping
short on the threshold of a building,
‘because I felt in my hand a cold object
which held my attention through a sort of
personality. I opened my hand, looked:
I was simply holding the doorknob’.
In similar vein, Alvar Aalto’s bronze
door handle has been characterised as
the ‘handshake of a building’. This sense
of engaging with the essence of a
philosophy of space through everything
the hand touches is a defining goal of
the design process.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Photography
John Pawson