SURVIVAL THROUGH DESIGN
SURVIVAITI
RICHARD NEUTRA
A'HROUGH DESIGN.
New York OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS 1954
Copyright 1954 by Oxford Univmity Press* Inr,
Library of Congress Catalogue 0;ml Nmuber: *n <w
Printed m tlu* Uuitnl Ktiitn rf Amnu.t
TO COLUMBIA, the university which in
two hundred years has grown up in the
midst of the world's most teeming and tech
nologically advanced community* 1754-1954
PREFACE to a loose and yet linked cycle
of writings collected over almost a lifetime.
The designing of structures, if we take
it 'not in the abstract/ concerns, above all, labor for human
beings, and with them. Human beings must be served and
they are reached by design not only as ultimate consumers;
in the process they must be won over as co-performers and
working crew. Every step must be acceptable, understand
able, convincing, so as to enlist the necessary co-operation,
and the final solution must be appealing, both rationally and
emotionally. It must be as comprehensive as possible to avoid
manifold friction and collision; the range of individual re
sponses must be foreseen.
Animals of lesser brain equipment have no such problems.
They are not engaged in convincing each other. And for the
most part they leave things alone which to touch would be
fatal. Man is different; he is a tinkerer. He tinkers with his
habitat, while other animals hold their peace with it. They
survive by adjusting themselves to natural change during long
biological ages or they perish. Man may perish by his own
explosive and insidious inventions. For an adjustment to
them he leaves himself precious little time, and progressively
less as his technological wizardry runs wild and rushes on.
If he is to survive at, all, it cannot be through slow adjust
ment. It will have to be through design more subtly consid-
VII
ered and circumspect, through more cautious planning in
advance.
The author feels keenly indebted to the men of literary
and philosophical gifts who have illuminated cultural history
and our own scene by an understanding of the past. When
we speak of the past or the present we do not mean sec
tions of abstract time. We mean, of course, processes that
occurred within them. And of technical processes especially
we can say that they unroll now faster and faster, so that
present and future become more sharply and progressively
different from the past. Parallels and comparisons turn out
bewilderingly unreliable.
In this book the author occasionally quotes scientists,
known for their original research, who after their professional
custom would hesitate to draw too hasty conclusions from
as yet incomplete findings. His own arguments do not stand
on any pretense of sharing all the systematic thoroughness
of science. He only had the deep desire to point out how
much aid to safety in design has come to him from contem
porary sciences that have observed organic functioning on
closest range and thus to point out how profoundly the en
tire realm and the fateful art of design can be benefited.
Answers in the light of a current knowledge of this kind can
not be brief and handy, as perhaps abstract speculation of the
past would have summed them up. But it is very stimulating
to see answers foreshadowed even though qualifications will
have to follow upon each other as long as observation
deepens and progresses.
The reader, like all of us, is a consumer of physical design,
of designed products, and of a planned and constructed en
vironment as a whole. Any efforts at clarification will tend
ultimately to help him and us with our consumer problems.
We all are in need of certain criteria to judge and to be
judicious, to accept and to reject.
As it is, humanity all over the globe, ever more artificially
supplied and thus often victimized, appears now at the mercy
VIII
of a rampant, over-advertised industrial technology which is
flooding us off our physiological bearings and, it may some
times seem, is threatening to drown the entire race like a
litter of defenseless kittens.
Perhaps we have come thus far because of a dualism, sepa
rating our production and design into the utilitarian and
non-utilitarian. This dualism is more than a misuse of words.
It simply has no real basis or simile either in outer nature or
in our own physiology. Such strangeness to real nature makes
it more than suspect of being destructive.
Involved in his own practical work, the author has been
forced to ponder this all-important subject for many years.
He could not have struggled through life if it had not been
for his faith that in a modest way he could, as an architect,
contribute a little toward the preservation of human kind and
existence something of objective value. There is a grow
ing number of us who are convinced that generally valid
scales and gauges for judging design in this sense can be
found and must be applied. To deny it would seem nihilistic.
Like memoirs carried over decades of a mind's develop
ment, a crop of thoughts may here be harvested to be help
ful; they somehow sprouted from the daily labors of design,
and often from those numerous and necessary conversations
with clients about its acceptance through conviction and
confidence.
Sincere thanks are due to the many who have given me
aid and comfort, although sometimes, over the years, niy
memory fails to recall even their names or their exact words
that impressed me. I wish I were able to assemble a full list
of stimulating sources or a complete bibliography of what I
have been allowed to absorb deeply but often beyond lasting
awareness. It would turn into something like an autobiog
raphy, and remain incomplete, as autobiographies always are.
R. N.
Los Angeles, California
June 1953
IX
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
The author's thanks are here expressed
to his dear life companion, Dione Neutra. She, with her cheer
ful labors, and others have helped him through the many years
of preparing the manuscript and bringing it into final form:
Rcgula Thorston, Eva Hcymann, and John Blanton, who also
waded through the galley proofs. Oxford University Press, espe
cially John Begg, has given much needed and appreciated co
operation.
SURVIVAL THROUGH DESIGN
The NATURAL ENVIRONMENT IS DOCTORED UP j
CONTINUOUSLY and warped by the acts of the
human brain.
1
Nature has too long been outraged by
design of nose rings, corsets, and foul-aired subways. Perhaps
our mass-fabricators of today have shown themselves particu
larly out of touch with nature. But ever since Sodom and
Gomorrah, organic normalcy has been raped again and again
by man, that super-animal still struggling for its own balance.
There have been warners, prophets, great floods, and new
beginnings.
What we here may briefly call nature comprises all the
requirements and characteristics of live organisms. This en
tire world of organic phenomena is, in the escapades of our
still obvious immaturity, often treated against 'the natural
grain' and contrary to the 'supreme plan* that of biological
consistency and requirement. In former ages it was a sin to
do this and for such failings the deity threatened to liqui
date the sinners. We may now have dropped perhaps too
carelessly the moral accent. Yet to us, too, the issue is still
one of survival by virtue of wholesomeness, or damnation
and death through our own default.
In human design, we could conceivably see organic evolu
tion continued, and extending into a man-shaped future. At
any rate, that phenomenally intensive development in the
multi-layered cortex of the human upper brain has not yet
with certainty been proved a blind alley or a dismal failure.
To be sure, this distinctly human brain harbors trouble, but
it also may furnish some as yet untried survival aids. We
have been laggards in calling upon all our potential powers
and resources to arrange for us in a bearable manner an indi
vidual and communal living space. The toxic trash piles of
our neglects and misdeeds, old and fresh, surround us in our
physical environment. The confused wreckage of centuries,
unrelated to any current practical purpose, is mixed in a most
disturbing manner with our often feeble, often arbitrary, at
tempts at creating order.
Organically oriented design could, we hope, combat the
chance character of the surrounding scene. Physiology must
direct and check the technical advance in constructed envi
ronment. This setting of ours is all powerful; it comprises
everything man-made to supply man, from the airy storage
compartment of our toothbrush to the illumination of a
speedway interchange, or of the neighborhood day-care center
for toddlers.
A great deal of what has been vaguely called beauty will
be involved in this proposed new and watchful scrutiny of
man-made environment. It will come into question perhaps
far more often than anybody could imagine in our current
drab disorder. But the sort of beauty we speak of here will
have given up its now too precarious grounds of self-defense.
Designers will recognize that gradually but surely they must
underbuild their proposals and compositions with more solid
physiological foundations rather than with mere speculative
conversation or sales talk. An eternal residuum of mystery
may always lie deeply buried in this field, and yet the realm
of research, testing, and provability increases from clay to clay.
All our expensive long-term investments in constructed
environment will be considered legitimate only if the designs
have a high, provable index of livability. Such designs must
be conceived by a profession brought up in social responsi-
bility, skilled, and intent on aiding the survival of a race
that is in grave danger of becoming self-destructive.
Design is the cardinal means by which human beings have
long tried to modify their natural environment, piecemeal
and wholesale. The physical surroundings had to be made
more habitable and more in keeping with rising aspirations.
Each design becomes an ancestor to a great number of other
designs and engenders a new crop of aspirations.
There were many failures in the past. Cities such as Rome
have been called eternal only to become monuments, less of
stability than of a continuing need for being remade. Rome
and many of its buildings have been cruelly rehandled by
inner and outer barbarians. The Eternal City bears striking
testimony to the shipwreck of a multitude of plans and de
signs that have forever remained frustrated fragments. In the
present, things may be different from what they were in the
past, perhaps, but certainly not better. The controversial,
calamitous character of contemporary towns, from 'modern'
Mexico, Milan, Manila, back to Middletown, U. S. A., is
known to all of us when we but cross the street from our
office building to where we have parked the car.
Through the mental work of design, which is supposed to
improve our lives, the race appears generally to stray farther
and farther from the natural scene. The paradisical habitat
of earliest man is considered a myth today and his natural
situation may originally have posed him harsh enough prob
lems. Yet those of our man-designed, man-constructed envi
ronment are often more trying and more severe tests to our
natural resistance.
Man's own cramped-together creations, anything from un
derground sewage systems and subways to a badly hemmed-in
sky overhead, irritatingly criss-crossed by a maze of electric
wires, should not prove as inescapable as fate. Lightning and
the plague, once so formidable, have been countered by
proper measures; must we then here find ourselves helpless?
Must we remain victims, strangled and suffocated by our
own design which has surrounded us with man-devouring
metropolises, drab small towns manifesting a lack of ordei
devastating to the soul, blighted countrysides along railroad
tracks and highways, studded with petty 'mere-utility' struc
tures, shaded by telephone poles and scented by gasoline
fumes?
Design, the act of putting constructs in an order, or dis
order, seems to be human destiny. It seems to be the way
into trouble and it may be the way out. It is the specific re
sponsibility to which our species has matured, and constitutes
the only chance of the thinking, foreseeing, and constructing
animal, that we are, to preserve life on this shrunken planet
and to survive with grace.
Such survival is undoubtedly our grand objective, accord
ing to an innate pattern of feeling. It is a matter of urgent
concern to everyone from the loftiest philosopher to the
most matter-of-fact businessman. Design to contribute to sur
vival of the race is more than design as a long-hair luxury or
as a lubrication of bigger and better trade.
Never have the opportunities for general and integrated
design on a world-wide scale been as breathtaking as they
are today. The Second World War has left huge areas of de
struction in its wake but promptly a clamor rose, from Le
Havre, France, to Agana, Guam, that things should be re
built in the 'old way/
Yet pitiful attempts at resurrection of what is bygone are
not the best we can do to honor the past. Also, naive paro
chial outlook needs supplementation by global forethought,,
experience, and contemporary know-how. With all sincere
respect for regionalism, there does exist now a cosmopolitan
'joint responsibility' for reconstruction anywhere. Human
planning cannot really remain compartmental or sectional in
an age of mutually braced security. Vast regions, which were
formerly colonial, are awakening to their own contemporary
participation with needs and supplies enormously stepped up.
Technological progress in advanced centers is spreading and
forcing a changed way of life even on the far-away, back
ward portion of the globe. And under the pressure of this
progress if it is to be integrated, conscientious design is
needed everywhere.
What sort of design? What are its governing principles
and on what objective foundations can it be based? Is there
anything to rely on behind all that bewildering multiform
activity of ours? Is there anything which eloquent philoso
phers could put into words?
The writer has long felt tempted to put into words the
fact that at this clay and age no speculative philosophy, no
deductive method alone, no talking-it-out can yield us all the
principles of design. In our time new instruments and obli
gations have come to us from research penetrating into life's
performance. Physiology is a pursuit and a science which
opens the door to broad and intensive application. We begin
to wiclcl tools which will enable us to do the patient spade-
work which must be done. It will be fascinating because it
is so novel.
With knowledge of the soil and subsoil of human nature
and its potentials, we shall raise our heads over the turmoil
of daily production and command views over an earth which
we shall have to keep green with life if we mean to survive-
not cramped full with all the doubtful doings of a too
thoroughly commercialized technology. Tangible observation
rather than abstract speculation will have to be the proper
guide. And drifting will no longer do.
is PLANNING POSSIBLE; can destiny be de
signed?
2
Is drifting really a matter of the past,
or is there some speculative philosophy left to justify it? Can
we really plan anything; or are we only laboring under an
illusion that we can?
In order to be effective and even possible, design presup
poses some kind of operative choice on the part of man,
which has been called a free will. We know it has been
gravely doubted, not least perhaps, because it conflicts incon
veniently with our tendency of mere drifting through the
world.
And a second philosophical question, strange perhaps to
an architect, has actually been posed again and again. This
sixty-four-dollar query is whether there is such a thing at all
as an 'outer world/ Is there really something outside of us
to be man-handled and man-made-over, or is all this around
us perhaps only a figment of the mind? Great thinkers have
aired their scruples about the subject. Yet it seems plain
enough that something real would have to be out there if
we were able to exercise the leverage of our decisions on it.
The doubts linger on: Are we free to act, is it real sense
to plan, or are we simply surrounded by our own illusions?
Certainly, the writer gathered from his experience of chair
ing a State Planning Board that to date this entire business
3
of planning is still obnoxious to many. Thus a little probing
into such doubts should prove truly useful.
First then, the concept 'man-made' is one which has been
endlessly questioned by suspecting philosophers as well as by
the simply faithful. Was not everything, with all its conse
quences, created and just readied to unroll, so that man can
not even lift his hand on his own accord? Has he actually
that free will, so much cherished by his self-respect or arro
gancea choice to make anything, or remake it? Is he master
of his destiny to shape his career and to choose his way over
the earth and perhaps beyond individual death up to a last
ing security? Can he go to heaven by his own power?
People of traditional conscience have been puzzled for ages
about all this. But even in most modern dress the same ques
tions have been asked. Is planning a white hope or just a
political creed of soulless totalitarian? Is it a pretentious de
lusion which disturbs natural processes nothing but a clever
invention to feed a parasitic bureaucracy of busybodies? Also
the free-lance fraternity of planners, architects, and designers
is hardly ever lucky enough to find an all-out support. Acqui
escence with their doings is often but half-hearted and cou
pled with a strange deep-down doubt whether things can
really be managed by anticipation and plan. On the other
hand, there is much wishful thinking that things will work
out by themselves, that one could well cross out from the
budget the tedious expense item of planning or design and
just muddle through, let things happen.
Quite related to the scruples we speak of is still another,
the troublesome one: Is man really separable from the world
at large so that he can act upon it? Or are he and all around
him just ONE?
The religious thought of ancient India strikingly expresses
this idea in the Upanishads, which may be soothing to some,
revolting to others. 'All that out there is you, yourself
(Tatvam asi!)/ Outer and inner world, environment and you
are fully meshed, not separable, not truly different from each
other. The busy passion for extraneous design, for making
things and keeping them moving, is all foolish and evil.
Fakirs, philosophers, and hermit saints wisely content them
selves to exercise the innermost being, nothing else. It is the
world anyway. They love solitude, despise and detest the vil
lages, the city, and all physical 'constructs/ Theirs is an old
indictment of civilization as a whole, especially the brand,
crowded with machinery and animated by a mechanical rush,
which the Occident has come to favor.
Tomes would be necessary merely to outline the ever-
recurrent and ever-qualified treatment that has been admin
istered to this double dilemma: Here, individual independ
ence of any outer setting or on the contrary, inextricable
oneness with it; and there, free will hopefully to design, re
design this setting of ours or else, determinism, fate.
We may just as well admit: A bothcrsozne quandary since
the dawn of the race, it is apparently innate and rooted in
our mental structure, and thus hard to ignore. The question
'Are human plans a good thing, or are they basically evil?'
has been speculated about for as long as 'Can we in the
long run win out with our wit before the sphinx and her
puzzles?' Do we really ever succeed with plans? Or arc all
our designs just wishful dreams? If we want to convert minds
to planning, it is at any rate instructive to remember how
long people have worried about its merit. Perhaps a little
retrospection into past troubles of the mind may rid us of
our own.
It has seemed to generations that God's grace alone, not
man's petty doing, could salvage and save. More than thir
teen hundred years ago, at the Synod of Ephcsus, this prin
ciple gloriously defended by St. Augustine won out against
Pelagius, perhaps quite characteristically a Britisher, who
represented the other conviction. He claimed that man can
design his conduct and mode of living, that lie can win sur
vival by his own effort, and immortally ascend to the circle
of the blessed. Stamped a heretic, poor Pelagius could to
this day be the patron of the planners who themselves arc
still so often exorcised.
Jt seems these two attitudes, self-confidence and trust in
10
providence, cannot really be segregated from each other even
in a single mind. Rene Fuelop-Miller has pointed out that
not only are these opposed convictions held by different
people or argumentative philosophical factions but that there
is a fundamental demonic, never-ending combat between
the two trends, to plan or not to plan, to be provident or
to let things happen. And both of these tendencies, I feel,
are really lodged in every one of us. They have, as I see it,
their turns with the ebbing or rising of our vitality. When
we are lucky and feel strong, we want to take things firmly
into our hands, plan ahead, even arrange the most distant
future. When we are stricken by sickness, loss, and failure,
our plans shorten desperately. Then they are reduced to the
next week, the next day. During a heart attack we only plan
for a mere second or two for reaching the chair in front of
us. At last, composed, we say, 'What's the use? Things come
as they must/ And we stretch out relaxed, resigned. Physio
logical tonus is more valid than philosophical claim.
Even the great Augustine himself, like the rest of us, may,
during the ups and downs of outer life and inner vitality,
have been somewhat undecided in his being, and occasionally
perhaps uncertain in his expression; otherwise it would be
hard to understand how for one and a half thousand years
to come, people were able actually to quote his words in the
defense of both sides!
The Reformation, with the bitter determinist Calvin in
the lead as well as the Thomists, the Dominicans, and later
the Jansenists within the mother church itself developed
considerable wrath against men of action by plan such as
Ignatius of Loyola. We can see in this vigorous saint and
exemplary organizer something like the sixteenth-century
representative of practical reflexology. His was the careful
and systematic knowledge of conditioning and re-molding
minds a subject always close to the problems of design as
we shall presently try to follow them.
Ignatius indeed turned out to be the prototype of an effi
cient trainer for plan, action, and results. His order had a
large tool chest that contained, among other instruments,
11
rich, expressive art and architecture. There was then waged
a long, bitter, and fundamental feud against the will tri
umphant with the Jesuit order standing for it. European
cabinets, bristling universities, and armies were on both sides
of the fence and the bloody battlefield. Finally, all was left
undecided by the decree of a Pope who justly longed for
peace. We can well feel with him.
The following two centuries saw the amazing rise of
science, and a new sort of determinism, a faith in an all-
comprising 'causality/ seemed once more on the verge of
winning out. A man of progress like Voltaire felt with some
justification that he could now don a wholesome sneer at
those antiquated, ever more quaint quarrels of the clerics.
Yet again, two hundred years later, we find that eternal twin
problem being discussed with endless qualifications and re-
qualifications in our own contemporary literature. Of course,
the vocabulary has changed.
That entire concept of environment versus the organism
now seems to experts an abstraction, 1 perhaps altogether off-
key and certainly often impractical to operate with. Neither
physically nor biochemically nor sociologically can the indi
vidual really be segregated or isolated as a separate entity.
The organism permits no severing of the hereditary from the
environmental. Indeed, eveiy cell is the environment of the
other cells, and every group of cells is part of the environ
ment of the cells of another organism/ Biochemist Hender
son points out that through the process of respiration the
organism is chemically so united with its environment that
the two can be separated only in the abstract way in which
we separate the water of two tributaries which have flowed
together into a common river bed. Organisms are immersed
to fusion in their chemical as well as their social setting; they
literally live on and in one another. The isolation of tlic
individual from his fellows is neither a biochemical nor a
social fact/
1 Murphy & Newcomb, quoting Henderson: Experimental Social
Psychology, Harper & Brothers, New York, 1937, p. 28.
12
Only a very little earlier, however, the famed and strict
'environmentalist' theory, we know, had innocently taken
such abstractions as most concrete facts. Now it commands
full credit no longer. Planners, as well as practical men in
hard-boiled traffic with 'outer facts/ will get a little confused
about how hard, fast, and 'outer' these facts really are.
Also in the findings of leading physiologists, such as G. E.
Coghill, the theory of a decisive environment is declared to
be 'grossly inadequate/ He ascertains through many minute
observations on growing embryos that there is such a thing
as behavior which is 'spontaneous/ meaning: not caused
from the outside. This behavior is 'expressing the inner dy
namics of the organism as a whole/ And indeed Coghill
speaks of such things as 'spontaneity, autonomy, or initiating
as factors in behavior.' All these things could make an
old-fashioned materialist, environmentalist, and determinist
shudder.
And then Erwin Schroedinger. He, a great man of contem
porary physics, seemingly first accepts that everything in our
lives is presettled. 3 This is surprising to many who have
heard of the 'undecided behavior' of particles in the atomic
nucleus. Yet, Schroedinger says: To the physicist I wish to
emphasize that in my opinion, and contrary to the opinion
upheld in some quarters, quantum indeterminacy plays no
biologically relevant role/ Further, he thinks, every unbiased
biologist would be a dctcrminist if there were not the well-
known, unpleasant feeling about 'declaring oneself to be a
pure mechanism. For it is deemed to contradict Free Will
as warranted by direct introspection/ At least for an instant,
Determinism, a tight, causal meshwork, again seems to be
tops here, despite all the individualistic behavior of those
atomic particles.
But then Schroedinger's reader is startled by something
like a magnificent somersault. The great physicist suddenly
proclaims free will not only a pleasant assumption, as he
had mentioned before, but something by inner evidence
2 Erwin Schroedinger, What Js Life? Cambridge University Press,
1951, p. 89.
13
quite indisputable. And he has another shock in store:
' "I" am the person, if any, who controls the ''motion of
the atoms" according to the laws of nature/ It sounds like
strong mystic language to be used these days and by a
physicist at that but there it is.
Schroedinger also speaks up against what he calls 'plu
rality/ Plurality means to him that only seeming separation
of the T from the 'you.' In reality, however, all is one and
a most modern scientist serenely joins here the most ancient
sages. The Indian concept of Ma/a, which he praises, does
not really permit such an idea as an outer environment.
Therefore the somersault has been turned into a double one
and here, bewilderingly, it is again, after all is said and clone,
We/ in a philosophical analysis, cannot do anything what
soever about 'it/
Well, perhaps we 'cannot/ but we MUST.
It is time for us to lose our patience with all these specu
lations. We had thought it fair and appropriate, perhaps
necessary, to inquire whether our proposition has meaning,
before proposing such a thing as planning, before suggesting
new ways of designing human destiny and its instrumental
surroundings. Charles Beard, the great historian, when read
ing this manuscript shortly before his death, strongly sug
gested that I should check whether planning was really
possible. 8
I have tried my best. Philosophical thinking of the past
and leading minds of our own historical moment have now
been considered. The problem has actually been discussed
for thousands of years, and it appears, no final solution has
ever been found. Perhaps our brain structure inherently pre
vents us from finding it. Yet, there remains an urgent in
escapable problem staring us in the face; today more than
3 From a letter, 23 Dec. 1947, by Charles Beard: Tcss up, now,
Brother Richard, just what do you, in a final showdown, believe about
the deterministic influences of environment on human beings, as bio
logic creatures/
14
ever we seem confronted with the anxious question as to
whether the human race is fatefully self-destructive and thus
destined to perish from the earth, or whether by our own
design we may attempt and assure our survival.
What are the means of willful design and what are its
ends, provided we can make these means work? To use an
cient language for a new and still somewhat repetitive situa
tion, do we hopelessly face a new flood as heaven has turned
away from us? Apart from all dire dilemmas and panic reac
tions, the flood simply is upon us. It is threatening to over
take us right now in this world of gigantic industrialized pro
duction which hardly knows any bounds set by biological
wholesomeness.
There seems really one thing left to do; that is to by-pass
speculative issues quietly, take heart, organize the procedure,
and confidently attack the stupendous ubiquitous problem
of design, as far as feasible, with an eye on tried inductive
method. And never must we lose a sincere, enlightened in
terest in the ultimate consumer our species as a whole.
Whatever those theoretical convictions may be in which
we sometimes like to indulge, for all practical purposes we
seem born and built to make anticipations. Equipped with
brains, as we arc, we must plan and design. We cannot leave
our salvation up to the old-fashioned brand of Kismet, nor
to a new-fashioned one either.
If the advocate of planning, who faces many opponents,
can gather very little definite support from philosophy, is
there such support in current science which, after all, itself
lays plans for research and has shown brilliant successes? A
conviction in favor of unavoidable causality has never in the
past lamccl science; it rather has helped its initiative.
Moreover, modern science does not look at the causal
point of view as the only possible one. 'Modern science/ to
quote the renowned mathematical physicist, Paul S. Epstein,
lias developed another, the statistical, standpoint, which is
just as logical and self -consistent and is in far better agree-
15
ment with the experimental facts as they are at present
known.' 4
In this new attitude nothing really has been decided either
for or against free will and initiative. Yet, one very impor
tant characteristic of modern thinking in physics stands out
and seems very pertinent to our argument for planning man's
environment on a really large scale. The intrinsic error of
observation (the reason for 'indeterminacy') has been found
comparably unimportant for large bodies and significant only
for small particles. Human intellect could, therefore, give a
valid prediction of the motion of planets and other celestial
bodies for a long period of time, but, in the case of atoms
and electrons, in their individual singular conduct, simple
calculations may fail.
The way we live in emotionally tinged expectations seems
to reverse exactly this cooler, sounder prognosis in regard to
feasible results of foresight! By necessity, every individual
does some petty planning for his small-scale individual career
and warmly believes in it. But if wholesale planning 'of large
bodies/ such as communities, or regions, is proposed, it is
frequently and readily pooh-poohed by a solid block of
rugged individualists who decry such an undertaking as a
chimera, a perilous illusion. Still, we should remember our
lesson that probability and the statistical point of view are
partial to it, favor it, and promise us much more security in
wholesale planning than in the design of individual circum
stances and careers.
4 P. S. Epstein, Thysics and Metaphysics/ TJie Scientific Monthly f
July 1937-
MANKIND PRECARIOUSLY FLOATS TO ITS POS
SIBLE SURVIVAL on a raft, rather make-sliift
as yet, and often leaky: Planning and Design.
3
In the center of the problem that faces
us next, once we have taken a fortified decision against yield
ing to predestination or to chance, there seems to loom the
question, 'Can we successfully separate Sunday from six
times as many weekdays? 7 Can we have two kinds of con
duct, two kinds of design, one, a somewhat dwarfish set for
Sabbath consumption and dedicated to beauty, ideals, good
ness and truth; another, a vast work-a-day set, meant for sup
posedly practical utility, with ugliness, shoddiness, and a new
brand of barbarism rolled into it, and permissible by general
consent?
In a religious community of old, only a despicable cynic
could have pronounced such a two-pronged idea of 'useful
ness' versus righteousness. At once he would have been
spotted as possessed by the devil; his utility would have been
recognized as the utility of hell.
Today, can we any more, and from any point of view,
accept such cloublc-talk and dual set of standards? We have
been led by science to recognize a fundamental unity within
ourselves. While man is now known to have vastly more
sense receptors than the traditional five, all of them together
still deliver one combined message of a world truly indi-
17
visible. Among the many senses, formerly unheard of and re
cently discovered, there is no sense of 'beauty/ nor has a
separate one for 'utility' been spotted. The current physio
logical view of our being makes man one, unless he is diag
nosed a pathological schizoid. It is also one world we shall
have to face with our designs.
If any design could be split into beauty on one side and
utility on the other, as now many of us so readily assume, it
would not be akin to the organic life in us or around us,
which most certainly has no such divisibility. And yet people
have had to live, especially these last two centuries, amidst
a multitude of designs conceived and executed in just this
mistaken spirit and be profoundly affected by it. Factories,
railway depots, office buildings, cheap mass-housing schemes,
and city plans which were first thrown together or engineered
for utility and then dressed up for beauty demonstrate
daily that they have painfully little kinship to life and in
fact are fairly foreign to it. They cannot really sustain it.
From designs like these only meager crumbs can possibly be
picked up for the purpose of vital assimilation and suste
nance. On the contrary, toxic influences penetrate from them
into us every day, every hour, every fraction of a second.
In contrast to this, our time is characterized by a system
atic rise of the biological sciences and is turning away from
oversimplified mechanistic views of the eighteenth and nine
teenth centuries, without belittling in any way the tempo
rary good such views may once have delivered. An important
result of this new way of regarding the business of living may
he to bare and raise appropriate working principles and cri
teria of design.
In conversation with his clients the designer finds that
likes and dislikes often are held to rule supreme. They are
an armor proverbially impenetrable by argument. In spite
of loose aesthetic verbalizations and speculations, acknowl
edged principles to support design must yet emerge and be
acted upon. So far all seems to depend only upon incidental
persuasive improvisations.
It must be emphasized how important, how broad an issue
18
is dealt with here, because clients are not just a few people
who want their penthouses decorated or their beach houses
built in nice shapes. They are not only capricious television
stars with spending money, but also, for example, city fathers
who dispose of staggering tax revenues extracted from all of
us. 'Clients 7 include executives of huge industries, mail-order
houses, and railroads; also politicians and bureaucrats who
pass on a big, mixed bundle of designs for speedway systems,
city halls, schools, projects for hundreds of thousands of fami
lies, and on plans to develop entire regions, states, or nations.
It is not at all a figment of the mind that untold billions of
dollars have already gone into such constructions and many
more will follow in a perpetual procession.
Meanwhile, the spread of carelessly caused decay, waste of
natural resources within and about us, destruction and blight,
approach a most alarming and desperate magnitude.
And yet there are those among us who retain their conta
gious skepticism about the possibility of any valid criteria
applicable to these matters and, therefore, of grand planning
schemes altogether. They dislike being stampeded into ac
tion and feel that history has been full of false alarms, as if
action were necessary. Is it safe to say: Experience has shown
that things will right themselves after a while and there is
no use worrying? That things have been out of gear so often
in the past; and the danger shouldn't be exaggerated? If
man has muddled through again and again, can it now be
as bad as all that?
The great conquistadores of olden times maneuvered a
handful of armed men and horses, and the famous ancient
explorers navigated a small ship with slow speed. Their maps
were rough and inaccurate; they possibly could afford that.
Is this true as well for a fleet of airborne troops, for huge
invasion armies of today, for a rocket ship to the moon, or
even for one of those modern airliners speeding along almost
as fast as sound? A plane like this needs the most exacting
preparation of its course, a true map, a minute plan of pro
cedure, a guiding beam, or else all may be atomized in a sort
of crash quite unknown to the ancients.
19
Contemporary civilization, for better or worse, evidently
operates on a new level. It is engaged in such high velocities
in the handling of such staggering masses that good old trial-
and-error ? always a little obnoxious and seemingly at no time
an ultimate method, now often reaches most urgently its re
placement stage. Of unavoidable necessity are more precise
and pertinent data, preventive and constructive programs,
blueprints. Those data will have to concern above all proved
and clarified common human potentials. If our designs are
to hold water, we not only must have a technological and
commercial horizon but we must more truly know man, the
consumer, and his 'physiological purchasing power/ To plan
for him we must know his characteristics. The terrifying
magnitude of energies, speeds, and masses invested today
have created a biological situation without precedent. The
early treatment through tradition, or the later lawless laissez-
faire, seems now out of the question.
And the mass production of the post- Victorian generation
of only yesterday was child's play. It was a rehearsal for the
breath-taking show we are going to face now, in the midst
of this high-geared yet unevenly spreading planetary indus
trialism of the second half of the twentieth century, where
war and postwar periods hold hands when it comes to fan
tastic figures of consumption. Condemned, bombed-out bor
oughs, cities and regions are to be reconstructed because of
war damage as well as for an obsolescence due to severe inner
blockages. The thought cannot vanish from our attention
that while there is an immense, a staggering demand for
design and for plans all around the globe, really workable,
broadly fundamental, and generally acceptable criteria for
this gigantic design activity are lacking.
Are there reliable values which are at least sharply sil
houetted against the horizon of the future? Can we define
such values beyond those which are commercially advertised?
Can we make these values more soundly founded or defen
sible? How is the knowledge of these values to be obtained
with a degree of assurance?
20
To worry about such objective criteria and to find them
is anything but gray theory. They drastically affect the eco
nomics of communities and nations. In fact, without objec
tive criteria, without well-founded principles to carry on,
plan, and design, we cannot prove anything to councilmen,
taxpayers, administrators, boards, or the people.
We must not, we cannot even afford to doubt the valid
existence of these principles and criteria. They can be based
on nothing but a perpetuation of the species, which we as
pire to insure on the needs for survival of the human race.
The entire organic evolution which had seemed to culmi
nate in the social and physical structure of human culture
must not come to a dead end. It must not stop in cataclysm
and a new sort of chaos simply because humans cannot
learn to control, by the brain, the constructions and multi
form products of the brain.
If design, production, and construction cannot be chan
neled to serve survival, if we fabricate an environment of
which, after all, we seem an inseparable part but cannot
make it an organically possible extension of ourselves, then
the end of the race may well appear in sight. It becomes
improbable that a species like ours, wildly experimenting
with its vital surroundings, could persist.
But perhaps we have not yet given ourselves our full or
last chance. In fairness, we beg for it.
There have been times when speculative thought on this
and other subjects was almost unchallenged. What George
Lundberg has in general pointed out for sociology, a science
of all human affairs, is equally true for the foundations of
wholesome design: mere speculation will no longer suffice.
It is not so much that new systems or styles will be 'thought
out/ but all will have to be underbuilt with painstakingly
sifted, observational, and experimental material.
In this crucial period of ours, we can no longer hope for
any short-cut. If we have any hypotheses, they must be work
ing hypotheses recommending certain paths of research that
lead to objectively verifiable results.
21
We must not jump to conclusions and we shall not light-
heartedly promise proof. But in the end, we hope to stimu
late trains of fascinating inquiry and investigation; the sort
that, through all our practical work, we have found truly
needed in order to outline a basis of design and to make a
sound, justified, and successful bid for its acceptance.
22
FROM A BABY CARRIAGE TO A METROPOLIS,
our man-made surroundings, top-heavy with
technological trickery, have become our mold
of destiny and a source of never-ending
nervous strain.
4
In periods of war or severe social and
economic stress, sweeping pessimistic statements are made
concerning the self-destructiveness of the human species. Our
civilized life, even at its 'normal 7 pace, may well inspire such
pessimism. Certain hopes set on science during the last two
centuries have proved illusory and the results ambiguous.
Indeed, despite its spectacular achievements in specialized
fields, systematic science does not seem to be applicable to
the whole of man's complex affairs.
Yet the construction of a contemporary scene which would
gratify human needs instead of frustrating them, which
would further the smooth functioning of man's nervous
system instead of imposing an intolerable strain on it, is a
problem that will most certainly not be solved by lucky ac
cident.
The human habitat originally the primeval forest or the
grassland of prairie and pampashas become more and more
man-made. And with us, it is perhaps 90 per cent the work
of human hands and we must hope brains. Civilized men
pass their lives in or between structures. These structures,
23
and the spaces between them, urgently require sound and
integrated design. They are the more in need of it because
they are static and permanent, unlike the campfire sites of
the nomads, which could be befouled and then easily aban
doned once they became uninhabitable. Yet primeval no
madic recklessness often still characterizes our dealings with
the physical environment. Also, the human species, more
numerous on the planet than ever, is crowded, cramped, and
harassed by density. A great part of the world has been trans
formed into congeries of slums.
In spite of technological progress, or perhaps because of
its spottiness, our man-made environment has shown an
ominous tendency to slip more and more out of control. The
farther man has moved away from the balanced integration
of nature, the more his physical environment has become
harmful. Nervous friction and wreckage have multiplied in
the metropolitan type of surroundings. Frightening statistics
remind us of this.
Although human beings no longer live in natural jungles,
they inhabit jungles of their own making jungles such as
are beheld from the windows of automobiles moving through
our towns, be they large or small. We see endless stretches
of wilderness from New York trains crossing through Harlem
or from the Chicago 'El.' Miles upon miles of 'fronts' and
'backs' which are now grimly neglected and old, but which
never were young, line the tracks passing Albany and Syra
cuse, entering Detroit or Los Angeles. One does not have to
be an out-and-out environmentalist to be concerned about
the baleful influence of such man-made surroundings. They
envelop the child, the adolescent, and the adult like an in
escapable fate.
The nursery in which a child spends its first formative
years, the bathroom in which it is taught the essentials of
modern cleanliness, the house containing these rooms, the
street in which this house stands, the neighborhood to
which the street belongs, with its schools, places of work,
worship, amusement, recreationall are part of what may
be called our constructed environment. It can be friendly
24
or hostile (for the most part hostile) to the human organism
on which it perpetually acts and reacts.
Our deep and unconscious responses lend the environ
ment demonic powers over us.
Early in life we spend much time floored baby-fashion,
perplexed, most curious. As a two- and three-year-old, I often
sat on the parquet of my parents' apartment, studying the
raised, splintery grain of the worn hardwood and the warped
boards. The cracks between the boards were filled with a
compact something which I liked to dig out with my fingers.
To grown-ups the floor is distant. Had they stooped to
examine what I produced from this quiet resting place of
open parquetry joints, they would have called it dirt. Mag
nification could have shown it to be a teeming microbiotic
world. I tested it by the toddler's ancient test- put it into
the mouth and found it 'no good.'
Strange as it may seem, my first impressions of architecture
were largely gustatory. I licked the blotter-like wallpaper
adjoining my bed pillow, and the polished brass hardware of
my toy cupboard. It must have been then and there that I
developed an unconscious preference for flawlessly smooth
surfaces that would stand the tongue test, the most exacting
of tactile investigations, and for less open-jointed, and also
more resilient flooring. I recall, that scantily dressed or
naked as I was, I became uneasily aware of the surface on
which I sat and moved.
It was then, also, that I first experienced the sensation of
towering height by looking upward to the carved top of a
Victorian dresser. I was more awed and impressed than,
later, by the gigantic columns that support the vaults of the
cathedral of Milan or the roof of the Temple at Luxor.
The idea of shelter is associated in my mind with a feel
ing that took root in me during those days. Our parlor ceil
ing was uncomfortably high, and so I used to sit and play
under the grand piano. The low headroom under our piano
provided me the coziest place I knew. Many likes and dis
likes must have taken shape in the child I was, as they do
25
in every child. At night there were dark, inaccessible, mys
terious spaces such as that frightening area back of the
olive-green upholstered love seat, placed 'catty-corner' into
the room. I still shudder at the memory. And I still loathe
the waste of space behind furniture.
Those many childhood experiences taught unspoken les
sons in appreciation of space, texture, light, and shade, the
smell of carpets, the warmth of wood, and the coolness of
the stone hearth in front of our kitchen stove.
Later our college lectures on architecture never touched
on such basic sensory experiences, or on the subtle relation
ship between physical structures and man's nervous behavior.
I did hear, though, a great deal about good taste and beauty.
So-called beauty was an outworn abstraction, which did not
advance my understanding, and so-called taste was a vague
term with no definite meaning. Both seemed conceived as
if they could simply be added to what otherwise would be
merely 'practical/ There was a flavor of non-essential luxury
about this taste-and-beauty 'supplement/
Our environment called for a more integrated evaluation,
especially that crucial part which man himself constructs
and continues reconstructing from age to age.
The natural scene the precultural environment has un
dergone only minor changes throughout the long formative
period of our species. The process of early man's adjustment
to this environment was largely automatic. Man-made envi
ronment, however, is subject to far more rapid changes.
There is no time for slow biological adjustment to novelties
which at any moment may become technologically feasible.
The velocity differential of these two processes is fraught
with dangerous friction. Experts in organic requirements and
reactions must help us steer clear of precarious maladjust
ment.
The fact that our surroundings have become ever more
alien to life and its needs has been clear enough for a long
time. But accompanied by a fortissimo of technical-industrial
activity, we have listened to the siren song of 'progress/
The physical surroundings, the expression, the looks of a
26
period like the Middle Ages could not well be understood
without sympathetic insight into the common faith and the
peculiar scholastic quirks of the minds that shaped it. Simi
larly, we ourselves have long been possessed by a popular
faith. It was a faith which ambitions and superstitions firmly
linked to a mechanistic brand of scientific outlook and to
the mass impact of industrial output. This faith begot our
present metropolitan turmoil. To gain a relative understand
ing of our present status, its background and potentials, it
may be useful to review, very briefly, a sequence of mental
attitudes that have evolved during the last two hundred years.
27
Rational thought versus traditional bias in
design: ARCHITECTURE, A BELATED CAMP-
FOLLOWER OF 'NATURALISM.'
5
No single one of the sciences or arts
has an entirely independent record of development. Mu
tually conditioned they become part of the general wealth
of mankind. Architecture of today is not a solitary offspring
of modern society; its intellectual pedigree is complex. Thus,
a glance at the broad cultural background implicitly related
to design will be of value. Unlike automotive and other engi
neers, architects have been trained to keep an eye on the
precedents of a distant past. They have long been accustomed
never to discuss even the most novel development of the
future without a grain of retrospection. In our brief survey,
therefore, without any claim to exhaustive treatment, we shall
try simply to highlight the historical background of current
views.
Rationality has in some measure been applied to the every
day operations of man and his designs during the last hun
dred thousand years. The origins of the modern scientific
approach may be traced back to antiquity or the Middle
Ages. By the eighteenth century, the achievements of scien
tific inquiry and mathematics had been very successful and
quite distinguishable from the results of earlier modes of
thinking. This success gave rise to the belief that everything
28
in the world could sooner or later be rationally explained,
and that human life could (and should) be organized on the
sole basis of 'reason/
This eighteenth-century trust in reason turned into a new
faith, as well as a fashion, and finally into a deep-rooted social
movement. It spread through court society and down into
the educated middle class, which aspired to political influ
ence commensurate with its growing economic power. Ra
tionalistic slogans were used in the struggle against the privi
leges of aristocracy and clergy. Yet actual scientific research
was still primitively organized. Infinitesimal mathematics or
involved astrophysics were understandable to only a handful
of people. Nevertheless, the new ideas were widely appre
ciated for their paradoxical brilliance.
Before the middle of that century, La Mettrie, a French
physician, wrote a book entitled L'Homme-machine. The
idea that man was a machine, even if it could not be proved
in detail, seemed like a splendid slogan to witty raisonneurs
who enjoyed annoying the Church. And there were earnest
hopes that this notion could actually be proved, at least later
on. At that time, the comparison with a machine did not
imply contempt for man; on the contrary, intricate clock
work or other machinery was the exciting novelty of the day.
While the educated classes were infatuated with rationalism,
the broad masses of Europeans had still not progressed be
yond a belief in witchcraft; and emotions that had previously
been associated with magic were now readily transferred to
the machine, the much admired automaton, the amazing
homunculus of the new age.
What contributed most to the spread of rationalism
among the masses was not, however, its pleasantly shocking
or fashionable aspects, but its deeper revolutionary implica
tions. One of these was the gradual replacement of the quali
tative by the quantitative approach in science.
Earlier philosophy had been based on the concept of
quality. 'Qualities' were regarded as irreducible essences. This
concept was bound up with the hierarchical structure of so
ciety. A 'quality' was something that by definition could be
29
discerned only by the especially endowed, not by the com
mon man. Whether the qualities in question were spiritual
or material, only a person of privileged view could assess
them. In fact, there were no material qualities; for even
these, such as shape, color, or rhythm, seemed to hold mys
tical significance.
The new, post-medieval science of nature adopted a quan
titative approach. Science was inseparable from mathematics;
its progress depended on the development of increasingly
more accurate methods of measurement with finer and finer
scales. There was promise that mystical qualities would be
universally resolved into understandable quantitative terms.
Society began to realize the democratic implications of such
a development. The common man had had no legitimate
access to those long-enthroned and puzzling qualities; he
had been kept out of the secret, and had been denied cor
responding rights. The common people had always been the
majority; but only now did the majority become important:
the new science, based on mathematics and measurements,
seemed to imply the glorification of numbers. How could it
fail to appeal to masses of people, now 'enlightened' by revo
lutionary literature?
Moreover, it was amply demonstrated by the new indus
trial technology that science really 'worked/ It did not matter
that only a few people knew how. The mere fact that it did
work and produce while its inventors obligingly explained
that it was no secret magic but the outcome of plain, quan
titative computation accessible to all was startling to the
common man. He began applying reasoning power to a good
many venerable social and political institutions, even though
they derived their authority from the will of the crown
which, in turn, claimed to act by the grace of God. Ration
alism was no longer a mere fashion.
While some philosophers of the Enlightenment, in a re
markable spirit of childlike seriousness and optimism, drew
up comprehensive plans for reforms, the physical setting in
which they lived remained largely unchanged. Pictures of the
rooms and buildings where the Encyclopedists met, or a por-
30
trait of Voltaire with his elaborately curled wig, show that
these ardent reformers continued to cherish old-fashioned
physical surroundings, to furnish them, and to dress them
selves in a manner hardly compatible with their rationalistic
creed. The compartmentalism in man's mind breaks down
slowly this accounts for the amusing contrast between attire
and conviction.
Ideas of reform received a new and powerful stimulus after
that calculating social idealist and militant sentimentalist,
Jean Jacques Rousseau, had stirred up a passion for broad,
radical readjustment. His followers thought that it would be
a simple matter to find the way back to what he called a
natural mode of life and social order. People, simple minded
and most plainly dressed sans culottes ultimately made so
bold as to storm the Bastille. They went so far as to behead
the king, who formerly was thought to possess mysterious
and unaccountable qualities different from the rest. Account
able quantities were now victorious.
A new era, calling for wholesale replanning, redesigning
for a total reconstruction of the pattern of life, seemed to
be at hand, as an inevitable consequence of the great po
litical revolution. Inveterate and obsolete conventions were
to be analyzed radically and liquidated en masse. Industrial
ized technology clamored for expansion and consumers. The
society of the future was to be modeled on Rousseau's social
contract. It was also to be based on the tabulated judgment
and vote of the many. Numbers obviously had succeeded in
solving so many questions, even the most intricate scientific
problems.
The new society was to be democratic. Before the Ameri
can Revolution, sizable democracies had existed only in an
cient Greece and Rome. Greco-Roman patterns of life and
artistic expression were therefore promptly revived to serve
and symbolize the new order. The rationalist-minded society
of A.D. 1800 made a strenuous effort to assume the outward
forms of antiquitywhich in itself was hardly rational or in
any way compatible with the dawning machine age. Ameri
cans built banks in the form of Greek temples, hundreds of
31
mansions donned Greek pediments. In the United States,
rainier than Hellas, nearly flat roofs, although covered with
new-fangled sheet metal, proved permeable to the moisture
of melting snow, and wet spots left their mark on the ceil
ings below. The porticos and colonnades were less majestic
than those at Selinus in Sicily. The symmetrical Greek face
often imposed a rigid floor plan that made homes of this
kind stylish but hardly practical. Rationalism in science and
social philosophy had evidently failed to find an adequate
architectural expression of its own, and succeeded only in
producing another fashion, one that was curiously divorced
from the requirements of real life.
The pendulum swung back. Public taste soon replaced the
rigid surface-Hellenism by a more flexible combination of
forms patterned on the supposed architecture of the Middle
Ages and other periods. The ideal of an integrated environ
ment, which was to be the programmatic expression of a new
order, seemed forgotten. It was as though the sneering pre
dictions uttered by the aristocrats as they ascended the guil
lotine had proved right. The populace, that mob of bour
geois, had proved unable to create new cultural patterns and
live up to them. From Louis Philippe to Queen Victoria,
the middle classes, political victors though they were, kept
on rehashing and diluting the forms of the ancieii regime
that they had upset.
Revolutions make many promises, but their fruits ripen
slowly. The eighteenth-century palace with its lackeys and
flunkeys is perhaps only now being replaced as a subconscious
ideal in the minds of the middle classes, who were the con
querors of 150 years ago. It is being slowly supplanted by a
taste for informal, self-service dwellings designed for the
masses of small consumers. The prophecies of eighteenth-
century revolutionary thinkers who strove to end the feudal
curbs on industry and enable everybody to enjoy its prod
ucts are beginning to come true in building matters only
today. The change in attitude has taken a long time to crys
tallize and is not yet clearly defined, if one may judge front
32
the Georgian residences still under construction in real-
estate developments named 'Bel Air' or 'Sans Souci/
Throughout the nineteenth century, while the art of de
sign remained tradition-bound, science and technology forged
ahead. Constructive thinking continued to develop behind
the controversies among stylistic schools. Rational organiza
tion of social life also became the object of a new science,
undaunted by bloody revolutions and the political reactions
that followed.
But while nineteenth-century thinking was largely stimu
lated by mechanized industrial progress, and furthered by
the development of physics, the new science of biology made
it increasingly evident that every living organism must be
adjusted to its environment, and that species and genera
had indeed been molded by their environment through mil
lions of years. The public became aware of the Lamarckian
and Darwinian theories of evolution. Originally these were
strictly biological hypotheses; but, almost suddenly, specula
tions on the all-powerful role of natural constellation and cir
cumstantial pressure became as fashionable as rationalism
had been in the eighteenth century. Later, just when the fac
tual foundation on which the original theories were based
began to be questioned by scientists, vulgarized versions of
them had a heyday in all kinds of contexts.
Although abrupt mutations had not yet been explained by
the theory of de Vries, and evolution was still believed to
be slow and gradual and to become noticeable and effective
only over hundreds of thousands of years, evolutionary termi
nology was glibly introduced into the interpretation of man's
comparatively fast-moving history. Socio-economic disorders
were comfortably ascribed to allegedly biological causes. The
laws of heredity and of environmental influence were invoked
as a neat justification of exploitative practices that conflicted
gravely with earlier Christian ethics. It became possible to
be complacent about unpleasant social realities. The indus
trial proletarians, living in shockingly crowded slums with
their hordes of sickly and neglected children, the weak and
unadjustable individual, the criminal, and all the characters
33
on the margin of established society became 'comprehen-
sible'-sometimes with a shrug of the shoulder. But the same
century saw the emergence of social psychology, sponsored
by Cesar Lombroso in Turin, as well as the patiently fact-
finding and systematic 'experimental and physiological psy
chology/ initiated by William Wundt in Leipzig. ^
European newspaper readers in the 'seventies and 'eighties
seemed again reasonably sure that they were on the verge^of
not only comprehending the human and social fabric with
all its intricacies but possibly even of establishing a rational
social order and organizing the globe in a most satisfactory
fashion, with all the remaining savages transformed into suc
cessful colonials. Although there were different schools of
thought, an optimistic outlook was predominant.
While big enterprise and empire builders forged ahead,
socialism and trade-unionism had entered the domain of
practical politics. Civilization promised to spread speedily
over the map as well as into the depth of society. The dis
covery of the laws of natural development and human con
duct seemed around the corner. The progressives of the clay
hoped that the social order which was so largely based on
tradition, and which had originated in primitive mystical
ideas, would soon be supplanted by a new one based upon
science. Everything in life, it was proclaimed, must be gov
erned by recognized natural necessity.
Perhaps not quite everything as yet. Certain important and
very specific aspects of life continued to follow conventional
lines and conflict with natural necessities, but few social
thinkers paid critical attention to such anomalies. The archi
tects of that period gave a new and permanently unwieldy
shape to the significant metropolises of the world and the
day. In Paris, Vienna, Berlin, the edifices and streets became
jumbles of the most disparate elements. They did not rec
ognize the rule of any natural necessity.
Camillo Sitte, one of the first theoreticians of city plan
ning, who found an audience during the industrial boom that
followed the depression of the early iSyo's, seemed almost
exclusively interested in producing impressive groups of
34
showy public buildings or representational fagades. An im
portant and gifted leader in monumental thinking, he did
not seem to mind the fact that one of those buildings might
boast a front in supposedly French-Gothic style, and others
in Italian Baroque or in Periclean Greek, while all of them
were planned and erected within the same decade and
around the same city square. Nor did he waste time, as
young Engels had done a generation earlier, on investigating
whether slums were indeed a natural necessity. These slums
had sprung up on the outskirts of almost every large com
munity into which a greedy industrialism had crowded the
laboring population in Glasgow, Manchester, Breslau, Bos
ton. Sir Patric Geddes has named this reckless, crude era the
paleotechnic age.
To us these slums would perhaps seem much more ur
gently related to an improved planning of dwellings or com
munities than to novel writing or picture painting. But for
some reason probably that of least resistance the sequence
of historical developments was exactly the reverse. Natural
ism in literature and painting preceded by three or four dec
ades a comparable naturalism in architecture and planning.
In the Paris of the 'seventies, when the new French re
public was ambitiously carrying forward the construction of
the imperial boulevards and building an impressive row of
fafades inaugurated by Baron de Haussmann, literature de
veloped initiative in a quite different direction. It went into
the slummy back streets and studied 'them with a realistic
passion for facts and for social justice. Pseudo-historical com
pilation and facial treatment were banned from at least a few
of the arts which now took the lead, and some writers even
began to call upon the architects to follow their example.
But most architects of that day apparently did not read
modern literature, or failed to understand its message.
Emile Zola shocked his contemporaries by writing a novel
entitled L/Assommoir, the slang term for a cheap saloon;
then he went further and wrote Nana, the story of a prosti
tute, which conservatives considered pure pornography and
which, in partial corroboration of their opinion, sold a hun-
35
dred thousand copies. Actually Nana had been planned as
one of a cycle of novels, which their author conceived as
objective studies based on the laws of heredity and environ
ment. His intention was to portray the impact of environ
mental factors on various branches of a family, in fact, on
French society. Zola himself proclaimed this sort of fiction
writing to be scientific on the ground that it dealt with hard
realities on the basis of objective research. He and his fol
lowers, watched by the rest of Europe, founded and drew up
the program for the naturalistic school in literature. This
movement was somewhat paralleled in painting. The artists
walked out of the academic studios in protest and began to
paint outdoors, striving to render the natural effects of light
and air. Impressionists and pointillists who were trying to
come closer to the realities of nature were inspired by a spirit
of scientific experimentation.
Disregarding the various manifestos and proclamations, we
may define Zola's naturalism as a movement which expressed
a reaction against the romantic tendency to escape from the
present into remote situations and periods. The naturalists
tried to counteract the influence of Musset and Hugo, with
their picturesque settings and fictitious treatment of life.
'Real life 7 was to be scrutinized with passionate attention.
Even vulgarity and banality were recognized as an ingre
dientalmost an ornament of realism. The underlying idea
was that the subject matter of real nature must be 'studied'
and presented 'scientifically/ with the help of all the tools
available to contemporary investigation. The naturalistic
novelist availed himself of systematic biology, realistic psy
chology, and, a little later, political economy. He introduced
into literature a phony parallel to scientific method of obser
vation and speculated about the application of the newest
theories to his own field.
In brief, naturalism advocated a return to nature, by the
most up-to-date means. Nature was to be recaptured by
'scientific' methods. It was not a sentimental or romantic
back-to-nature movement. Zola's conception of nature was
worlds apart from that of the idyllic poets. A regularly
36
scheduled Victorian railway train was taken into the natural
scene lyrical promenades or picturesque Neapolitan donkey
rides were done for.
Thus Emile Zola wrote his stories about a strike in the
mines of the northern industrial district, and photographed
with his pen, or should we say daguerreotyped, the popula
tion of a backward rural area. Woven into all of this was his
genealogical report of that French family, the Rougon-
Macquarts. With respect to form, Zola's clustered composi
tion may have been modeled somewhat after the Comedie
humaine of Balzac's methodic genius. But now a definite and
extra-personal scientific system became the backbone of this
new literary cycle.
In the course of time, naturalism and the scientific ap
proach to literature were superseded by other movements
and fashions, while science plodded on patiently, less con
cerned with short-lived Utopias, than with long-term results.
Best-sellers that promised to solve the riddle of the universe
by a short cut or in ten easy lessons remained incidental
diversions.
The sciences often progress at an uneven pace; some make
great strides, while others kg behind. For example, it took
quite a while before the organic chemists or bacteriologists
picked up their parcel of higher mathematics. But uneven-
ness in development is only temporary; for all the sciences
have become interrelated, and no part of the advancing front
line may for long remain far ahead of the others. Needless
to say, the actual pace of scientific progress was rather slower
than suggested by the blurbs of so-called scientific novels;
yet, there was steadiness of direction, and progress became
less and less accidental.
As if in contrast to such systematic integration, the human
mind has also, we said, an innate tendency to remain divided
into tightly separated compartments. Emile Zola, like Vol
taire before him, was not free of such a peculiarly split out
look. He courageously advocated a consistent interrelation of
all things, adherence to nature, indifference to conventions,
37
and realistic logic. Ultimately he embraced socialism as a
doctrine that promised to achieve a rational organization of
the human community. But when he came to build his own
house in Meudon or furnish his apartment in the Rue de
Boulogne, he certainly did not act like a champion of prog
ress. His self-chosen physical environment was quite at vari
ance with the spirit of his radical pronouncements.
One might expect to find this leading proponent of back-
to-nature-by-scientific-method sitting at a clean-cut, modern
writing table in an airy, well-lighted, almost empty room,
simple but psychologically gratifying in design and color
scheme, so conceived as not to interfere in any way with
crystal-clear thought. In such austere surroundings we might
imagine Zola, frugal, full of sympathy (as much sympathy as
a scientist can afford, of course) for the exploited miners,
working hard and systematically at his daily 2500 words of
Germinal. Here he would create that bitter mass drama of
a strike, a tragically frustrated attempt at self-help in the new
and troubled industrial age.
How he actually furnished his 'new' apartment we know
from the following enthusiastic description of a contempo
rary:
A large room into which the light penetrates with
difficulty. . . The big windows are reduced to small
dimensions by use of broad Bonne Grace window hang
ings of blue plush on which flower embroideries, cut
out from antique Italian chasubles, arc sewn. Curtains
of white lace and double curtains of red crepe-cle-chinc
increase the dimness of the room and render it severe
and lugubrious. The cabinet de travail (this is the work
room) is furnished with objects from every epoch, every
style, every country. The work table of Dutch origin,
heavy and massive, dates from Louis XII; the huge writ
ing chair of solid rosewood dates from Louis XIV and
came from Portugal. There are two small bookcases of
the Louis XVI period, a little Louis XV table, a piano
and two magnificent Persian vases, containing bunches
38
of lilac. Above one of the doors is a kind of scallop
from an Italian altar hanging, embroidered with Vene
tian beads, dating from the seventeenth century. There
are numerous pictures on the wall, for the most part of
the impressionistic school, including the famous por
trait of Zola by Manet, and landscapes by Cezanne,
Monet and Pissarro.
What we face here is lusty mid-Victorian eclecticism at its
wildest, surrounding a new sunrise of impressionist painting
and naturalist writing. But we step farther into the apartment
of the revolutionary.
The bedroom is the most curious of all. The walls are
hung with antique tapestries from the Chateau d'Am-
boise. The windows are of stained glass of different pe
riods, ranging from the twelfth to the seventeenth cen
tury.
Between the two windows is a huge coffer of carved
wrought iron. There is an antique Preston cupboard,
some superb Majolica pottery, and a tall and massive
bed of the Louis XIII period ornamented with hang
ings made from a chasuble of Genoese velvet.
Strange as it may seem, the author of L'Assommoir and
Germinal worked in a study encumbered with antiques and
slept in a Louis XIII bed in an air-tight compartment of
antique Genoese velvet. And we must keep in mind that
Zola's books were not only written but also read from
Bucharest to Saint Louis in the midst of just such furniture
set in similar rooms and settings.
Zola's modern biographer, Josephson, from whom the fore
going quotation is taken, tells us that when Flaubert was led
by the gleeful Zola into that extraordinary bedroom, he sat
on the majestic bed and stared about him with his great
wondering child's eyes, ravished. He thought of one of his
own romantic tales of the Middle Ages. Why, it is the bed
room of my Saint Julien, the Hospitaler/ he whispered rap
turously. And so it was or nearly so.
39
The apartment in the Rue de Boulogne, in the Paris of
1877, was furnished to have what the romantic pre-Zola lit
erature considered medieval flavor. Zola, who had deliber
ately wrecked the literature of the preceding period, busily
indulged in its furnishings, architecture, and superannuated
gimcracks. The pictures adorning the walls were for the most
part of the radical plein-air impressionistic school, which
Zola had championed and promoted. Did he fully grasp
their message? He undoubtedly hung them dead on his over-
decorated walls. We may well conjecture why Cezanne, a
genius of much greater stature, became estranged from his
old friend who lived surrounded by all this confused clutter
and bric-a-brac picked from all the latitudes and longitudes
of history. I do not know whether Cezanne's bedroom had
a window large enough to admit a bit of plein air for his eyes
and lungs, but we do know that he did not die from suffo
cation in a hermetically sealed sleeping chamber. Zola ac
tually did. I was a child at that time, but I still remember
the big headlines. My parents seized this opportunity to
explain to me the dangers of gases emanating from poorly
vented fireplaces and stoves, and then conversed on the new
creed of sleeping with a window open.
Today, Zola's novels may seem long-winded; but parts of
them remain historically instructive. His mind was a sensi
tive instrument accurately recording the tendencies of his
period; he is representative, not accidental. His naturalistic
program was in revealing contrast to the style of his writ
ing desk, his working chair, his bedroom. It is a real and
poignant tragedy that the sincere popularizer of straightfor
ward science-for-life's-sake succumbed to a shortage of oxygen
and an excess of gingerbread.
There was no proto-surrealistic plan whatever to his com
bination of altar candles on the desk and sexual psycho-
dissection in the manuscript. Zola was unaware of his own
double standards. His doctrine of naturalism was one thing;
his apartment was another. He lived and died at the hands
of the vigorous interior decorators of his age.
40
The new ideas were not yet strong enough to form their
own physical shell Such a process takes time.
What recently and for a while has been called the new
architecture was new only as architecture goes; in fact, it was
a belated camp follower of 'naturalism' which, in those
earlier days, was to revolutionize only the literary compart
ment.
But similar ideas have come home to us. Forty years later
we again witnessed the revival of a movement advocating a
return to nature by way of modern science. We were assured
that we must not be afraid of such a trivial object as a bath
room soil pipe exposed freely on the exterior of a building.
It might even have propaganda value for realism and matter-
of-factness. Once more the objective was to conquer senti
mental romanticism which again was spotted as nihilistic and
showing no loyalty to the possibilities of our own time!
Zola and his literary friends had followed this line of
thought; LeCorbusier evidently felt quite similarly inspired
by the Paris of half a century later, but the focus of interest
had now shifted to planning and 'toward a new architecture/
LeCorbusier had come home from Vienna, where he had
met Adolf Loos, the architect, who shook the Philistines of
his time with proposals for new modes of living, while Oscar
Wilde only shocked them with parlor witticisms. By the end
of the century the aspiration for a radical change had abated
in literature but invaded the field of physical design.
Earnest reform may every so often be interrupted by ca
price; much of arbitrary eclecticism might still be adopted
as a 'spice/ Plastercast caryatid virgins, rococo chairs, and
Victorian cartouches reappeared between the world wars in
the penthouses of Paris, London, New York, and the gigantic
Brazilian gambling casino of Petropolis. 'New Empiricism'
and 'Neo-Romanticism' can in certain places be granted title
as authentic movements. But the main and primary current
of developmental progress in building design can now be
deflected less easily. At all events, it is no longer as isolated
as it had been before. Architects have begun to be interested
in other branches of human endeavor. The consciousness of
41
the broad relationship of design to life has been recognized
in some measure. An over-all integration and clear direction
should prevail over all petty cross currents.
The blunt pose of mere reaction against naive romanticism,
however we may choose to define it, has subsided. The super
ficial desire to indulge in banal and ostentatious crudities
intended to frighten the Philistines, may have been as fash
ionable in 1925 as it was in 1880; it is so no longer. The
essential core of design emancipation has never been merely
a fashion destined to die when the next spring model comes
out.
Sentimental retrospection and the hunt for sheer novelty
may often seem to dominate the scene. Yet another attitude
has come increasingly to assert itself in everyday design at
its best. It is an attitude of rather sharpened, objective, all-
around observation before wielding the pencil. It is creatively
systematic, sometimes meticulously statistical, undogmatic,
but not irresponsible. Altogether it is different from classical
precedents however great and venerable these may be. And
in spite of such flagrant differences there is no reason to sup
pose that an intensive human art cannot thrive in this new
atmosphere, or that the end of all real pleasure in life is
in sight.
42
PERFORMANCE GUARANTEES VERSUS OLD
'QUALITY' IDEAS. Forms around us became
dictated by an industrial technology and jus
tified by 'operation/
6
After naturalism, many movements
followed one another in swift, sometimes confusing succes
sion. But a 'scientific' ambition, inaugurated by the natural
ists in literature and the impressionists in painting, had be
come one of the artists' permanent drives. Instead of inter
preting romantic subjects, late nineteenth-century painters
decided to set these aside and tried to render the natural
phenomena of light and color, to paint according to scien
tific optics. They were selective recorders and most patient
experimentalists, like Seurat, the inventor of pointillism. It
was only fifty years later that mathematical physicists began
wondering whether strictly speaking the observer and his
very means of observation do not affect what he sees.
When color and light in nature were no longer a fascinat
ing novelty to the artist with his modern searching mind, his
interest shifted to the study of 'pure form and color/ of 'the
new media and materials/ or of the artist's 'ego and his sub
conscious/ The results of such inquiry and research were
what he painted and carved. In whatever devious currents
post-impressionistic painting divided itself, art never again
reverted to the bygone innocence. Scientific aspiration per-
43
sisted. More especially, a scientific-sounding terminology,
loosely borrowed from various sciences, now seemed neces
sary to many artists and critics. Although they were not
scientists themselves, they depended on the language "of
science, almost as much as the medieval artists who were
no saints had depended on the language of their Christian
faith. Thus in the first quarter of the twentieth century, it
was, for instance, the psychoanalytic terminology that in
spired many artists and their public. Despite their enthu
siasm, both had often only a faint idea of what it was all
about.
As a young man I was befriended by Professor Freud's
sons and had the chance to observe on social visits in his
home that the great man himself was indifferent, if not hos
tile, to the then current expressionistic art, fraught with
'depth psychology/ Sigmund Freud was a connoisseur but
kept aloof from consciously revolutionary, controversial, and
programmatic novelties. They did not attract him as did
Cretan jewelry, Greek statuary, and Hellenistic painting.
Science, fascinating because it was beyond the layman's
grasp, or popularized with questionable accuracy, imprinted
itself on art manifestos, but often to the annoyance of the
scientist.
While the old romantic approach was being shunned for
a time by the artists, science itself consolidated its inductive
method and preferred operational concepts to the handy
package labeled 'eternal truth.' Even philosophy, as far as it
survived, began to be permeated by this matter-of-fact atti
tude. In America, pragmatism and behaviorism attracted
wide attention. Following James, Dewey and instrumen-
talism proclaimed that an idea was true if it worked.
If a thing had truth because it worked, it now also had
beauty because it functioned. A hundred years ago the
American sculptor Horatio Greenough declared that the
structural form created by man must follow function, just
as was the case for living organisms, according to the new
science of biology. Dr. Giedion has most interestingly re-
44
corded less well-known predecessors of these ideas among
French designers and writers.
An impressive literary precedent is Gottfried Semper's wise
and voluminous book The Style. Semper, a contemporary
of Greenough, practiced architecture in Dresden, Zurich,
and Vienna, and his writing was translated in part into Eng
lish by John Wellborn Root, the greatest architect of Chi
cago's 'pre-Columbian' period. Semper's programmatic state
ments: The solution of modern problems must be freely
developed from the premises given by modernity' and 'Any
technical product is the result of use and material/ were un
doubtedly known to Louis H. Sullivan and cherished by him.
But however radical the ideas of Gottfried Semper and his
French counterpart Viollet-le-Duc may have been, these men
never abandoned traditional formalism in practice.
It was Sullivan who in 1892 decided to house Pullman
cars and locomotives at the Chicago World's Fair in a Trans
portation Building of nontraditional form; and it was Otto
Wagner who, simultaneously, built two or three dozen sta
tions of the Vienna subway and elevated rapid transit lines
in the new style of the time. The same issue was dealt with
on similar terms by one man in Central Europe and another
far away in the Middle West of North America, where forty
railroad companies had begotten a metropolis which was
slowly to emerge from grimy chaos.
I know from my early and frustrated attempts to get Sul
livan's writings into print that publishers, only a generation
ago, failed to realize the revolutionary significance of Sul
livan and the interest his consistent 'Kindergarten Chats 7
would finally arouse. Perhaps he did not state in so many
words the relation between morphology, the science of or
ganic shapes, fabrics, and textures on the one hand, and
physiology, the discipline of life functions on the other. Yet
the very idea of this interdependence certainly permeated
his profound conversations which inspired and comforted
me. Greenough's articles of 1850 probably had remained un
known to Sullivan. At least I do not recall hearing him
mention these articles to me.
45
Assuredly, in every piece of constructed machinery (and
why not of building engineering, too?) form seemed to
follow function, and perfect functioning seemed to be a
criterion of perfect form. Beauty was due for a re-definition
by the engineer as well as by the biologist.
The rebirth of aesthetics on a 'scientific-naturalistic' basis
seemed to be at hand. A universal solution for all aesthetic
problems had all at once been proclaimed, a monopoly of
interpretation, and a rule of action seemed established: In
vestigate the functions of a proposed construction, give it
adequate functional form, and it will be a 'beautiful 7 form
whether or not it fits into our traditional scheme of shapes.
Design no longer had to comply with social convention;
rather, it was computable through a critical analysis of the
available materials and determining requirements. Design-
result could be almost automatic. This was a point of view
quite unfamiliar to Palladio and Vignola.
What Louis Sullivan, as a saddened and dying man, was
kind enough to tell me, a young tyro, about the changed
functions of today's building, as well as the need for devel
oping new and fitting formal solutions for them these were
ideas which reflected the general trend of thought of the
closing nineteenth century. He was the ingenious recipient
of the ideas of his time, destined to formulate these general
and fundamental beliefs in specific application to building
design.
Possibly in some former periods architects occasionally
played the part of pioneers and educators by introducing
original ideas of their own. But in the 1890'$, the geniuses
Wagner and Sullivan distinguished themselves mainly by
their relatively higher receptivity to already current thought.
Their great merit was to be far ahead of petty-mincled col
leagues and of their profession, which in general was arrested
in its development and impervious to the demands of
modern life.
Architecture was now expected to become a real and sig
nificant part of current existence instead of remaining the
archeological game into which it had degenerated. The
46
straggling architect had finally caught up with his time. An
integrated environment seemed really just around the corner.
But soon the very biased concept of 'utility' was rashly cou
pled and popularly confused with the much broader one of
function. This led to a distortion of Sullivan's thoughts and
paved the way for a reaction.
The ancient idea of Democritus and Lucretius that forms
of life developed by an automatic natural selection of suit
able elements (while the nonsuitable ones disappear in a
cosmic wastebasket) had had its celebrated comeback in the
biological philosophy of Darwin. By way of the short for
mula of the survival of the 'fittest' it had penetrated into the
socio-economic neighborhood of the designer. Pressure of
circumstance which molds a solution was now recognized
and honored.
Routine practice in architecture, which throughout the
the nineteenth century had not fully acknowledged techno
logical progress and indulged in eclectic play with shapely
morsels and tidbits from all by-gones and the nooks, islands,
and continents of the globe, was in need of a shake-up. The
shock came from the new evolutionist doctrine. It was now
a credo that everything truly alive at a particular time had
to be a fitting expression of contemporary needs and means.
To progressive minds in architecture, Greek columns and
other symbols of the mystically tinted statics of the past
were atavisms. Vestigial organs, such as the vermiform ap
pendix, no longer function and, therefore, it was reasoned,
must disappear. It was felt they should vanish by atrophy or
else be speedily cut out lest they cause trouble. At an earlier
stage of development, such organs might have been fine
and useful, but now they were being carried along as a point
less and even harmful burden turned toxic by disuse.
The question arose: Can such dead matter be at all
'beautiful? According to the newly formulated functional
definition of beauty, the answer was no.
Beyond doubt, these Greek columns had lost a good deal
of their prime appeal since they had been moved from
Sicily or from Cape Sunion which serenely looks over the
47
wine-colored Mediterraneanto LaSalle Street of the noisy
Chicago 'Loop' or Wall Street in Manhattan, crowded with
a quite different sort of life and looks. These columns now
served to camouflage a new technique foreign to them, and
often a whole pile of stories towered above their sorely be
fuddled epistyles. It all became an arbitrary collection of
senseless, accidental props, while originally these forms had
been revered as invented by gods to play a noble, exclusive
role in their system of structural symbolism.
Greek columns had perhaps been fluted to give them the
expression of resilient, strong members of fibrous organic
material, and they showed a pronounced swelling at the
lower part of their shaft to indicate something like a visible
capacity of elastic compression under load. They were care
fully 'proportioned' and enriched with symbolic accents, as
is the ritual dance that has come a long way from primitive
society.
But their careful proportions and symbolic accents did not
really fit these ancient paraphernalia into the dry logic of
an office building which stands or falls with its concealed
modern steel skeleton, whereas the Parthenon actually stood
and fell with its exposed truly supporting Doric columns.
Symbolism in structural members, aiming to dramatize
their static function, was probably in order at a time when
traditional faith and experience, all initiated by a god-teacher,
guided the construction crew. The glorified customary pro
portions of the load-bearing members were sufficient to con
vince the beholder that the structure was secure, which fact
could, after all, then only be guessed and suggested, not
mathematically computed. The symbolic detail reminded
him of mystical wisdom which, as a protective force, stood
behind it all.
However, symbols of strength were now deflated by exact
computations of strength which supplanted them. The La
Salle Street bank or office building was thoroughly 'figured'
by people with engineering degrees who ascertained the
structural capacities of framing members and their fabricated
connections. Other accredited engineers as representatives of
48
the public interest checked the computations, and only then
did the city building department pass on them. Nothing
here was aesthetically proportioned, but dimensions and
safety factors for every part were prescribed by regulations
and ordinances and chosen without any due mysticism.
Once a steel column was thus computed and dimensioned,
nobody could proportion it differently; common sense for
bade it and the law was strict. In consequence, the architect
divorced the rational .engineer and, all by himself, conceived
and gave birth as though by parthenogenesis to a dream
column, quite independent of the structural one. This latter
column was to be the beautiful one. Apart from the intrinsic
steel-skeleton, it was made of false, inflated masonry and
faced with conventionally fluted terra cotta. This symbol of
an ancient golden age still rises quite casually over the parked
cars of the uninitiated and the very uninterested.
The divorce of 'beauty' from 'utility' can only puzzle the
consumer. One must not be surprised that this supernu
merary beauty never deeply touched the souls of the people
in Cleveland or Buffalo. In such context, it would hardly
have touched anyone in Periclean Athens either. For a while
it really was enjoyed by the professionals. The man in the
street was merely impressed by the historical prestige of these
fagades and by the luxurious waste of a startling investment
in surplus make-up.
This superficial application of beauty, borrowed from the
past, turned into an elaborate curse. It was taught by an
erudite caste of intellectuals and carried out by humdrum
draftsmen, all of whom, as Sullivan felt, lacked confidence
in their own age and failed to appreciate its lively possibili
ties and vital needs.
Although these building designers were officially bound
and pledged to historical precedent, on many occasions they
indulged in a playful good time, rather like the Marx
brothers. They juggled all sorts of historical items and
amusingly divested them of any original meaning. Truly the
boys of the architectural fraternity were far from tragic or
historically serious. If it had not so often been stupid rou-
49
tine, it might have been downright fun to kick the Petit
Trianon on top of a twenty-three-story hotel and call it a
penthouse.
In the new camp, however, which professed the doctrine
of an inevitable development determined by environment,
there did reign a kind of almost tragic fatalism. The amusing
game of making an arbitrary patchwork quilt was superseded
by the grave pursuit of integration.
In the eighteenth century, Herder, young Goethe's ad
mired older friend, advanced the theory that the character
of the songs or literature of a given people is determined by
the living environment. It was another hundred years before
men consciously found architecture, too, was part of their
environmental destiny. Sullivan detested the flood of archi
tectural old-world imports as a tedious hangover from which
American design was to be freed, and posed the question:
Does not life itself discard its past forms?
The wide, uninterrupted span of necessity with its tragic
flavor was dear to Louis Sullivan. Despite his essential opti
mism he was fascinated by this same tragic and continuous
wide span in the modern music of his beloved Richard
Wagner, which had overshadowed the easy coloratura tricks
and carefree compilations of a Rossini or Donizetti. No
longer were borrowings to be made from old bel canto, be
cause its charms, whether in music or in architecture, simply
could not be borrowed without badly fading out.
But Sullivan had additional good reasons for opposing the
adaptation of old forms. These forms had been inaugurated
in the architecture of priestly castes, absolute sovereigns, and
feudal aristocracies. The America of the railroad age was very
different from the diminutive Greek democracies, half slave,
with their very limited class of free full-fledged consumers.
Modern life and production were, on the contrary, deter
mined by the machine and based on a mass consumership.
Sullivan was the first architect to see American masses, as
Walt Whitman had seen them, a grand, far-flung nation of
American men and women. In actual fact, however, modern
50
industry and its consumership were broadening to interna
tional dimensions, more international than the Roman Em
pire or anything that had ever existed.
Once upon a time, the material specifications had been
short and simple. For the Parthenon they were marble, quar
ried in the neighborhood. This was the only material em
ployed from flooring to roofing. Now, the material specifica
tions, not only of a huge monument but even of a little road
side service station could easily fill a heavy tome if they
were to be pounded out on a typewriter. There are fire-
enameled sheet metal and glazing and structural steel, con
duits, wires, pipes, plumbing installations, sash, roofing,
plated hardware, and what-have-you. Countless finished prod
ucts of complex industries which are located in many sections
of the country -of the globe make up the 'raw materials'
of even the smallest building.
The glorious 'unity of material' was a thing of the past.
The 'raw materials' were no longer raw, but themselves end
products of long drawn-out and widely scattered manufac
turing processes. The new builder and designer quarried his
material from Sweets, the great annual building material
catalogue. And Sweets began to stand on shelves in Mexico
City, Shanghai, Melbourne, and Johannesburg. The quarry
was anything but local. Just as cars were shipped from De
troit to all points of the compass, so structural steel and
sacks of cement found their way from a low-wage industrial
country like Belgium to distant Singapore and Rio. American
fixtures filtered into many regions of the planet. The build
ing market had become cosmopolitan.
Materials and building supplies, traveling around the
earth, were purchased from agents and distributors who
knew little about the qualities, composition, or manufactur
ing processes of their merchandise. Nevertheless, the so-called
quality specification still lingered on in now empty phrases
such as 'good workmanship and material.' Brunelleschi may
have well used this language in fifteenth-century Florence to
admonish the dependable craftsmen who built his Segrestia
Vecchia. Now it became more sensible to say: 'Everything
51
according to the standards of the American Society for Test
ing Materials/
Today, apart from specialists, nobody in the building trade
knows much about how billet steel is best made, or what its
qualities are. Most material and supply items are innocently
purchased over the telephone. Common knowledge of ma
terials in the old sense is gone. Such knowledge has become
far too involved to be accessible to the ordinary consumer,
or even to his building attorney, the architect. This unavoid
able ignorance dims the value of pronouncements on sheer
quality.
Also in neighboring fields, quality specifications have been
replaced by performance specifications, that is, by a descrip
tion of the performance capacity and operational objective.
These are the criteria according to which a turbo-generator,
or a sewage-disposal plant, is actually purchased. Similarly,
the buyer of an automobile seldom knows what is inside
the engine housing, nor does he hire an expert to find it out.
He may come to the showroom for the gloriously advertised
style, but what he wants to know or asks about, besides the
retail price, is the mileage per gallon of gas and the endur
ance record of a particular make. And he wants to venture
a reasonable guess about when the major repair bills will
begin pouring in on him. What is actually given him or
what he asks for from the supplier's agent is a performance
guarantee. All the incidental talk about quality in itself
seems now to be recognized, at least by the enlightened
buyer, as vague and unverifiable sales talk.
Qualities can be explained only by a craftsman, not by a
salesman; but performance can be guaranteed to the con
sumer by the manufacturer or his distributor. Thus the func
tional concept, the pragmatic concept of commercial values,
gradually came into beingand the more mystical concept
of quality faded away because it was too nebulous to offer
security.
Industrial technology had begun to flavor all concepts,
from security to beauty.
52
QUALITY ONCE WAS RARITY in an industrial
ized age, however, quality is no longer aris
tocratic, and 'Beauty' is now on two fronts
in battle: with the monster of monotony, and
all the novelties of salesmanship.
7
The earlier consumer of handicraft
products an average man buying, say, a piece of cloth in
sixteenth-century Nuremberg had, through long ages of un
changing production methods, developed acquaintance with
the properties of the few established kinds of consumers'
goods. But at the time when Mark Twain engaged in his
humorous description of the period following the Civil War,
he found a great American topic to joke about. Machine
technology spent its youth in a wild jungle of 'bluff/ Mental
balance was impaired. Advertising was perfected to flood the
defenseless public and trap it into useless purchases.
An earlier standardization had broken down. It needed to
be re-established in order to restore security to civilized life.
By bitter experience the consumer of our civilization learned
that he had no means of judging alleged qualities; he could
judge performance only.
If 'beauty' did not clearly follow function, Value' certainly
seemed to follow it. Fascinating manufacturing processes
might be extolled in sales talk to buyers, but who could un
derstand them all? Only users could assess true value.
53
Fraudulent publicity had been so interlocked with the
business that first sprouted from machine production that
the machine itself was branded by some writers as a curse.
It threatened to obliterate fine qualities in human beings as
well as in their products. The retrospective kind of roman
ticists warned that the end of the world was at hand and
advised return to the good old crafts. A hundred years ago,
Ruskin, a man of lofty intellect, traveled all over England
in a stagecoach, which he dug up from some old barn or
museum, in order to demonstrate against the quaint steam
locomotives of his time, which he hated and despised. The
threat of mechanization is still very much with us, but our
urgent hope of countering it has undergone changes. 1
At any rate, the good old qualities could not be preserved,
still less arbitrarily revived. The machine age called for the
creation of a new sort of life and a new type of quality. They
were being created while much else was undoubtedly being
lost.
In periods of the past, the excellence of a product was
closely associated with its singularity or even uniqueness, like
some silken handkerchief or lacquer piece, especially worked
by an outstanding craftsman for the Chinese emperor. But
now the axiom 'Quality equals Rarity' became meaningless.
Some of the new quality goods, such as electric bulbs, devel
oped a tendency to migrate to the shelves of dime stores, thus
demonstrating that despite their excellence they were any
thing but unique. On the contrary, they were so 'excellent'
that almost unlimited quantities of them could be easily sold
every day. Needless to say, the term 'excellence' no longer
had the old connotation of uniqueness when applied to prod
ucts that proudly displayed their brand and standard. But
standardization must not be lamented as vulgarization. Mass
distribution is simply the essential prerequisite of continuous
improvement toward a machine-made perfection. The refine
ment of the post-aristocratic quality type is completed only
1 Cf. Lewis Mumford, Technics and Civilization, Harcourt, Brace &
Co., 1934. Siegfried Giedion, Mechanization Takes Command, Oxford
University Press, Inc., 1948.
54
when commodities, tested through performance, can be pro
duced in mass because they are sold at a nominal price.
The electric bulb, its uses and appearance, would have
been marveled at by the ancient connoisseurs of Chinese silk
and lacquer. Its metal filament has qualities of fineness far
beyond the comprehension of any educated layman. It was
developed in hundreds of laboratories, and it contributed to
the emergence of a new science, colloidal chemistry; it was
perfected by the tremendous apparatus of intricate research,
through thousands of resourceful and highly trained brains.
The production of such articles, the indispensable machinery
and equipment, requires a preliminary investment which
could not possibly be made by a single individual, whatever
his financial status. The purchasing power of modern masses
tops that of the Chinese emperor. It is the potential and
the actual market of a-billion-a-day users of electric bulbs
that brought into existence this new type of quality, a quality
difficult to understand in itself, but easily appreciated in a
standard performance.
Standardization and a functional concept of what a thing
is or rather how it ought to perform are unavoidable in an
industrialized world. They alone have proved that such a
world, no matter what its drawbacks, must not perish in
fakery and confusion, and in the obliteration of quality
per se.
In the half-industrial and half-handicrafts methods of
today's petty building business half free of sweaty chores
and half slave to them there is still reflected a good deal
of that initial insecurity which earlier characterized, in gen
eral, incipient industrialization, with all its deficiencies.
Many who have trusted in twenty subcontractors to build
their home shudder at the memory.
It was the organized quantity buyer, not the retail con
sumer, who first awakened to the new requirements. He was
anxious to put an end to insecurity, accident, and fraud
and soon proved himself capable of imposing rules. First,
the great American railway companies in the 'seventies of
the last century, and later the United States government,
55
purchasing per annum values up to several hundred million
dollars, staggering at that time, showed organized initiative.
They laid down standard specifications, always focusing their
interest on performance. The triumphs of transportation and
even of armament pale beside this greater victory over con
sumers* insecurity, which was incidentally brought about.
Even before the First World War, American research work,
aiming at industrial standardization, low-cost production,
and increased security of the purchaser, may have amounted
to eight or nine millions yearly, and probably to very much
more if all unofficial efforts are taken into account.
And yet, when the idea emerged to evolve creative stand
ards for such an important branch of human activity as
housing ninety per cent of the populationan activity in
which, on an industrialized basis, billions of dollars could
and should be soundly invested sentimentalists raised the
cry of 'Danger/ They blithely overlooked other, more immi
nent and real threats to social security. Design resisted the
trend to standardization in the name of so-called Individ
ualism, But the individual interpretations of architectural
beauty, which are assembled along the streets of Hollywood
and elsewhere, the curious jumble of French chateau, Eng
lish half-timbered Tudor, Spanish, Moorish, Mediterranean
homes, apartments, and bungalow courts, were not built ac
cording to individual background or the respective historical
standards of craftsmanship. These were merely mimicked;
a common flimsiness was genuinely of our own speculative
age. What modern industry contributed was hastily milled,
second-grade, shrinking, and warping lumber, and black
paper and chicken wire to cover the roughly nailed car
pentry frame and serve as the base for a thin coat of crack
ing stucco. Cracks seemed only to add to the charm of this
quick-turnover traditional architecture, which aspires to look
venerably antique.
Galloping depreciation and what may be called 'obsoles
cence praecox' kept this type of enterprising construction in
ever-new demand. The advocates of variety at any price (even
the lowest) failed to see the ugly waste. If they criticized it
56
at all, their censuring was mild compared with their denun
ciations of the dreadful monotony that would result from
industrial standardization in architecture.
They contended that the American suburban develop
ments, those gems of variety, would simply perish in a deluge
of uniformity. They prophesied that 'beauty' would not sur
vive industrial uniformity of structural elements and sys
tems. The home catalogues of mail-order firms showed more
models and variable trimmings than the company could
handle economically; and sales correspondence was carried
on in plain envelopes, lest the purchaser be found out by
his neighbors and taunted for acquiring a house that was
not individually built. But would such have meant a specific
fit?
Even wholesale housing projects were doctored up to
achieve a spurious individualistic variety. This was achieved
not by means of a truly sensitive site plan, a 'human' group
ing of homes, and creative landscaping, but simply by super
ficial architectural recitations of one kind or other. There
was general fear that uniformity might spread over the globe
and destroy the joy of living. At any price, the monster
monotony was to be kept at bay, even by far-fetched means.
This writer has traveled extensively and owns a collection
of photographs of remote villages in Europe and Asia, from
Kwangtung, Southern China, to Wallis, southern Switzer
land, and the Carpathian Mountains in Slovakia. The ap
pearance of each of these places is most often one of a
natural uniformity, and not of a wild variety of production
methods. Identical roofing material in a given region natu
rally calls for an identical roof slope. Modes of fenestration,
sash, door, and wall construction within one locality are
almost exactly the same all the way through. A standard
which the villagers know is most in keeping with their re
quirements and tools is bound to imprint harmony upon the
total picture. All the dwellings are oriented in the same
direction, because the sun is known to rise for everyone on
the; same side of the valley, and everyone is anxious to get
57
the same kind of exposure, because it has been found to be
the most suitable.
The Swiss village has the same repetitive sort of charm
seen in the fir woods on the hills behind. Each tree there
looks like its neighbors because they all root in the same
soil, receive the same radiation from the sun during its daily
and yearly course, bear the same snow-loads, and resist the
same winds from identical directions.
Countless tourists have spent millions of dollars to enjoy
seeing such restful and appealing uniformity, without ever
thinking of monotony. Recurrence, unity of elements, and
consistency really make for harmony.
Across the Pacific, on the islands of Japan, an entire na
tion has been living in minutely standardized dwellings for
a thousand years. It is a kind of mass standardization of
housing far beyond anything ever attempted or conceived in
the industrialized age. Japanese towns have been the delight
of crowds of American visitors, yet these towns consist of
houses, and the houses of rooms, which are all strictly dimen
sioned according to a basic area standard, the Japanese floor
mat of three by six feet. Neatly joined together, these mats
fully cover the floor of each room, which is thus a multiple
of the standard measure. Millions of houses are the neat
aggregates of such basic rooms, and there is not even a strong
difference between urban and rural districts so pronounced
in Europe. All sliding partition panels of exterior and in
terior enclosures are three feet wide. They line up with the
floor mats, and so do the Tansu or drawers in which are
stored the folded and pressed kimonos made of cloth which,
throughout the realm, is woven on looms, again three feet
wide. Thus, the cloth the Japanese wear and the storage
drawers for this cloth have established the basic dimensions
for rooms and building craft.
Such a standardization of the dimensions of sliding doors
and partitions, of built-in drawer sets, of roof construction,
balcony railings, and wooden bathtubs enabled the planner-
builder-carpenter to sketch his layout in the simplest way.
Standards settle structural details, and they give shape to
58
living. All activities are subtly and organically integrated
with the shell in which they are housed and the stage on
which they play. This is equally true of the stationary, noise
less Japanese dance on padded floors, and the chirping, short-
range music and songs which, within an enclosure of light
non-resonant partitions of paper stretched to dull tension,
require no reverberation. Just as the plan and the building
standards fit this form of dancing and music, so does the
typical Tokonoma, the visual 'joy-niche' of the living room,
accommodate a tenderly brushed roll picture which hangs
neatly in dominant isolation behind a vase with a plum twig.
Everything is typical, from the focal distance and light suit
able for the scale and painting technique of the picture, to
the arrangement of the knick-knacks and the flowering
branch. The buildings are designed to serve this refined
ritual of life.
Naturally, when conditions change, cultural standards be
come inadequate and break down. Men who must run up
and down the stairways of elevated railways in metropolitan
Tokyo or pedal bicycles, or step on the gas throttles of little
cars get into the habit of wearing close-fitting leather shoes
and European clothes, less dainty than the old Japanese
garb. Thus the flooring of their houses must no longer be
mats designed for feet in padded socks; Western clothes must
be hung in closets, not laid in drawers; doors swing on hinges
and are no longer simple sliding panels, independent of our
complex hardware. Heavy pianos are carried in and placed
on a shaking floor, now too lightly constructed. The foreign-
trained player sits down on a stool, high for a Japanese and
unknown to tradition, and raises a tender ceiling with the
crashing chords of Liszt and Rachmaninoff. He bursts like
a bull into the china shop. To avoid a public nuisance, in
sulation becomes necessary, and reverberating walls are re
quired for a desired brilliance of acoustics which the Japa
nese instruments could ignore.
Bathtubs and walls are made now from materials other
than wood, and their surfaces must be glazed to keep in
step with imported ideas of sanitation. The old carpenter-
59
builder is puzzled by it all and loses face; he is crowded out
by a dozen subcontractors of specialty trades. Ancient unity
yields to a bewildering variety. New standards and newly
adjusted judgment seem, for a while, merely a vague promise
of the future.
This East Asiatic example deals with only one of many
civilizations similarly consistent in all its elements and simi
larly disintegrating when these elements begin to disappear.
Design is closely linked with the survival of over-all social
patterns.
Regional uniformity in planning the vast majority of
human dwellings existed all over the globe before the rising
pressure of importation made itself felt. It was a uniformity
that served human beings long before modern industry, un
curbed by distance and the limitations of local supply, rushed
in, disturbed men's minds, and made possible such things
as artificial slate, tile, thatched, metal, and paper roofs, all
on one and the same street.
Expanding industry and building activity have not created
uniformity; on the contrary, they have tended to destroy a
wholesome measure of uniformity which had existed earlier.
A restoration of things in common, so profoundly needed
for .mental comfort because of better human grasp and
'in-feeling/ will obviously require much effort and cost a
high price. Nevertheless, it is a humane program. The natural
objective for neighbors is frankly to admit common denomi
nators instead of being victimized by a variety, often intro
duced by mere salesmanship.
When Marco Polo, who had grown up in medieval Venice,
first walked through Canton in Southern China, he certainly
must have found it very different from his home town. But
after all, both places were built and equipped according to
the principles of handicraft which then were essentially
similar all over the globe. There is no such consistency to
connect the half-timbered barn, designed and nailed together
as the garage of an American's 'English cottage/ and that
other pride of his, the newest model automobile housed in
60
that barn. Here is merely a weird juxtaposition grown into
a senseless habit. The car, the highly polished end product
of an intensive and extensive industrial production process,
is much more of a stranger in its own barn-garage than the
Venetian Polo was in Chinese Canton.
Lost unity must be restored. Can it possibly be done now
on another basis than that of machine production, 'which
nobody really considers avoidable, or would personally wish
to do without?
Human life, actually a function of human nervous sys
tems, cannot remain split. It cannot survive astride a demar
cation line which separates the qualities of a new production
reality from a crude and flimsy, imitative, and far-fetched
stage setting. Dignity or warmth cannot be borrowed from
a fictitious 'past/ More and more eyes were beginning to see
the ridiculous incongruity of driving this car into that
garage. Reversions to counterfeit innocence cannot last.
Faked infantilism too often ends in an infantile fake.
If an adult uses or pretends to use baby talk, we cannot
very well feel for him the warm tenderness we have for chil
dren. If he crawls on the floor, he is awkward to look at, he
is no longer charming like a baby. We might like an old
English barn, but we do not really enjoy seeing it aped by
a two-car garage on Floral Heights.
If the community was to regain mental comfort, 'beauty 7
would have to be based, as it was in some of the most signifi
cant periods of the past, upon the broad acceptance of stand
ards of its own mental and technical age, fully harmonized.
Common practices, and ever-recurrent types, are character
istic by no means only of an industrialized age.
Twenty-odd huge temples were built in a standardized
style on the Acropolis of a Sicilian town, and extensive colon
nades, repeating identical forms, accompanied the main high
ways leading to Syrian Palmyra and many other Hellenistic
cities in quite different sections of the, Old World. Over and
over again the same typical, tested, and acknowledged pat
terns were repeated. In the course of years people had learned
something about columns and about the 'classical orders/
61
Persistent repetition and gradual improvements had refined
not only the product but also the layman's and consumer's
capacity to discriminate.
Hectically changing fashions are indigenous to and perhaps
justified in the ladies'-apparel business, with new models
coming out every spring and fall. In building, where long
amortization periods are of the essence, such fashionable
changes first bewilder the consumer and eventually repel
him, make him sick and tired of it all. Hardly has he had
time to read up on Norman, Colonial, and Tudor, when
Mediterranean, French chateau, and modernistic became the
vogue to his greater confusion. He well knows he 'cannot
judge these things'; he has no basis on which to found his
judgment. In the end, kaleidoscopic novelty itself becomes
the standard.
To combat this nuisance, 'architectural control' was
adopted in some quarters as the battle cry of the enlight
ened land subdivider. What it often, amounted to was
merely to save buyers the trouble of worrying themselves
about the props that do or do not fit into a given mas
querade party.
But other masquerades were going on simultaneously and
competitively, and no integrated style could be achieved by
such impositions. If all the people cannot be fooled all the
time, there is also no single kind of fooling and masquerad
ing that will do for everybody in the long run. Finally a
few scattered reformers, opposed to shifting real-estate fash
ions, held out a hope for a return to sincerity Which would
yield a sound, consistent whole. Individuality is at last sur
mised to be not a matter of superficialities but the outcome
of profound physiological traits that are not honored by just
random diversity.
62
Only with STANDARDS AS ANCHOR could the
typhoon of insecurity be weathered when
industrialism broke loose over the world.
Earlier, eternity had been cherished, and it
called for quite different standards than does
a calculated period of amortization.
8
In our discussion of standards we have
pointed out some of their mental and physical benefits for
the consumer but the producers are interested as well. A
wise standardization reduces production problems and the
number of individual 'set-ups' and operations. Speed in
training of personnel will also save costs and worry.
At least until the competitor has caught up, standards
mean a larger margin of profit; and later, when installations
and specific tools have been amortized and thus are available
without additional expense, further financial benefits will
accrue. Distributors, for their part, welcome the reduction of
the number of items to be stocked and the fact that they
need handle only a few 'lines/ In the long run, however,
standards cannot be successfully dictated by sellers, distribu
tors, or producers. Nor can they, in a society like ours, be as
static as in a tradition-bound tribe. Today, standards must
be sensitively tuned to the times, by never-tiring, systematic
awareness of requirement. The socio-economic aspects and
implications of each technical feature and, above all, ever
63
better biological fitness of design are worth studying before
mass production is warranted. Standards must not be per
mitted to degenerate into reflecting only the vested interests
of a minority, such as the producers.
During the early phases of manufacture aided by machines,
the idea of common standards advanced slowly. The strange
logic of competition lured each producer to adopt his own
special and monopolistic measurements, sizes, and often
bogus systems of grading. All of this befuddled the buyer.
America, after industrialism in its primitive, "paleotechnic 7
form had taken root, first went through her anarchic period
of insecurity and fraudulence; but she had the good fortune
to discover effective remedies at a relatively early date. The
vast national market favored the growth of quantity produc
tion methods, and the development of uniform technological
qualities. Because industry could draw on a continent-wide
purchasing power, the United States seemed predestined to
play a leading part in the industrial realization of a new envi
ronment. A quarter of a century ago, this writer predicted
an American bumper crop in contemporary building design,
although little had been done at the time to justify his opti
mism. But his thesis that design of and in our day will wax,
feeding on a broad subsidiary industrial output, is now well
borne out.
Creative concepts are always essentially operational and
they are stimulated by specific materials at hand. The best
ideas on timber construction would have been of little use
in treeless Babylonia; consequently, we may well assume that
no Babylonian ever had them. There were no forests in the
Euphrates valley, and that is why nobody there even dreamed
of log cabins or frame structures.
In our century, the so-called raw materials for building are
actually industrial end products. They are rarely supplied
from near-by natural sources, but are accessible thanks to a
far-flung transportation system. Today cargo and freight
tariffs aid or hinder design, and the economic geography of
transportation influences our imagination to create things in
this or that region.
64
We have seen that the annual advertising catalogue of
America's vast building material and supply industry inspires
the contemporary designers just as stone quarries inspired
the neolithic Indians of Peru, or the presence of timber
stands the carpenters in the Carpathian Mountains. But the
most 'naturally' stimulated development can be strangely
stunted. The human brain functions under certain compul
sions. Designers follow patterns of the past even in contra
diction to facts in hand, and their prejudices are usually
encouraged by vested interests and already acquired long-
practiced skills. These may or may not aid living. They may
make progress irrational. Lydian and ancient Greek builders,
compelled by this mental mechanism variously described as
sentimental association or sacred inertia continued a timber
tradition while shaping structural members of stone, which
had replaced their earlier building material. According to
Pausanias, the Baedeker of the classical world, the original
wooden columns of the venerable shrine at Olympia one by
one were replaced by stone columns; but these, and even the
later Hellenic temples, while actually built of stone, were
still formally conceived in wood.
The same property of the human mind may drive us to
make a steel-built home or the concrete university buildings
in New Mexico appear like so much piled-up adobe. As we
shall discuss later, there is distinct comfort for the human
nerves in following habits. Our creative effort is adulterated
by the comfort of adopting the habits of others and reviving
traditions, and by codifying habits into laws, sacred or
secular. We have mentioned the incident of a speculative
real-estate subdivider who, once having invested in a par
ticular brand of aesthetics, tries to cut his worries. He insti
tutes some sort of 'Architectural Tract Restrictions' in order
to freeze design and arrest development to rigid unity and
powerful permanence.
Still there are stronger forces than those of a tract deed
which enforces by whim the perpetuation of some structural
infantilism. An 'adult' steel-built house may prove very eco
nomical and practical because it holds in store less damp-
65
ness and rheumatism. It cannot so easily be rejected even
though it does not happen to look like an early Californian
adobe ranch. Restriction of a stylistic kind might in fact
cause land sales and values to fall off. Tracts thus restricted
may later collapse commercially unless property owners
awaken and band together in revolt to lift the restrictive
covenant that makes them early Californians or Cape Cod
fishermen.
While even laymen readily understand that, basically, con
struction must govern appearance, there is reasonable doubt
that steel-built houses would sell well from the start if they
actually looked like what .they are.
Acceptance is a measure of the consumer's neuromental
adaptation. When all is said and done, brain physiology will
have to interpret all such sociological effects and phenomena.
A process of learning, of transformation of habit, is required
on the part of the user. However imperfectly at first, nervous
adaptation will eventually follow suit to meet practical con
ditions, if they are biologically feasible.
The floor plan and the external appearance of a steel house
might be restricted to a type of regularity greater than is
customary in order to simplify shop preparation and fabrica
tion at a distance. If these rigid rules are cumbersome, there
are compensations. A slender steel frame permits liberal
openings into the outdoors, while a bearing masonry or
adobe wall does not lend itself safely to more than a few
minor windows. Yet because such features are in conspicuous
contrast to custom, they call into play a 'defensive reaction';
the prospective buyer tends to oppose them. In order to
cushion the shock, the seller resorts to cover-up and mimicry,
and his half-measures are often very unfortunate. 'Appear
ance' is composed of direct sensory stimulation plus an im
portant package of diversified mental associations elicited in
the beholder.
The picturesque, irregular grouping of the building bodies,
the sloping roofs, the haphazard fenestration which seem to
make for the charm of some old types are incompatible with
the new system of construction; they cause unnecessary
66
trouble, which is expressed in excess costs to the builder and,
in turn, to the consumer. The industrial trend has naturally
been toward increased work in the shop and decreased work
in the field. What once may have been a pleasing agglomera
tion of accidental irregularities, harmless because they were
naturally and easily taken care of by the men right on the
job, turns into an artificial, undue complication where every
bolt hole is punched in advance according to blueprinted
details. When an imitation of carefree rusticity is offered
under the greatly changed procedure of a precisely scheduled
and machine-tooled production, everything becomes involved
and costly.
Above all, it becomes ridiculously false. Every type of
construction, whether ancient or recent, has its inherent
mode of handling. The technique modifies the problem and
fits the solution to available means. Penalties of many kinds
must be paid as soon as one deviates from this rule.
A construction in adobe, for example, not supplemented
by wood will naturally produce large wall areas and heavy
wall cross sections because this material has little strength in
compression, shearing, and bending. If wood or other struc
turally superior materials are added to strengthen an adobe
wall that has been weakened by window perforations, joints
between the disparate materials will often open as a result
of unequal shrinkage, and the precarious plaster coating will
crack. If the designer disregards the innate possibilities of
a structural type, he produces one lacking in homogeneity
and exposed to rapid disintegration.
The Pueblo Indians did not mistreat their adobe dwelling
construction, or force it to a performance beyond its natural
range. They contented themselves with air and light through
the door alone; window openings difficult to span were few,
narrow, or nonexistent. The primitive builder, ignorantly or
wisely, dodged many of our troublesome details.
But the primitives enjoyed still other advantages. Each
spring, on a certain moon-determined date, their squaws per
formed the ritual of adobe repairs. Such repairs, befitting the
material, were fully anticipated. Maintenance had no accent
67
of nuisance to neolithics, nor were they staggered by water
proofing bills. Fixing up the pueblo was a festival like spring
sowing. Periodic maintenance was a revered ritual.
To us, recurrent repair costs are a damnable item in our
running budget. We feel and know that the remedies for
leaks in enclosures, plumbing, and what not, are annoyingly
expensive in a commercial order of things. We are in no
festive mood to give honor to the godly forces of nature
when water seeps through our basement wall, the linoleum
and wallpaper peel off, the windows stick, and the exterior
door butts corrode. Our attitude toward maintenance has
changed since ancient rituals and economics have both
passed on, one linked to the other.
In short, the aesthetic potentialities of design at a certain
historical moment are not vague abstractions that can be
easily borrowed and manipulated at will. The satisfactions
possible from designed environment are profoundly depend
ent on the structural means just then available and on their
economic and psychological implications, all of which are
inseparable.
The antique metropolis of Babylon, according to Herod
otus, was spread out thinly. A huge and very populous place,
it covered an area almost as large as that of New York City,
about 300 square miles, but communication must have been
even more cumbersome, without subways, crosstown buses,
and taxicabs. In that Mesopotamian mass of public and pri
vate structures, there was scarcely an interior as large as a
moderately sized living room of today. Ten feet of ceiling
span was an engineering feat in Babylon. And even consid
erably later, the palace of the mighty Sargon in Khorsabad,
a colossal group of structures, had only three open spaces in
a labyrinth of corridor-like rooms and narrow interstices be
tween very heavy walls. The open spaces were courts. If a
spacious room was needed, an unroofed court, perhaps cov
ered by an awning at certain hours, was the only answer
within the limited structural possibility of that period.
It is obvious that a great civilization like that of Mesopo-
68
tamia, excelling in agriculture, hydraulic engineering, astron
omy, arts, law, and literature, must have been essentially
affected, as regards social life, by this significant absence or
scarcity of even moderately spacious and naturally lighted
interiors. Interiors made spacious by means of trusses, girders,
joists, or steel-reinforced concrete slabs, with an array of ceil
ing constructions ready to take formidable bending stresses-
all this has modified our daily life. Structural technique has
a deep influence on human behavior and social patterns.
Because crude clay cannot withstand the attacks of the cli
mate, and because it offers extensive unbroken wall areas to
these attacks, the Babylonian architects must have searched
for a durable skin to cover their royal structures. The prob
lems of surfacing and, incidentally, of surface decoration
were solved by burnt and glazed tile.
A development like this makes for a significant progress
in attitude. There is mental comfort in permanence. Un
doubtedly, all human beings harbor an ideal of it. But while
a primitive people, such as the Pueblo Indians, express this
aspiration in a recurrent ritual of rebirth, which is more dra
matic than piecemeal, current upkeep, advancing civiliza
tions generally tend to build durable structures that do not
require periodic maintenance. The aim is to secure godlike
eternity to initial form and color concept.
Yet the mythology of permanence is manifold. Minds
must be differently conditioned to restore buildings every
spring or every generation, or to follow an even more in
volved scheme, as is the case with the thousand-year-old
double Shinto temple of Ise, built in wood, of which one or
the other twin is always under complete and minute recon
struction as a matter of ritual.
Man, the householder, is constantly in quest of freedom
from chores. Nervous energy freed from the task of per
petually rebuilding the stage of the physical environment is
made available to enact the drama itself, the multiform
drama of a civilized society. Thus permanence without main
tenance becomes the ideal or perhaps the illusion. At any
69
rate, in one form or other, it is deeply related to a general
nervous satisfaction and also to a specific aesthetic gratifica
tion.
In Egypt, common domestic architecture must have been
crude and temporary, like that of Babylon, or like the mud
huts of the present-day Fellahin. But when monumental
structures were built for the dead and the immortal gods,
higher sites were chosen, outside the fertile area of periodic
inundation where daily living took place. And up there, the
gods and the dead were entitled to permanent building ma
terials of their own limestone, basalt, porphyry. Unlike
Iraq, Egypt had rock formations that supplied these hard
materials, some of them more enduring than the Mesopo-
tamian glazed artifacts. While the bulk of our architectural
expression today concerns the living, in Egypt the realm of
obsolescence (which is that of life) was evidently not con
sidered worthy of gerat effort and of such permanent build
ing material as could be quarried on the rock banks along
the Nile valley. Eternity without maintenance was here the
aspiration.
Thus the most precise stone cutting and stone masonry
of all time served the static, mummified dead and the deities.
Those gigantic ashlars and column drums would not have
been cut and moved and lifted with such persistent pooling
and forcing of labor if the buildings had been planned only
for use by mere living men who are short-lived at that.
Since the occupants were undying gods and preserved dead,
their housing had to be made to last over millenniums; the
intended amortization period was eternity itself. And the
sweat, blood, and misery wrought into these sacrificial build
ings added essentially to their mystical value. Design served
survival after life. Pictures of monuments reflecting this men
tality occupy a prominent place in our illustrated textbooks.
For many years they have been before the eager eyes of ap
prentices in building design and still continue to influence
the popular concept of architecture.
Today it would be possible to build the Cheops Pyramid
by means of electric derricks and other labor-saving ma-
70
chinery within a scheduled time. But such a structure would
be meaningless, utterly lacking the original halo of sacrifice
and the flavor of superhuman exertion. Building for the
eternal must be done under a supreme stress of all capacities
and even under a painful sacrificial overstress.
Yet ambition for literal permanence becomes anomalous
at a further stage of social and mental development. The
will to construct a static environment for eternity may origi
nally derive from a basic nervous urge to avoid continual
readjustment to new stimuli. But static peace, slipping out
of the chain of ever-new events into a life of stable 'facts/
is an ideal we cannot possibly entertain. To our science, in
terrelated events in time compose the universe. The Hera-
clitean view of 'everything in flux* has again become true,
and design is acclimatized to this mood. Our environmental
structure is acknowledged to be transitional, and our build
ings are built for anticipated finite periods of duration or
deterioration. Sacrifice is no longer sought for any magic
attempt to overpower eternity, which to us means not a few
thousand years but more than billions. This ambitious at
tempt, always futile, has finally been abandoned in realistic
resignation.
We now like to see temporal building for masses of the
living. Any new monumentality is concerned with the pul
sating life of the community. And we want to build with
less and less perspiration; we can do it more easily, more
comfortably. Passers-by enjoy seeing a 6o-ton built-up girder,
ten feet deep and fifty feet long, blithely hoisted to the sixth-
floor banquet hall ceiling of a hotel under construction. It
is done in a matter-of-fact manner by the combined action
of cleverly placed, slender derricks. A few qualified workmen
turn levers with their gloved hands and up goes the colossus.
It tickles loafing sidewalk superintendents to watch the huge
letters of the fabricator's sign on the rising girder's web grow
smaller and smaller.
No slaves are lashed; there is no sweat, no bloodshed. All
is ease instead. Is the satisfaction gained from such a proce
dure and from avoiding those more gloomy concomitants of
71
ancient construction in an essential relationship with the
aesthetics of the finished product? If aesthetic satisfaction is
a matter of brains and nerves, the finished product and its
mode of production perceived or remembered are closely
linked. Must not design for a wise gratification and as a true
aid to life recognize this powerful dependence? The method
of creating a thing colors its value for us. 'Beauty* is not an
absolute static, and standing alone. Our minds and nerves
intimately relate it to the living dynamics of producing and
consuming.
72
While 'BEAUTY' is PROCLAIMED TIMELESS,
RELEGATED TO AN OCCASIONAL PEDESTAL,
AND THERE HONORABLY MAROONED,
tion is liable to turn into blight.
9
If a hotel is built with the help of
lahor-saving devices, the resulting economy will, of course,
be reflected in the price charged for a room. But financial
considerations cannot fully account for the satisfaction of
watching such devices in operation, A similar economy could
be achieved by the use of cheap labor and backbreaking
working methods, such as were customary, for instance, in
colonial metropolises like Shanghai.
Mere financial considerations are beside the point in ques
tion. The way a thing is produced seems to matter a great
deal in our evaluation of the result, even though we our
selves may not be the exploited slaves, or foot the bill. But
in its psychological effect upon us or in its aesthetic appeal
the ultimate product is not independent of an implicit inter
pretation of the processes that brought it about.
As to pure form, there is great similarity between the
scroll of an Ionic column, carved in limestone, and the spiral
of a thin steel spring which, because of its material charac
teristics, perfectly and speedily rolls up by itself. The two
spiralic lines may be equal, but the formative process auto-
73
matically contributes different psychological accents to each
of these products, and the distinction is felt by the beholder.
Aesthetic gratification, seemingly concerned with form in
space only, deals with implications of development in time,
unless this form is lifted out of practical context for the sake
of simplified theory.
We seern physiologically made to see things always in a
genetic time perspective. Moreover, we unconsciously look
at things as if they had been produced by a human maker;
we tend to sense at work a creative being with nervous equip
ment and behavior similar to those of man. This naive, an
thropomorphic attitude is natural. It, too, is physiologically
determined, because any creative experiences that we can
possibly have ourselves are correlated with our own nervous
reactions, such as accompany our labors to produce a thing.
Viewing hand-formed pottery, or the lines of a draftsman,
or the lettering of a calligraphist, we unconsciously identify
ourselves with their makers: We seem to follow vicariously
the imagined muscular exertion in the nervous experience of
the craftsman, as if experiencing it ourselves. In the same
way, our tongue is slightly innervated when we only think
of a word; our muscles tighten while we watch a wrestler or
a tightrope walker, however comfortably we ourselves may
be seated. Our emphatic experience of the pains of creation,
unconsciously inferred when we look at a product, may add
or detract, heighten or reduce, our enjoyment of it.
Precision that is, minimum deviation from the theo
retical aim has at all times been a major human aspiration;
in fact, as we shall see, it has been considered the object
of a basic urge. For thousands of years, precision of produc
tion could be achieved only by laborious methods. Our atti
tude toward precision has thus been closely linked to the
idea of a slow, long, and painstaking process, and, as already
noted, the quality of precise workmanship has in turn be
come associated with the characteristic of rarity, sometimes
even of uniqueness.
The Chinese emperor would send for a famous craftsman
in a distant province, and give him unlimited time to pro-
74
duce a lacquer bowl with twenty coats, smoothly ground, or
a handkerchief of exquisitely spun and woven silk, or a
miracle of ceramic glaze. This work, and the craftsmanship
required to produce it, would become a legend for millions.
Such admiring appraisal goes far back to primitive society.
The Stone Age collection of the anthropological labora
tory at Santa Fe, New Mexico, contains specimens of amaz
ingly perfect rotational pottery, made without a turning
wheel, a contraption that originated in a later period. The
ideal of perfect shape and texture was present in human
hearts much earlier. It corresponded to a need of the nervous
system which existed long before tools were invented to sat
isfy it. In fact, the ambition for perfect form, or the nervous
pressure toward it, must have led to the invention of the
potter's wheel. Yet, today, in the bazaars of Santa Fe, tour
ists are offered artificially misshaped, bumped-up pottery as
charmingly primitive souvenirs. The truth is that perfect
roundness was a perhaps rare but well-recognized desider
atum even in the most ancient pueblo.
With the coming of machines, however, the concept of
quality has undergone a profound change, as far as our
nervous responses are concerned. The productive processes
have often become puzzling, and we can no longer vicari
ously share in them. The formative background, the genetic
perspective, is now blurred and clouded. This is like travel
ing in an unfamiliar country. If all empathy has its original
precedent in reading facial expressions and thus experienc
ing the motives behind them, this ability seems to fail us
when we are among the natives of an utterly strange place.
Our customary clues no longer fit. Precision in workmanship
meant one thing when the work was done by craftsmen; it
means another when it is inhuman, done by strange ma
chines.
Mechanical precision was initiated in the munitions in
dustry, which was also one of the first to use mass-production
methods. Munitions must be produced in enormous quanti
ties, since consumption here frequently approaches the level
of complete waste, even from a military point of view. The
75
exact fitting of projectiles to gun barrels required great me
chanical precision in the shop and made operation on the
battlefield more foolproof. This precision was later extended
for similar reasons to other mass manufactures. Automobile
production is perhaps the most striking example.
But here another important factor had to be taken into
account. Although the motor car was made as foolproof as
possible to allow for careless and wasteful handling by
drivers ignorant of mechanical exigencies, unavoidable re
pairs on the road had to be foreseen and facilitated. This
problem was solved by the interchangeability of parts. Worn-
out pieces of the engine can be easily replaced by substitute
parts, which are stocked in thousands of far-flung depots.
The necessary repairs are made without hand-fitting and
without too much dependence on the worker's skill. The new
part cannot easily be misplaced even by a poorly trained
mechanic, or despite fidgety human nerves.
In order to achieve interchangeability of parts, the highest
degree of accuracy became imperative in the production of
good automobiles, and only the minutest dimensional devia
tions from the norm could be tolerated. As early as the
1920'$, the margin of error in the production of some cars
could not exceed: 1/1000 of an inch for 5000 processes;
1/2000 of an inch for 1200 processes; 1/4000 of an inch for
300 processes; and 1/10,000 of an inch in bearing balls.
All this precise workmanship was marshaled to produce
not a refractor for astronomical use, but a common, almost
ubiquitous article. The concept of rarity or uniqueness is as
foreign to this new type of precision as it is to this new type
of quality. The entire issue grew into a matter of broad
popular impressiveness; it thoroughly re-educated us and re
conditioned our attitudes. Precision, formerly a luxury, has
turned into a prerequisite for economical production and
maintenance, because the possible market, the scope of con-
sumption 7 depends on it.
As precision became commonplace in an industrialized
civilization, however, it inevitably lost much of its charm
and mysterious prestige. Those uniquely balanced innerva-
76
tions in a master craftsman were here no longer required,
nor could they be admiringly re-experienced by the consumer.
It was within the very historical decades which produced
machine precision that precision itself lost face and was ar
bitrarily abandoned for 'beauty's* sake. Precision was dis
credited; it seemed vulgar, and was combated by various
romantic antidotes. For instance, contrivances such as Jazz-
plaster, or picturesque false ceiling beams, crudely surfaced,
began to infest American domestic architecture. This was
also the time when wheel-turned pottery was kinked out of
shape just to make it look primitive. Precision was equated
with coldness, imperfection with warmth; exactness of detail
was discarded, and haphazard 'rustic' forms were introduced
by the speculative psychologists of the real-estate market.
Moreover, these introductions proved to be cheap, wher
ever lingering remnants of neat handicraft could be aban
doned. While formerly a plasterer had to serve a long, exact
ing apprenticeship, now especially in a temperate climate
like that of California any laborer seemed capable of doing
a plasterer's job quickly and, of course, for less. While in
bygone days paint had to be applied with skill in flawlessly
uniform coats and tones, now wild irregularities and acci
dental discolorations became an asset of the Hollywood
bungalow.
It is true that the machine has ruined handicraft. This,
however, did not come about because, as Ruskin and Morris
sadly noted, the first machine products were crude and
primitive, but rather because the machine soon proved supe
rior in precision, the quality that craftsmen had proudly re
garded as their prerogative for thousands of years and that
had inspired consumers with awe. The machine introduced
an entirely new psychology of precision, by changing, and
sometimes directly reversing, the accents. Thanks to it,
irregular, imprecise forms have become unusual, and almost
morbidly attractive.
In abstract aesthetics, the method of producing an object
may possibly be ignored as a factor of evaluation. But the
77
practical situation and the daily workings of our brain are
never so purely one-track. Whenever we are confronted by
a product, our attitude toward it is more or less consciously
motivated first by considerations of performance and con
sumption. How is the form of the object related to the
manner in which it operates? Is there any obnoxious discrep
ancy between appearance and immediate function? Secondly,
considerations enter concerning the genesis of this form.
How was it produced? How did it grow and reach this par
ticular materialization? How far is the consumer able to
follow? Can he at least vicariously, nervously, empathically
share in the production process?
The first group of questions is concerned with functional
significance, and the second with the 'constructivistic' back
ground, with constructive procedures, sensed behind the ap
pearance. Any appraisal of design, then, has these two vital
aspects: the constructivistic how is it made? how can it be
fabricated? and the functionalistic how will it operate and
be used?
Also, the concrete beauty of an organism, say a plant, is
not understood as just a static non-operational phenomenon,
looming in space. Here, too, a dynamic time perspective is
indispensable and unavoidable. In our minds, beauty is re
lated, on the one hand, to the process by which this or
ganism seems to have grown to its present state and, on the
other, to the manner in which it will function to fulfill its
obvious biological requirements. Much of this can be intui
tively perceived without analytical knowledge, and even erro
neous judging does not alter the principle. If we look at a
pine tree bent by the wind on a coastal bluff, the concept of
it does not remain within the bounds of mere sensual impres
sionism. The fused conductive structure of our own mental-
nervous apparatus, its rich operation as an integrated whole,
makes this impossible.
Sensory perception merely ushers in an automatic process
of higher brain activity. The entire associative machinery of
the mind is bound to be set in motion. From beginning to
end our emotions are co-activated. We feel in a flash those
78
struggles our tree has had with storms. The genetic past, the
present function in relation to external forces, the telling
expression of functional preparedness the tree bracing itself
in the direction of prevailing winds all this is hardly sepa
rable from what we look upon as the form and beauty of a
grown tree. Any doctrinaire division of the total concept
into the aesthetic and the non-aesthetic aspect would be arti
ficial and cloud rather than clear the insight into this truly
unified phenomenon. No such division is possible from a
physiological point of view; and no other view, we feel, could
be valid today.
In animals, or in human beings who are underdeveloped
or who have regressed, the activity of the higher brain cen
ters is limited, associations are of lesser scope. But it is ab
surd to reduce aesthetics for normal human beings to the
level of animals or morons.
We shall consider the undoubtedly existing primitive
aesthetic comfort of birds and insects equipped with ex
quisite sense apparatus. But there can be no doubt that the
human nervous equipment, through the associative powers
of the forebrain, has developed incomparably more differen
tiated demands and solutions.
It is an unfortunate roaming of theory that favors a sepa
ration, even an antithesis, of beauty and utility, and places
an accent of additive extravagance and uselessness on the
first of this pair. Once such a contrast has been established,
the self-respecting adult, the practical man, cannot but vote
for 'utility first/ with perhaps a few occasional self-conscious
concessions to 'beauty' second.
An artificial, abrupt contrast has been set up where, by
nature, oneness and an uninterrupted continuum are true to
fact. Where does the utility of a tree stop and its beauty
start? Our dualism has dangerously harmed, not helped, an
understanding of design and of the architecture of a well-
integrated environment. The direct result is that harmful
turmoil we know so well, that disintegration conspicuously
spreading and sprawling around us in so-called civilized
areas which are biologically blighted.
79
NATURE'S FORMS GROW QUITE DIFFERENTLY
but they often are models for those designs
which man produces, accepts, and, before
long, strangely tires of.
10
Whatever we perceive as 'beauty' in
nature is never, and in no way, an addition to what we per
ceive as 'utility/ All organic shape and detail depend clearly
upon structure itself, and never can they be looked upon as
decorative adjunct. Natural forms and colors are not added
or superimposed, but intrinsic, immanent, integral.
But the process of natural growth is different from that
of human 'con-struction/ In nature, growing and function
ing are inseparable, mutually determined, and simultaneous
life processes. The seed, the seedling, the plant, function
continuously during all the infinitesimal stages of well-fused
growth. In human creations, being produced and function
ing always follow upon each other, and full harmony be
tween the two is really never accomplished.
We first build a factory, and only after the building is up
do we use it. During the planning period, we merely try to
anticipate future use requirements and endeavor to bridge
mentally the decisive gap between the phase of construction
and the phase of function. Nevertheless, the practical opera
tion begins only after various errors may already be petrified
80
in ferro-concrete. Some later constructions will be required
to incorporate the experience of usage.
The essential time interval between the phase of produc
tion and that of function expresses itself also in applied
aesthetics. Beauty is added to a thing which first is practi
cally conceived, then manufactured, and finally used by
human beings. Those who plan a house are often mentally
engrossed in the mode of its construction. Only after this
problem is solved does imagination free itself to behold the
occupants in their responses of daily life. It is difficult to
bring simultaneously into focus the images of structural and
functional requirement, and melt them into one. A distinc
tion between a constructivistic and a functionalistic aspect
in nature would be a theoretical segregation of what in fact
is a concrete unity: growth. But in human production, this
division is by no means theoretical; it is most real and can
never be fully overcome.
There is another important difference between natural or
ganisms and the products of man. Calves bora with two
heads are rare, and if born, they have no survival value or
chance of reproduction. In nature the magnitude of change
is comparatively restricted. Man, on the contrary, is the
creator of fairly permanent atrocities, which surround us 'for
the duration' and beyond.
Natural selection of survival values consists in automatic
elimination of mutations that show lesser fitness for life.
Similar principles may in the long run apply as well to
human production and to the construction of human envi
ronment. Here, however, survival value is a more complex
concept.
Primarily, our concern may be with the assured and con
tinued existence of a product or commodity itself. It must
survive on the open market, prove its mettle against com
petition. But then our man-made surroundings, our human
products will in the last analysis and over long periods have
to demonstrate their wholesomeness not only for the indi
vidual consumer but to aid the survival of the race itself.
81
Plants and animals can survive only if they are adjusted to
their physical environment. Man, unlike plants and animals,
is a tinkerer and has the capacity to transform his physical
environment by most fateful additions. Leo Balet 1 has stated
that intellectual spokesmen of the eighteenth century, the
era of political absolutism, indulged in the general doctrine
of complete mastery and the knocking down of resistances.
The reversion of natural properties into their exact con
traries, the replacement of nature's forms by artificial ones,
was triumphantly interpreted as the Mastery of Nature. The
foliage of trees was cut to look like straight walls, cubes,
spheres, birds, or what not. Painted faces, powdered coif
fures, courtly furbelows attested that it was possible to con
form nature to the will of the absolute sovereign. It was
against this unnaturalness, or anti-naturalness, that the rising
power of the middle class was soon to react in words and
deeds. This protest was then lodged largely on moral ground.
Nature was drafted as an ally in the revolution against the
godless rule of the prince and the arbitrariness of his political
and artistic henchmen.
Today perhaps we no longer regard this as a moral issue,
but may still rather agree with those protestants as well as
the Biblical prophets who saw the wrath of the Lord rise
against perversion. We have learned to think of the laws of
nature as inexorable and never violated without severe pen
alty. To the biologically minded, mastery of nature does not
mean reckless perversion of her forms and processes, but
rather the art of attuning man's ways to her order.
Our creed as designers should make peace with a creation
which long preceded our own. Yet in recent times the spe
cifically human capacity of troubling nature has increased
way beyond all the artificialities of the ancien regime. With
the help of alpha particles and gamma rays, we can influence
even the innermost chromosomatic base of the species and
cause heretofore unheard-of mutations. The atomic bomb
1 'Die Verbuergerlichung der deutschen Kunst/ Literatur und Musifc
irn 18. /aJirhundert, Leiden, 1936.
82
has popularized spectacular dangers of this kind, but there
are many less conspicuous ones. Dr. Beadle produced muta
tions with seemingly harmless ultra-violet light, and certain
chemicals have similar effects, although we may for a time
be unaware of them. Nevertheless we place these potent
agents in our immediate environment.
Man constructs tools, and with these tools more tools to
change increasingly natural surroundings, and each product
has its own incidental cluster of by-products. It is through
this comprehensive activity that houses, road networks,
cities an entirely new environmentare created. The man-
made setting reacts through an infinite number of stimuli
upon the nervous system of every member of the commu
nity. More than that, today design may exert a far-reaching
influence on the nervous make-up of generations.
The claim of Dr. Sonneborn of the University of Indiana
that newly discovered cell plasm genes in protozoa can
transmit to a next generation acquired characteristics of, for
example, higher temperature resistance, implies that things
are not as fixed as we thought only recently. Conceivably far-
reaching influences on the future of a species can be exerted
through design. Out of ignorance, we permit our instrument,
human design, to operate accidentally, and it may bring
about mutations more fateful than nature's.
Modern biological research, then, has somewhat shaken
the theory that acquired characteristics, or inflicted impair
ments, mean nothing to descendants. This return since
early Darwinian days to a belief that the inheritable sub
stance itself can be molded, adds a great deal to the prestige
and significance of design. But, even assuming that acquired
traits do not endure through generations, it still remains true
that the individual, the 'phenotype/ must have its opportu
nity of development so as to realize inherited characteristics.
And thus we still would have to worry a great deal about
man-made environment and its possible obscure dangers to
the human community, even if we set aside all ominous con
siderations about how, through design, we tamper daily with
the precious inheritable substance itself.
83
There are numerous threats in those unheeded by-products
of human inventions. We may mention, for instance, the fact
that there are two hundred known carcinogenic substances,
that is, substances that favor the incidence of cancer. One
of these is ordinary soot, the effect of which has been studied
on ailing chimney sweeps in England. Another is the hydro
carbons, such as are contained in the kerosene drippings from
seemingly harmless little body stoves, which Hindu women
have been carrying too close to their skin, with fatal results.
Many industrial processes have been investigated for the
purpose of determining such noxious influences. But the
entire urban surroundings of our age, which are so com
pletely permeated by technological processes, need to be
combed for trouble.
In the cases mentioned above, the victims long remained
unaware of their plight. The disease struck insidiously. There
had been a sensory adaptation, an accommodation of the
skin, to the particular poison, the presence of which might
otherwise have been noticed. Sickness, often followed by
death, came without much advance warning. Many of the
victims were stricken before reaching adult age, before repro
duction of the species was realized. For survival, we cannot
always depend on our senses. They often fail to report
danger in the smallest 'dose, which sometimes is the most
dangerous.
An amazing observation was related to this writer by Dr.
Frederick Crescitelli of the University of California. It con
cerns animal subjects which were brought to convulsive ac
tion by exposure to a certain sound, a note of particular fre
quency. The effect of this sound was manifested even long
after the subject had fully adapted itself to it e as an acoustical,
sensory stimulus. While this sound was scarcely perceived, it
could still produce violent contortions!
The fact that a man does not realize the harmfulness of
a product or a design-element in his surroundings, does not
mean that it is harmless. We need other, more objective,
criteria than mere opinions or custom and habit. We may
become used to the sight of a telephone pole in front of
84
our window and may claim that we can ignore it, but it still
might be proved detrimental to visual and thus general
well-being.
Nature has endowed us with minute pain receptors, de
vices that alarm us in case of injury. They also signal over-
fatigue, and thus help to head it off. These pain receptors
function successfully in natural situations. To insure the per
petuity of this elaborate apparatus for the benefit of our
survival nature has made it non-adaptive, i.e. pain does not
become less perceptible if it persists. Nobody can really get
used to painful exhaustion and just work harder and harder.
On the contrary, these alarm signals get more and more
piercing and loud if we do not heed them. But it seems that
some 'unnatural/ man-made stimuli, while eliciting response
from other receptors, happen not to cause direct pain, and
in such cases repeated stimulation results simply in an ac
commodation to it. From then on, we are left without any
warning.
The adjustment of human beings to man-made environ
ment is a much more complex process than biological ad
justment to a natural habitat. It is a process involving rapid
readjustments; new frictions and nervous 'arrhythmias' are
continually produced, and efforts are continually made to
alleviate them. All this internally mirrors, in fact physologi-
cally constitutes, the endlessly ramified process of civiliza
tion. The pace of this process is much speedier than that of
adaptation through long, biological ages. Every new techno
logical invention results in urgent new demands on the
human nervous equipment.
Through a tedious learning process, this nervous apparatus,
naturally limited in scope and speed, tends to approach
again and again a balance of the bearable; but we have it
even more in our power to change our physical surroundings
and to step up once more the multitude of stimuli.
We know all this from suffering under an avalanche of un
assorted so-called progress. Harsh neon signs, for example, in
certain technically limited color combinations are splashed
all over a commercial street. Their quick succession as we
85
pass them in a fast-moving, motor-driven vehicle would have
been terrifying to people even one short generation ago.
They may be nerve-wrecking to us, whether we know it or
not.
It has become imperative that in designing our physical
environment we should consciously raise the fundamental
question of survival, in the broadest sense of this term. Any
design that impairs and imposes excessive strain on the
natural human equipment should be eliminated, or modified
in accordance with the requirements of our nervous and,
more generally, our total physiological functioning. This
principle is our only operational criterion in judging design
or any detail of man-made environment, regardless of how
difficult it may seem to apply the principle in specific cases.
We must keep in mind that in nature even minor defi
ciencies in adaptation have in the long run obliterated entire
species. Obscure, seemingly insignificant elements of our
man-made environment may produce disastrous effects if
given sufficient time. A systematic illumination of the danger
in our present scene should be the order of the clay. Our
muddling through in a perniciously and neglectfully con
structed environment must no longer be taken for granted;
its perils must not be ignored.
Man-made mutations, in the realm of technique and cul
ture, loom large in proportion to the structures of yesteryear
which we may have learned to deal with. Effects of change
here are often so violent that they quickly annihilate the
status quo. This strange disruptiveness is a specifically human
factor in patterns of development.
Many of our cultural changes often the more conspicuous
ones are accounted for not by a steady positive evolution
but by a negative factor, fatigue. It is a phenomenon which
seems to occur on many organic strata, from the exhaustion
of a bit of unarticulated plasma to that of a complex human
brain.
Mere tiredness of existing forms may overpower us. We
may want to get rid of it all. We need a clean-cut change.
86
At times, being tired of what exists may obscure other im
portant issues and turn into a primary motive of human ac
tion. Nevertheless, over long periods at least, evolution can
never become exempt from that simpler and broader prin
ciple that establishes the survival of what is physiologically
most fit.
Perhaps one could venture to subordinate the first prin
ciple of fatigue to the second principle. One can fuse both
by stating that especially for the more highly developed
human neuro-mental system a static changelessness se^ms
especially unfit. Dissatisfaction with a static unchanging en
vironment also increases with the complexity of our cultural
structure. It is certainly much less noticeable or prevalent in
a primitive tribe than it is in a more civilized society.
Our fatigue may concern the shape and color of our auto
mobile, furniture, or house, the texture of upholstery fabrics,
the smell of our carpet, the tunes of popular music. We may
become tired of a socio-economic order or a political admin
istration. It is such tiredness that can account for novel fash
ions and extravagances in ladies' apparel, hats, handbags,
hair-dos. It reflects a need for new stimuli, which is charac
teristic of civilization on higher levels and indicative of
their perpetual physiological unbalance and lack of stable
adaptation. We must keep in mind that the quest for divert
ing novelties to counteract boredom tends toward a rank
overgrowth. It may obliterate or warp the basic, long-range
evolutionary progress of human production and creativeness.
In nature this urge for diversity for its own sake has no clear
counterpart. There is well-motivated variety but no petty
arbitrariness indulged in only to relieve fatigue.
In spite of all these differences between generally natural
and more specifically human developments and production
processes, it must not be overlooked that nature outside of
the human realm has amply served as a model for human
constructive efforts.
A strict imitation, however, often seems to end in sterile
failure. If two 'equal 7 forms are produced by unequal proc-
87
esses, or in unequal materials, they are not of an equality
that satisfies the highly developed human brain. Human
minds evolve from a childish stage where shallow similarity
is taken for identity to ever-higher levels of differentiation.
Yet 7 striking similarities between things that are incon
gruous occur in nature also. Simple color adaptation to sur
roundings, static as with a grasshopper, or changeable as
with the chamaeleon, develops into fantastic cases of pseu
domorphism. Certain plants of very different families become
similar in appearance to such a point that grazing animals
mistake them for each other. A butterfly, or a caterpillar,
may, for visual protection, closely mimic a plant leaf on
which it lives. This shows that a quirk of functional circum
stances may indeed bring about similarities quite different
from and independent of structural similarities. But such
cases remain anomalies. They are incidental or even in con
trast to the main fertile current of biological progress which
evidently has much more fundamental determinants than
such occasional mimicry.
Many man-made imitations, however deceptive, have only
a superficial and ephemeral appeal to the senses and often
only to some of them, not to all. They are not 'omni-sensoriar
and not well related to a fully active mind. Although we
may become habituated to dull imitation, it can never be
truly fertile. A machine-made Persian rug means to us very
much less than the original meant to the Asiatic peasant
craftsman and user.
Of course, we must not confuse the repetition of a pro-
ductional process, in which the same technique and mate
rials are used as in the original process, with pseudomorphic
imitation. Such repetition is compatible with sound produc-
tional traditionbe it in weaving, wood joinery, or ceramic
glazes. What we call pseudomorphism is the achievement of
superficial similarity, but by different structural means, as in
the case of a cast-iron wastepaper container that is shaped
like a cut-off tree trunk.
A constructed building that looks 'as if grown' is pseudo
morphic, no matter how engagingly true to life the word
88
'grown' may sound. A dynamic plant that grows from roots
which absorb moisture and nourishment from the soil is one
thing; a static structural weight resting on waterproofed con
crete footings is another. If these should be conceived as
roots, they are dry and dead roots indeed. The sham simi
larity does not contribute in any way toward a better under
standing or a deeper enjoyment.
By the same token, articles that superficially imitate the
workmanship of a bygone day are ipso facto pseudomorphic.
In 1640 a fisherman built a house on Cape Cod for his bride.
Resurrected near Hollywood in 1940 by lump-sum contract
work from the architect's blueprints and for the use of a
motion picture producer, the same pattern is pseudomorphic,
without any generating potency. It seems about as close to
its original as marbleized linoleum is to genuine crystalline
limestone. Only for a brief sensual perception may these
houses possibly appear similar; so as not to disturb this sort
of similarity, any further cerebration would have to be cut
off. Fortunately, it cannot be fully cut off by an architect.
Even the knife of a brain surgeon will fail to do that because
life could not last beyond such major butchery.
The roots of imitation are deep. It aims to reproduce a
desired pattern of stimuli, which has earlier elicited one's re
sponse. Nature has modeled for imitative nian, who wanted
to be her equal. There is an original human craving for repe
tition, and imitation plays an important part in the history
of design; we cannot shrug our shoulders at it.
Since Tarde's Laws of Imitation, in 1890, this subject has
often been investigated, but much remains to be clarified.
Musical cicadas have a drive to repeat their own call and
imitate the sounds of their fellow insects. Children below a
certain age and morons tend to repeat speech and action.
The phenomenon is known in psychopathology as echolalia
and echopraxia. According to anthropologists Novakovski
and Jochelson, certain Siberian populations, when depleted
in energy by their winter hardships and starvation, break out
in a strange epidemic of senseless imitation.
89
It obviously takes energy not to imitate. It is very natural
to repeat what another person does or says. McDougall and
his school of psychology saw in imitation along with sug
gestion and sympathy a primary psychological force. But
imitation, like other primary forces, can easily become a
scourge to life.
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NATURALNESS CAN BE REGAINED when the 3C-
ceptance of design is guided physiologically
and not just commercially pushed.
11
Acceptance of design must turn from
a commercial into a physiological issue. Fitness for assimilia-
tion by our organic capacity becomes a guiding principle for
judging design because such fitness aids the survival of the
individual, the community, the race itself. Design must be a
barrier against irritation instead of an incitement to it. The
everyday insight in this matter is more rudimentary than we
would think because of the weight of habit, A diet is not
necessarily healthful because it is habitual. The fact that
someone is used to smoking opium, even craves it, does not
make opium a harmless drug. An element of design may be
habit-forming and thus attractive but still incompatible with
the requirements of our constitutional system. Designers of
the future will neither cater to harmful habits nor gratify
arbitrary desires. Their decisions will abide by ever-increasing
physiological information.
In many countries the buyer of food or drugs is, to some
extent, protected by law against products that might prove
damaging to health. But things must not necessarily be
swallowed to bring harm. External stimuli in our physical
surroundings must not be underestimated and left untested.
Beauty commissions, whose opinions are controversial, solve
91
little and might find meager support when they dared de
viate from public taste. As for the producer's claims and
propaganda, it is obvious that they cannot be taken at face
value.
Let us analyze an example of a common builder's supply
item linoleum called marbleized. First, a look at the pro-
ductional aspect. Flawlessly plain surfaces are harder to pro
duce than mottled ones, and thus the latter are found to cost
less. 'Beaut/ enters the picture as an afterthought, when the
manufacturer accidentally discovers that his product has a
possible visual likeness to marble. This is what we describe
as pseudomorphism. The manufacturer exploits the simi
larity by advertising his linoleum as marble-like and marble
ized; and then he suggests also a functional plus of his
article: 'dirt does not show/ The cheaper product is made
acceptable to the consumer because it is 'beautiful and prac
tical/ In one strange mathematical sum, two abstract con
cepts of rather different class and order are added up.
Now we may disregard the seller's biased advertising and
consider the consumer's side; for instance, the manner in
which a kitchen counter or any work surface may affect our
nervous system. There are possible three clearly distinguish
able cases of stimulation originating at the surface of an
object:
1. Continuous, smooth and even distribution of stimuli
over this surface.
2. Rhythmical distribution of stimuli
3. Irregular distribution of stimuli.
We can test our sense receptors in experimental arrange
ments, and this testing will actually have to be done to arrive
at anything but an arbitrary decision. Experiments will yield
data about fatigue of the mainly affected sense receptor, the
visual sense, through exposure to the test surface for definite
and measured periods. Then the total nervous system, not
only the eye, will have to be checked under the influences of
the particular surface in question for general tenseness or
lack of relaxation, for increased or reduced receptivity to
92
additional stimuli, for such effects as glandular and digestive
secretion, for modified metabolism, et cetera. The investiga
tions will further compare normal responses of the test
person in a passive state with response conditions when the
subject is engaged in specific tasks over the surface being
tested. Also the range of individual differences will be in
teresting.
If we propose predictability and scientific reliability before
hastily speeding a newly invented commodity into produc
tion or permitting production to flood the market, we sim
ply must not go by likes and dislikes, so easily and often so
irresponsibly evoked. Nor can we lightly assume that a
matter is insignificant because it is small. Science has indeed
taught us to appreciate the importance of very small things
like minute irritations and sub-microscopic viruses.
Although we have as yet no experimental data to prove
that irregularly textured (jazz) plaster or marbleized linoleum
is under certain conditions unpleasant to the tactile or
visual senses, we know that throughout history man has
shown a certain preference for smooth and even surfaces.
Neolithic flint implements are polished beyond immediate
practical requirement. A neurological interpretation, or at
least the securing of factual data, will come from pertinent
experimentation on animal and human subjects.
Over an even surface, our tactile and our visual senses can
move without abrupt changes in innervation, just as a skater
glides over smooth ice. Bumps or holes in the ice make skat
ing less pleasant, because sudden and irregular nervous ad
justments become necessary. If such external obstacles to
steady nervous processes occur at rhythmic intervals, how
ever, their effect seems more pleasant than that of irregular
and haphazard interruptions.
Without delving into these quasi-kinesthetic problems, we
should like here only to point out that something of 'beauty'
or 'pleasantness/ or the lack of them, in marbleized linoleum
is not beyond physiological testing. Perhaps we could even
come to interpret why one type of mottled effect is less
offensive than others.
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As for the 'practical' merits of a product, we must again
resort to. an associative evaluation. The idea that dirt does
not show on marbleized linoleum is similar to that of paint
ing a butcher shop red because blood splashes on a red wall
do not bother the eye.
Cleanliness has been put on a level with godliness and
morality. It contains also what used to be considered potent
aesthetic ingredients, and altogether a vast background of
associations extending into the depths of consciousness. For
reasons of this involvement, the idea of cleanliness changes
with time, place, and setting, and becomes another instance
to prove the insufficiency of an aesthetics, pure, simple, and
timeless.
To us, cleanliness is not merely a matter of visual appear
ance, as it was, for example, in the past to the Japanese.
Under their spotless floor mats, the tatami on which they
eat and sleep, small refuse could accumulate for months and
feed vermin. In the shiny hollow hairdress of Japanese
geishas, artfully constructed around a core of silk and paper
(negake) and riveted together with many Kanzashi and
Kushi (pins and combs), there gathered a week's dust. These
hair sculptures were so laboriously contrived that they were
preserved for many nights, and during sleep the heads, thus
adorned, were supported by little wood bridges instead of
being permitted to sink into pillows. An ornamental mode
of living is often unfavorable to a regular regime of cleaning.
As borne out by odors in a poor but neat Japanese house,
the sense of smell for instance can be markedly much less
involved in the concept of cleanliness. Here cleanliness is
purely visual, while a Hindu may conceive it mostly in spir
itual terms. In India, thousands of the faithful cleanse their
ailing bodies by submerging them in waters that seem pol
luted to Western tourists.
Our own concept of cleanliness, imparted in kindergartens
and elementary schools, through parental admonition and
pamphlets of public health departments, is neither merely
visual nor spiritual. It has a biological basis and is conceived
almost as a scientific survival aid. We often act to protect
94
ourselves against agents of uncleanliness which cannot be
detected without a microscope. In no case are we really sat
isfied with merely concealing dirt. From this point of view,
a surface that shows clearly any undesirable accumulations
of dirt is superior to one that does not. Maximum impend-
ousness and absence of open joints are preferable on this
count as well as on the count of labor saved in cleaning. It
is true that the cost of suitable materials may at first be high
as it is in the case of all innovations; but if such materials
are in increasing demand, a way is found to manufacture
them at reasonable prices. Such demand is the all-powerful
motivation of an industrialized civilization. Enlightened con
sumers will only have to pose correctly the problem of easy
removal of dirt from lived-in interiors and especially from
surfaces, imperviously finished.
Polished marble, for example, a very ancient product, pos
sesses just this quality to a high degree, while thin gauge
linoleum, the first material of this sort to introduce a phony
marbleization, had a surface clearly afflicted with the pro
nounced unevenness of its burlap base. The producer's claims
concerning the practical merits of marbleized linoleum de
pended on a fallacious association: Marble is easily cleaned;
marbleized linoleum resembles marble, and so it is clean and
cleanable. And if in fact it is much less easily and perfectly
cleaned, well, at least it does not show the dirt. A clever
pseudomorphic substitute is introduced with the intent to
satisfy one sense, the eye (rather dulled that eye must be),
while those of its qualities that are important for hygiene,
such as minimum porousness and chemical imperviousness,
are disregarded. Textured plaster, rolled 'figured' glass, orna
mental cast iron, 'jazzily' discolored paint coats, et cetera,
could be similarly analyzed for commercial rationalization of
defects.
The manufacturer's notion of practicality then can be
trusted as little as his notion of beauty, so profitable and
easily advertised; his is a very biased beauty and biased
utility. His ideas as a specialist in the mechanics of produc
tion should be fully honored; but the consumer must be
95
guided by experts other than the manufacturer alone if he is
to evaluate products in the light of his own deeper interest.
What he needs is not clever sales talk, but reliable investi
gations. Conditions closer to our natural wants can be re
gained in our constructed environment if productions are
physiologically probed.
96
NATURE'S WORKINGS, so INSPIRING TO MAN,
were imitated by him and' then PRODDED
WITH A LITTLE MAGIC.
12
There appears a millionfold complexity
of the cause-and-effect relationship in natural phenomena. It
is a meshwork utterly impossible to disentangle, to grasp, or
to account for in full. Only fragmentary interpretations have
emerged. Human intellect tends to make up a world picture
of causes and then, by analogy to its own constructive effort,
makes it over into one of aims and purposes. Purposeful de
sign has been interpreted to underlie a unified world ma
chine.
The concept of a universal order by planned intent seems
especially satisfying to the human mind. Abstracted from
comparatively few observations of supposedly understood
natural events, it was stretched and elaborated.
The picture of an ordered operating cosmos is a useful staff
or reassuring crutch for the difficult obscure road through
the chaos of incomprehensibility. The ancient idea of a
world wisely ordered to function affords an emotional grati
fication that has shown eminent and long-tested survival
value. It is the inspiration for all planning and designing.
A teleological or purposive evaluation of natural processes
appears very early in human history and has persisted as a
simplified contentment of the mind, so much in need to
97
maintain its balance. As man's abstractive capacity devel
oped, everything in existence and in operation began to seem
geared to everything else in sight. The ancient astrological
doctrine of the correlation between terrestrial and celestial
events is a striking precedent for the scientific postulate of
a universal context.
Except perhaps on the levels of lowest magnitudes, as in
the orbits of atomic particles or the mutations of organic
matter, an abundance of causal ties are conceived by our
mind which seem to make possible operation and functional
sequence. We do not think in terms of static, isolated, or
independent occurrences in nature. Nothing stands and per
sists by itself like a solitary monument, unaffected by neigh
bors. Everything seems meshed into an over-all context,
which has its dynamic functional character.
For a million years, the evolving human mind found in
the natural environment an immediate spur to imitation of
this functionalism. It seemed only in need of adaptation to
man's own purposes and tasks. Successful approximation of
nature's unfailing functionalism, however, calls for protracted
periods of persistent experimentation, and such effort has
always been hampered by the circumstance that the indi
vidual life span is short. A man perfected a tool, reached his
limits, then died. After a pause his son or even his great-
grandson might go on perfecting.
The creations of man are imperfect when seen in the light
of the functional integrity that prevails in nature, Human
products are static, i.e. not self-regenerative or self-adjusting,
even when changing conditions flagrantly demand such an
adjustment of function. Every step forward calls in turn for
renewed effort and initiative on the part of the human cre
ator. Man's mental economy, his physiological liability of
periodic as well as final exhaustion, make temporary con
tentment mandatoryoften long before he can realize the
goal of functional perfection he sets for himself. At the same
time he remains conscious of the imperfection or faulty func
tioning of his product and is perturbed by it. He seeks to
compensate the physical deficiency at least by psychological
98
means. The more primitive the product, the greater perhaps
is the urge toward such 'supplementation/
For ages, the supplementation consisted in adding the in
strumentality of magic. This involves the ability and the urge
simply to identify things with names and attach to them
powerful imaginary attributes. The magic supplement may
be found in a symbolic sound, a symbolic shape, an amulet,
a mystically potent substance either very pure or a concoc
tion of strange ingredients, ritually processed.
A tool or a weapon such as a bow and arrow may be fairly
well fashioned to purpose, but nevertheless may prove in
some degree functionally imperfect. Its efficacy seems capable
of being heightened by spoken conjurations, by charms in
scribed upon it, or by powerful symbolic ornament. This
assumption depends on a mental mechanism similar to the
one that performs the identification of a rock with a power
ful demon, a tree with a nymph, friendly or hostile, or the
magic by which a child transforms an old towel into a cher
ished doll.
Man tends also to ascribe by sheer mental power a func
tion where he is actually incapable of observing it. Even with
contradicting evidence at hand, he is likely to find alibis to
support the decrees of his mind. We should be more nearly
correct if we called this magic an extrafunctional supple
mentation. At least there is no palpable physical function
to it.
The functional parts of a building can be augmented in
this same manner by means of symbolism in shape, detail,
and color and, as mentioned, by the sacrificial and therefore
magic effort vested in its construction.
On the one hand, the purely functional design of a human
product follows precedents found in nature, however crude
the approximation. A reinforced concrete framework, based
on intricate computations of internal stresses, rightly re
minds us of the skeletal structure and bone texture of a
vertebrate, in both design and function. The slender con
crete shell of a dome by the great engineer Dischinger, span
ning a planetarium or large market hall, exemplifies the same
99
laws of statics as the paper-thin but amazingly stress-resistant
shell of a snail or crustacean.
On the other hand, the magic supplementation that is
intended to compensate for imperfect function has no such
analogy or precedent in nature; it is one hundred per cent
of human origin. Yet frequently it may borrow and super
impose formal images from nature, in whole or in part as
when shapes of fishes, birds, phalluses, eyes, mouths are
painted or carved on arrows, boats, temples, helmets. Such
applied images are fundamentally divorced from any natural
functioning. Nevertheless, they allude to it symbolically, and
thereby become operative, if not in the objective world, at
least in man's wishful thinking.
100
MAGIC WANES AS TECHNOLOGY ADVANCES but
some of the 'old 7 is saved as ornament to
warm the heart.
13
Gradual increase of functional perfec
tion in design seems to be accompanied by a proportionate
decrease of extrafunctional supplementation. Here emerges
a psychological law of human production.
Primitives as well as moderns try first to realize their pur
poses through technological inventiveness and functional de
sign. Then, not completely gratified by the result, they sup
plement the slow and laborious satisfactions of imperfect
instrumentalism with wishful magic and symbolic imagery.
Where rationally purposed design falls short, a presentation,
irrational but suggestive of function, may bolster our confi
dence, our feeling of security. But as we attain greater func
tional efficiency in design, we can gradually find a purely
naturalistic approach, dispensing with supernatural augmen
tation. Our designs then tend to acquire in some measure
the differentiated complexity as well as the economy of the
unimpeachable functionalism that impresses us in nature.
Our productions gradually lose that dualistic character, com
pounded of the rational and the irrational, which is so typical
of early human endeavor. The handling of our technical
problems becomes more matter-of-fact, less involved in
ritual, charm, or prayer. Lighting a fire for warmth and
101
brightness was once a grand act; today it is no longer fraught
with symbolism we simply turn a knob or press a button.
The symbols associated with that ritualistic attitude, how
ever, tend to linger on long after the psychological need that
brought them into existence has passed. Originally man
thought to make sure of obtaining his aims by means of
magic; the succeeding ages have retained a residue of magic
simply through force of mental inertia.
Doubtless we have here one of the main sources from
which ornamentation springs. It flows on by conditioning in
infancy and formed habit. Ornamentation cannot well be
rationally invented and applied in cold blood, and current
arbitrary decoration lacks the initial emotional impetus, the
authentic purpose, of gratifying a deep primordial urge. It
also does not endure and so it is quite unlike old ornamen
tation that has served through many generations.
Nevertheless, even shallow, unemotionally conceived deco
rative treatment, attached without profound faith or magic
implications, has been used throughout the ages. It has ap
peared again and again, probably preying on ancient custom,
and sometimes merely for the purpose of covering up surface
imperfection. For example, when cast iron was first offered
for nineteenth-century consumption, after the mold was re
moved plain surfaces were often found disfigured by little
sand holes. As a remedy, Renaissance foliage was superim
posed to improve the appearance. Whenever the potential
inherent beauties of a new material are not recognized be
cause production techniques are insufficiently developed to
present it in perfection, the decorative artist is called in to
sugarcoat the pill and to divert attention from deficiencies.
Unlike the ancient sage of true ornamental wisdom, his
feeble descendant, the decorationist of our day, seems to die
young; certainly his creations are short-lived, barely surviving
from one season to the next. The value of his makeshift con
tribution is nullified by fascinating technological advances,
which finally offer in its stead the satisfaction of flawless sur
faces. In the end, pure, unadorned forms appear, sensitively
conceived in the new material, with nothing imposed on it.
102
A real rose needs no painting or decorating. Lively colored
plaster coating of marble was used by the Greeks in an early
period. Later, when marble was treated more expertly as a
fine material, such a practice would have seemed infantile or
characteristic of arrested development.
In discussing decoration, we must mention the fear of
emptiness. The blank often makes us shudder; the horror of
it seems ingrained in our mind structure, a mental horror
vacui. From earliest time man has striven for perfection, for
elimination of disruptive imperfections; but his mind seems
to shrink from the ultimate perfection and uninterrupted-
ness, the plain, which threatens him as a void. In general, he
feels prompted to fill a vacant space with pattern. Children
are fairly impelled to scrawl on a blank wall.
What an undeveloped mind perceives as blankness, how
ever, may strike a more mature mentality not as a vacancy
incapable of assimilation but as a meaningful element in a
larger composition. An untrained person, for example, may
see a wall, an area of color, a piece of plain furniture as an
isolated entity, and rebel against its bareness. A trained
person can conceive it as a part of a room and enjoy a jux
taposition or play of contrasts that completely eludes the
first observer. To the connoisseur, the over-all composition
becomes alive. The accent of quiet achieved by an interval
of emptiness may mean delight, not revulsion. It is an out
standing example of how more complex cortical activity may-
reverse an earlier affect of emotional brain centers. A phe
nomenon as basic for design evolution as this deserves full
attention.
Before the invention of canvas and paper and the popu
larization of easel paintings, artists beginning with the pre
historic hunter in his cave must have been badly pressed
for sufficient surface space on which to paint according to
their heart's desire. If they chose the wall of the cave or,
later, of a building, the intention was not always to improve
the wall itself just as a Shakespearean sonnet was not
written in order to improve the paper. Truly creative paint
ings, including murals, cannot be regarded as intended just
103
to embellish the base on which they are superimposed. They
are not decor, or features merely added to something else.
Rightly or wrongly, they are conceived quite independently
of their physical setting. A pianist playing a Chopin noc
turne is not concerned with acoustically adorning the living
room. On the other hand, soft music emanating from a con
tinuous record player is actually something like an acoustical
decoration. Even though there is an abuse of the pieces thus
played, it may be granted that such an audio device does
something to the setting and to the hearer.
We have sketchily dealt with symbolic ornament and deco
rative surface treatment. There is another category of, strictly
speaking, non-functional material we tend to retain in our
environment. This might better be characterized as no longer
functional, but as still charged with lingering associations
suggesting actual use and comfort, and must be differentiated
from the void-filling kind of decoration and from the sur
vivals of magic emblems mentioned above. It is to be said,
however, that this clinging to the shadow of bygone usage
may in itself easily acquire the accent and flavor of a magic
formula.
Fossilized forms remaining from an obsolete technological
situation often continue to provide a certain strange mental
comfort, even though the gratification they yield coulcl now
be obtained in an entirely different manner. Thus we derive
pleasure from installing fireplaces in houses that have heat-
radiating floors. Heavy door and window jambs appropriate
to thick walls are found where actually cork or Fiberglas in
sulation may permit the use of much thinner enclosures.
Conspicuous light fixtures or chandeliers have been retained
when indirect, wholesomely diffused light coulcl be or is
being supplied; decorative wrought-iron window guards have
been favored, although burglar insurance policies are in the
bank safe and could obviate them.
Such old standbys now serve merely to symbolize our assur
ance that warmth and light can be produced and security
maintained as of old. At a later stage of development, these
104
feats are taken for granted and bits of surplus design are
dropped as no longer psychologically necessary. Ultimately,
even the switch controls needed to operate lighting, heating,
air-conditioning, and burglar-alarm systems come to be re
garded as too conspicuous, visually and acoustically, and are
masked from sight and hearing. Design interest has at last
attached itself to other matters and ceases to assure or to
demonstrate what needs no assurance or demonstration.
But in general, forms and ideas associated with past modes
of living or with earlier attitudes hold a peculiar attraction
for man. This is only in small part to be accounted for by
habit. The conscious revival of interest in long-buried cul
tural treasures has little relation to persistence of habit or of
the particular living traditions connected with them.
It may be that the sentimental attraction of documents
representing vanished stages of human history is linked with
the nostalgia for a golden age or that 'happy pasf complex.
Or perhaps we seek a pleasant feeling of superiority, such as
the one we enjoy in a kindly condescending conversation
with a child.
At any rate, it seems somehow pleasing to see the primi
tive and the modern side by side; it stimulates the mind. An
old piece of furniture in a modern house may serve as a
window, opening up a perspective from one age into another,
an outlook from our own enclosed little moment onto the
broad landscape of history.
Most people know that Martha Washington 'home-made'
candy is produced on some sort of assembly line. It is not
purveyed with a gracious social gesture but in brusque com
petition with the 'home-made' candy trading on the name
of Dolly Madison, which also reaches us through hundreds
of chain-store outlets. Nevertheless, we must find those
names and 'colonial' wrappings somehow heartwarming, as
otherwise they would not have been invoked by master
minds of salesmanship.
Although people may go on camping trips in streamlined
trailers, or soon helicopters, of the latest model, they feel like
pioneers when they build a log fire on which to heat the con-
105
tents of a tin can bearing the endearing label, 'Old-Fashioned
Bean Soup/ Then follows a course of delicious pancakes,
from a box on which the beaming face of 'Aunt Jemima'
symbolizes the culinary magic of a slave mammy of the 'old
South/ Finally night falls, the butane-gas heater is turned off,
the aluminum-framed Pullman beds are unfolded, and the
party of 'old-timers' goes to sleep on foam-rubber mattresses.
Old is a Varm 7 word it seems good to have it around. An
old baroque curve or a Victorian curlicue in some otherwise
contemporary design may cater to the same appetite or add
the spice of contrast. But the original object or a reproduc
tion of it can never recover the function of genuine nourish
ment. It can never again be a staple food; its function has
shrunk to that of an imported tidbit.
106
'FUNCTIONALISM' CAN TURN INTO A SUPER
FICIAL CREED for extroverts, but it can also
be guided to honor the functions within our
skin and the innermost life.
14
We have seen that at the end of the
nineteenth century functionalism undertook to establish an
objective criterion of aesthetic judgment. It promised to
supersede all arbitrary historical formalism in design. Yet Sul
livan's splendid rule of no exceptions, the principle "Form
Follows Function/ unfortunately does not hold the handy
answer to all problems of design motivation. The point may
perhaps be illustrated by a deliberately exaggerated example.
The game of billiards is played according to certain rules
and with a certain technique. Both rules and technique call
for specific playing equipment. The functional design of this
equipment seems simple. There is a level table, with elastic
side guards, covered with a deep-colored felt cloth on which
the balls can roll smoothly. The balls must be perfectly round
and polished, and of a bright color to insure maximum visi
bility against the background of the table. All that seems
requisite in a billiard ball is that it be a round, smooth, clearly
visible perfect sphere, resilient to a degree.
To Sullivanand the writer concurs in this heartily such
a ball would have appeared satisfying in its sheer simplicity.
Any decoration of it would not be called functional. Mil-
107
lions of billiard balls of this simple form have been produced
and used. They are little wonders of essential beauty in Vic
torian pool halls and on tables with grossly ornamental legs.
Now let us assume that we have a billiard ball embellished
with the portrait of Abraham Lincoln. At first glance, this
appears to be a flagrant instance of nonfunctional decora
tion, and its apparent offensiveness should give all the ad
vantage to the orthodox functionalist point of view.
If it could be readily shown that the decoration has no
functional justification, we might serenely subscribe to the
theory that all human products can be clearly divided into
two kinds, the functional to be approved and the non
functional to be condemned. The first kind is identified with
beautiful simplicity, like the clean ivory ball; the second is
characteristic of much of our environment, cluttered as it
often is with decorative accretions that have no functional
meaning. The future designer could be easily advised which
path to choose.
Unfortunately, the situation is not so simple. The benefit
to be derived from neatly isolating the black sheep is tan
talizing; it is seemingly placed in our reach but it cannot be
sustained against all argument. Consider the billiard ball
bearing the Lincoln portrait from the point of view of the
man who ordered this adornment. He, like that other fellow
who smokes a pipe with Teddy Roosevelt's face on it, says
that he loves a great president. But our man adds another
claim and swears that the sight of Lincoln's kindly, reassur
ing features helps to improve his game of billiards.
At first blush this sounds a bit far-fetched, but it has in
numerable and much more impressive parallels. A famous
writer may allege that he must have a certain painting hang
ing over his writing desk; otherwise he cannot write. More
over, the desk must be a Louis-Philippe desk, or it must be
of light birchwood. The collection of bric-a-brac on Zola's
writing table, mentioned earlier, seemed to him as func
tional as a velvet beret was to Richard Wagner, who could
not compose when he was not wearing this headgear.
108
Our problem now appears to turn on the factor of nervous
conditioning. None of these items is in itself functional but
as a result of the conditioning of the user they have become
functional in a sense.
Let us assume that the owner of the billiard ball, surface-
treated with the likeness of Lincoln, is a successful elderly
Negro whose parents were slaves. As far as we can gather
from the man's own testimony, his nerve tonus improves
and his faculties are stimulated to expand when he thinks of
the great and gentle emancipator. His self-confidence is in
creased when he sees Lincoln's face. His innervations and
muscular co-ordination become more precise, his arms, his
fingers, and his eyes work with greater steadiness. If he bases
all these claims on inner evidence and, even more, on his
quite measurable scores in the game, how could we safely
refute him?
If a man orders a functionally meaningless decoration, it
evidently is not functionally meaningless to him. All orna
mental nuisance, all arbitrary formalism can thus be justified
by devotees who claim that they feel better if they have
what they like and, exasperated, we are back where we
were before Greenough or Sullivan stated their great prin
ciples.
It is all well to say that form follows function, but unfor
tunately this does nothing for the form purification of wash
bowls or architecture, as so many of us ardently hoped it
would. It is a striking slogan, but it does not give us a prac
tical leverage for changing the curlicue-burdened condition
under which the human race suffers.
This suffering and widespread trouble are obvious enough.
Yet if anything truly constructive is to be accomplished, the
threat of a million formal impositions on our lives must be
proved in factual detail by intensive laboratory work. Only
observation down to the most minute detail will disclose the
physiological principles on which we must base a reformation
of design. Strangely stratified but fusable nervous responses
are really our problem. The task of reconditioning us from
harmful addictions will be arduous; predilections, as they pile
109
upon and against each other, solidify and are hard to dislo
cate. If we do not guard against unwholesomeness, it grows
up about us and seems to become functional, or at least
strongly habitual. It is not easy to keep the two concepts of
the habitual and the functional apart, or to illuminate their
interrelation.
no
FUNCTION MAY ITSELF BE A FOLLOWER for
example, when form and color excite sex in
courtship.
15
The precept that form follows func
tion is based on the observation of nature. Some phenomena
of organic life, however, seem to contradict this principle,
unless by means of sophistry we succeed in putting the cart
before the horse.
Granted that appearance and aesthetic appeal are usually
in the train of functional circumstance. This certainly seems
true of the scraggy growth and the impressive branching of a
tree under prevalent wind pressure. Yet suppose we can find
other examples in nature where, on the contrary, aesthetic
appeal is something that does not merely follow, where ap
pearance is no consequence but obviously also a cause. Then
form may in turn serve to release important functional se
quences; the faith in 'functionalism' is shaken and its un
qualified version becomes untenable at least as a universal
mode of explanation.
The shapes and colors of flowering plants that depend on
insect fertilization have, as we know, developed through
natural selection. Colorful forms are an important gear in the
wondrous, ever-busy world mill, and the billions of visiting
insects are another gear. Gears function by fitting into one
another, by interlocking. But just how does each individual
111
tooth of the first gear activate or put into motion an indi
vidual tooth of the second one? In other words, what does
actually make a wild azalea attractive to a bee? Admittedly,
the shape of the azalea's sex organs fits the bee's proboscis.
The color of the flower is white (not red, which the bee's
retina would fail to register distinctly), and the scentwell,
the scent attracts and pleases 7 the bee. Why does the whole
proposition please the bee? Why does this flower please us
and the bee? Have we really progressed with our function
alist explanation? What makes objects pleasant and attractive
to us is still a puzzle.
It is evident that, physiologically speaking, the bee is
equipped with such receptivities that the azalea can offer to
it a defintie sequence of stimulations, optical, olfactory, and
tactual. But it is exactly this combination of much-desired
stimulations that used to be called aesthetic appeal. And
such appeal appears to be operative in us as well as in the
bee. What, then, has been basically gained by this novel in
terpretation?
Again granted, the flowering plant could not exist, would
never have evolved, without that still mysterious appeal and
it is functionally dependent on it. What interests us is the
bee's endowment with a primary positive receptivity. This
phenomenon seems similar to a tropism, a basic responsive
ness to light, or moisture, or gravity. Perhaps, if we cannot
further penetrate to the core of the mystery, we can at least
gain from pointing out its specific character.
First: If the phenomenon described depends at all upon
something like aesthetic appeal, we must conclude that
aesthetic appeal is not based on the absence of interest and
desire as specified by some puristic philosophers.
Second: In the case of primary attraction, such as that of
the bee to the flower, there is something elementary at work
which may not necessarily be present in the more involved
gratification a human mind derives from perceiving a form
integrated with function. Such a 'higher' gratification is man's
prerogative and depends on his formidable upper brain equip-
112
ment, which permits all kinds of complex rapid-fire associa
tions.
This sort of satisfaction is undoubtedly widespread in hu
man life. But there remains a marked 'plus' in that primary
enjoyment of the flowering plant. This must be discussed
and is of great differential significance. The appeal here
seems to rest on quite other grounds than the logic of func
tion. It certainly does not help an over-all understanding to
close one's eyes and deny the flagrant, more elementary pe
culiarity of sheer aesthetic stimuli. The problem is stratified
and must justly be tackled on various levels.
A fish is streamlined and is covered with a waterproof and
flexible armor of scales. The adjustment to a liquid medium
is so perfect that we are delighted to behold it. Even as the
fish lies still and dead on a boat's deck planks, we can easily
imagine its living movement through the water; and if we
had never seen a fish swim, we could probably reconstruct
its function from its form.
It may readily be admitted that through such natural
forms man has learned a great deal about what constitutes
'beauty' to him. And he has applied what he has learned to
his own production; the streamlining of our automotive vehi
cles was the result of such a lesson in formal know-how.
Still, we do not for a moment see in the shape of a fish
something that was evolved to provide aesthetic appeal for
humans. Clearly this kind of beauty is a by-product.
If a streamlined form is attractive to us, the azalea is in a
different and much more primary way attractive to a bee.
Obviously, the flower presents stimuli definitely addressed to
the bee. The striking thing is that this attraction is quite
comprehensible even to us on the very same sensual grounds
on which it operates for the bee. We are evidently not the
original addressee, but we, too, respond to the message.
The appeal that the fish form has for us is based on its
obvious functional appropriateness, to which after brief cere
bration we respond emotionally. The azalea appeals to us
not because of miraculous adjustment to insect life or any
other functional considerations. Higher brain centers are not
113
involved, and the appeal evidently reaches the bee in the
same manner, since this insect is altogether devoid of such
higher centers. We humans have added through growth im
pressive top layers to our nervous equipment and are capable
of intricate satisfactions. Still we have retained the ancient
"bottom layers of the structure as well, and their primary func
tions. The study of the anatomy of the nervous system shows
that the emotional tract connects with each level of this
stratified and well-communicating structure.
Emotional response and aesthetic appeal of the primary
sort appear, for instance, in the courting activities of ani
mals. Animal courtship not only serves the purposes of sexual
selection but also provides the stimulation that leads to the
excitement necessary for mating. In lower mammals, this
stimulation is brought about by seasonal inner secretion.
But even in the case of salamanders, birds, and so on, the
stimulus to excitement must also be supplied from the out
side, especially by the male partner. His means are highly
varied but in many cases they unmistakably include elements
of what deserves the term aesthetic appeal. Not only the
birds but human bystanders as well, sexually unengaged and
indifferent as they are in this case, readily recognize this ap
peal, no matter how convinced we may be that the courtship
phenomenon fits intimately the general functional scheme of
nature. Here is simply that salient specific 'plus/ that already
mentioned primary aesthetic element which in most other
natural phenomena is not observable. Exciting form here
becomes cause.
Some Empididae flies when courting present the female
with small insects they have snared. The gift is wrapped in
silk spun by the male, or in a large glistening balloon com
posed of bubbles secreted by the lover who carries this mar
riage gift. 1 If colored paper is strewn near the males, they
will put it in their balloons. The cellophane-wrapped gift
* Wells and Huxley, The Science of Life, Doubleday, New York,
1931.
114
package and the gleaming perfume bottle have their pre
human, phylogenetic precedent.
Stickleback fish turn an iridescent red color in sexual exci
tation, and their appearance seems to be the stimulus that
in turn excites the females.
The male newt wears a magnificent nuptial dress and per
forms a courtship dance in which he prances with arched
back before the female while his tail wafts toward her the
odorous secretion of certain glands. It is this that excites her
to pick up the sperm packet he drops and to insert it herself
into the oviduct.
According to Elliot Howard, the male warbler builds the
nest, then the female joins him, and the courtship begins.
The male spreads his wings and his tail, and bristles up the
feathers on his throat and his head to thrill the female.
Again to quote Wells and Huxley: 'Most people have seen
a peacock displaying his train, perhaps the most sheerly beau
tiful sight in nature. The bustard inflates his throat, throws
back his head and overts his wings so that he may strut be
fore the hen like a surprising giant-white chrysanthemum/
The argus pheasant has perhaps the most striking ritual of
all. The long brown wings, their pattern of light spots so
wonderfully shaded that they look like solid spheres, are
spread out and thrown forward like the bell of a great flower.
His long tail plumes wave up and down and from under one
wing an eye peeps out to keep the hen in view and to watch
the 'aesthetic effect' on her.
The male Australian bower birds construct peculiar bowers
which are quite different from their nests. The bower often
consists of a short tunnel of twigs; at its entrance the bird
deposits shells, bones, berries, and bright objects. This col
lection, comparable in appeal to Victorian bric-a-brac, ap
pears to be a substitute for courting plumage; the display of
the male consists of driving the female through the bower,
and drawing her attention to his exhibit.
In all these cases, function obviously seems to follow form.
It is consequent to the display and perception of form, color,
movement. In some cases, function is provoked by a light
115
signal, by a stunning illumination, such as that produced by
certain night-mating fireflies. This beautiful light goes out
when the sexual act, which it helped to spark, is accom
plished. The function, so to speak, effaces the form when it
is no longer needed as a stimulus.
Thus the functionalist slogan might often be neatly re
versed: Appearance precedes and clearly seems to evoke an
operational event. Function follows form. Form here is pri
mary, a motivating force, as it has always seemed to old-
fashioned aestheticists who listened to music or looked at
jewelry.
As the physiologist knows, sense receptors have through
many millions of years grown in ability to perceive many
forms and colors. It must be admitted that they have come
to develop a selectivity for some preferential stimuli or their
combinations. There is no use denying that certain stimula
tions arouse emotional responses by a short circuit, while
others do not.
If we are correctly interpreting this sort of response, how
ever, which seems so independent of intellectual cortical
appreciation of function, we must evaluate it as belonging
to a relatively early evolutionary stage, in dominance when
cerebro-neural equipment had not yet reached human levels.
If we wish to judge stimuli and responses, we must under
stand clearly how our organic endowment has evolved its
present multilevel complexity, and now responds accordingly.
Nothing is gained and comprehension seems lost if we try to
blanket with one aesthetic formula two types of response,
involving operation on different physiological levels. We
should, rather, like to distinguish them more sharply.
A tree in springtime bloom elicits immediate sensory reac
tion and powerful biological events in linked-together insect
and plant life; a dead tree may, because of its shape, interest
a sensitive artist or a philosopher. To speak of both trees as
beautiful, to maintain that their beauty or their type of effec
tiveness for response be covered by the same blanket rule, is
only to cloud or confuse matters. The color and form appeal
116
of vernal bloom is more universal, more basic because it
operates in us on a relatively deeper and broader physio
logical level. The enjoyment of the dead-tree form is strictly
human and not even foreshadowed in pre-human animal na
ture. The difference is best described by a corresponding dif
ference in the characteristic neural happenings which actually
involve different regions and specific capacities of the brain.
Several of the animal species mentioned in our examples
have only a very rudimentary nervous system as compared
with man's. They thus function perfectly and normally with
out certain brain activations, many of which are in fact quite
out of their reach, though common to us.
Certain of their responses, however, still have their coun
terpart in the human nervous life, which is in some respects
more developed than theirs. Brief and direct responses that
exclude highly evolved and refined cortical activities, such as
differentiation, association, and abstraction, are quite normal
in animals, but such short circuits may well be called sub
normal when they predominate in man. Even imbeciles, ex
cept those of the very lowest grade, react more complexly
than animals.
We like to remember that any attempt to relegate pure
aesthetic appeal to a subhuman level, or to put all problems
of beauty on a subnormal level of psychic activity, would
be an erroneous approach to the whole issue. Subhuman
aesthetics cannot possibly be regarded as the right thing and
as merely polluted by the admixture of human upper-brain
action. The notion that intellectual activity as a component
of aesthetic response is an undesirable or even harmful adul
teration has become untenable. On the contrary, such ac
tivity is a normal constituent factor in the chain of our
neuromental processes. In the light of current physiological
knowledge, the idea of purity and impurity must be yielded.
Our neurological entity must be recognized. It is indi
visible and, though operating on several levels, it always re
mains a whole. Thus human judgment of environment,
whether we call it aesthetic or something else, will simply
have to have its full share of cortical ingredients. There will
117
then be many thought associations, especially admixture of
appreciation concerned with functional and genetic aspects.
All these are, so to speak, articles handed down from the top
rung of the ladder. Not indigenous to animals, upper-brain
action belongs inevitably to our stage of development and
to the human picture of the world. It is in this more com
plex world, as we see it in the light of current organic re
search, that the coming designer must operate, not in the
pure aesthetics of a bygone brand of speculation.
118
For our responding nerves DESIGN is ALWAYS
INVOLVED IN TIME from sudden shock to a
great steadiness of appeal.
16
In the examples from animal life given
in the preceding essay responses that are elicited by a
'primary' appeal have one common quality: they are sea
sonal, and their duration is very brief. As momentary excite
ments, they are communicated, for instance, from one indi
vidual to its mating partner. Bright plumage is a stimulus
for a special occasion; it is often tucked away in normal life
and only during courtship is it brought suddenly into play.
The appeal seems designed to come almost as a shock, in the
sense that it abruptly deviates from everyday appearance and
behavior.
In human conduct, too, direct sexual appeal is a departure
from the ordinary, the humdrum, the continuous. When
overt and forceful, it can scarcely be reconciled with habitual
decorum. It contradicts the rules of stable daily life. Sexual
appeal shocks into excitement, although it may sometimes
come in tiny quanta, as a mere tickle. Any attempt at mo
notonous routine would soon wear it off; it would be shock
ing no longer. Courtship behavior is only one case of express
ing and arousing emotion, and non-sexual excitation may
induce something similar.
Dr. George Murray Levick, in Antarctic Penguins, re-
119
counts that sexually excited penguins present stones as nest-
building materials to their females. The appearance of hu
mans near their rookeries seems to induce a comparable ex
citement; sometimes a bird approaches such a stranger in
stead of its mate, and solemnly drops a stone at his feet. Dr.
Levick was quite embarrassed the first time he was a recipient
of this tender attention. Thus, while display, exhibitionism,
and appeal of this sort seem related in the first place to
sexual excitation, they may also be prompted by individuals
other than the mate, or even by lifeless objects. But charac
teristic of related aesthetic phenomena are excitement, brief
duration, exceptionality. The flowering of plants, too, is a
short seasonal outburst in the course of a year, or, as in the
case of century plants, at even longer intervals.
Excitation is imparted like a shock to insects co-operating
with the flowering plant. The biologist Von Frisch has de
scribed the ecstatic 'dance 7 of the honey-gathering worker bee
upon her first return to the comb from a locale where some
species of flower, rich in nectar, has just opened into bloom.
The other workers crowd around the dancer to catch the
scent and then, guided by their olfactory equipment, eagerly
swarm out to the new 'strike/
The kind of appeal we are discussing here is essentially
linked to novelty, surprise, departure from the usual; by its
very nature it cannot be continual. Blooming and mating
are intermittent; such excitation cannot be constantly main
tained if the organism is to survive. There must be nervous
counter-currents, an inhibitive mechanism to prevent the
exhaustion that would result from endless repetition of reflex
responses. Without fatigue and the useful awareness of it as
warning signal, muscular or sexual energy, or biological ca
pacity in general, would be fatally depleted.
This primary aesthetic appeal, then, can stimulate activity
for a limited time only. The principle of function following
form operates in nature within a time limitation. On the
other hand, the principle that form follows function is not
thus restricted. It shows the stability typical of upper-brain
vintage and deals with those hardier, lasting cortical prod-
120
ucts, which are called abstracted concepts and occur only in
humans. Such concepts may guide us through a lifetime.
Their satisfactions are comparatively steady.
The cells of a honeycomb are constructed to function the
year round. Our human response to the 'functional beauty'
of their stress-balanced hexagonal structure is as stable as
this structure and its function are. The satisfaction here has
nothing to do with sudden shock. It takes a more highly
developed brain equipment to appreciate the operational
form and structure of the honeycomb, and derive lasting
gratification from it, than it does to enjoy the sweetness and
scent of honey, which constitute a more primary but short
lived satisfaction. The sensations caused by taste and scent
strike us at first like a pleasant shock, then dwindle from
second to second.
This brings us to a general consideration of the time ele
ment in aesthetic appeal. It is evident that the factor of
duration varies according to the neural level on which the
stimulus is processed and the response is formed. The level
on which complex associative operations are elicited is much
higher than that of merely sensory reaction, but what par
ticularly interests us here is that the responses on these dif
fering levels differ also in stability. Speeds of obsolescence
and fatigue phenomena play their role everywhere.
The idea of aesthetic appeal must be divested of a quality
of timelessness or eternity often attributed to it in the past.
Such appeals are subtly stratified as to neurocerebral recep
tion and assimilation and thus in regard to physiological time
in which these organic processes unfold. There are certain
basic shapes that have almost constant appeal, coupled with
a certain steady mental economy. Other aesthetic stimuli
operate on a fluctuating sensory level. But all appeals should
be graded with respect to their duration or rather the dura
tion of our receptivity to them. Each has, so to speak, a defi
nite amortization period.
Musical form, configuration of sound and rhythm, can,
through repetition, be vested with stability as a stimulus. For
the most part, however, its impact is strictly instantaneous.
121
The same may be said of certain forms in space, such as the
shape of a whiplash or a lasso in action, or of a lightning
flash. The 'shock appeal' of such a form vanishes when the
attempt is made to perpetuate it, say, on a photographic
plate or to reproduce it in a static medium. The grin of a
comic actor is immortalized to no avail in the bronze statue
of his tomb. Appeal here may even turn into repulsion.
An improvised joke or phrase patterned for primary appeal
may be rich in shock value, but if we have to hear it repeat
edly, its effectiveness wears off. The construction of a quip
intended for ephemeral newsprint is quite different from
that of a passage written for a book that is expected to re
tain favor for many years or centuries.
By this token design of form should be governed by the
criterion of the anticipated duration of exposure and appeal.
Here we undoubtedly have a basic rule for creative practice.
A billboard poster, a book, a tombstone each has dif
ferent amortization periods; very different approaches to
form and arrangement of letters or typographic standards
will therefore become appropriate. Ladies' apparel may be
designed to last only for a season. It would be a sorry mis
take to be similarly carefree or arbitrary in designing a house,
since it represents a much greater investment on the part of
the consumer, who may have to take twenty-five years to pay
it off.
Neglect or disregard of the relevance of the time factor in
design is a frequent and yet a fatal sin. It is responsible for
a permanent cluttering of our constructed environment with
elements that at best are enjoyable or endurable for only a
relatively short time. We may not be able to stand them any
longer, but they persist.
122
EARLY AND LATER FORMS OF MENTAL SATIS
FACTION closely fit early and later stages of
civilization.
17
In our everyday life we are assailed
continuously by a chaotic complexity of forms, shades,
colors, smells, noises. But a differentiating, abstracting, and
then synthesizing process takes place, until the chaos around
us is somehow articulated into more or less distinct objects
and organized entities. This mastication of an outer world
in individual bites, followed by a suffusing of all particles
into a digestible world picture, is a device not unlike chew
ing, salivation, and digestion for the assimilation of physical
food. Our mind seems bent on processing the amorphous
intake of the senses by means of a specific secretion of its
own namely, order. Design depends on this ordering ac
tivity of the mind, and contributes to it.
Plato ascribes a solemn mystical significance to abstract
ideas, to simple numerical relations and geometrical pat
terns. Mental economy evidently favors what can be easily
conceived, visualized, memorized, and communicated. Thus,
a square, a circle, or an equilateral triangle is more readily
defined, envisioned, and recalled than a figure of irregular
shape and anomalous proportions.
We are somehow equipped so that we can record our con
sumption of nervous as well as of muscular energy. Emo-
123
tionally we seem conscious whether the exertion required
for a given task will be great or small. This inner awareness
constantly colors our outlook and all our mental under
takings.
Experiments have shown that bees seem able in some
way to determine the number of their wing beats or the con
summated flight effort and thus the distance they have
flown from the hive. Effort and strain are somehow self-
measuring by inner sensations.
Our speech center records energy expended while we
repeat rhythmically rolling verse or a sample of bumpy,
chopped-up prose. Verse and prose have different values
especially in the light of brain-physiology. In a similar way
the visual center differentiates between the effort involved
in following a steady curve as a guideline, and that required
for jumping in space from point to point.
Kinesthesia deals with the feeling we experience in moving
members of our body or any small part of it, such as the eye
ball. There is a sort of kinesthetic constancy in the gliding
or, more correctly, rhythmically jerking of our eye along a
straight line. Something like a 'plus-effort' seems to occur
at any point where such a line is interrupted or where it
changes direction. In a zig-zag or in irregularly broken lines,
the volleys of nerve impulses also become irregular and have
to be multiplied.
With such inner evidence of energy expended or of econ
omy achieved, we subconsciously put a high value on regu
larity or order. We are even induced to ascribe such order
of our own making to natural phenomena which, of course,
are independent of the economics of our perceiving and con
ceiving and for the most part devoid of simple patterns and
proportions. Nature, beyond our own limited grasp, is im
partial to simple numbers and complicated fractions. Numer
ology is a very human invention, queerly projected into the
universal scene. In spite of all the ingenious endeavors of
the Jesuit scholar Wachsmann, and many others, the propor
tions of the golden mean have not been proved to prevail
in nature. By contrast the Ludolphian number jt, expressing
124
the ratio of the circle to its diameter, plays an important role
in the physics of the universe, although 3.1415 ... is any
thing but a simple, round number, easily memorized.
The experience of apprehending or remembering something
with ease is accompanied by a pleasurable feeling of lowered
tension, and thus is cherished. Conversely, our mental econ
omy, as well as Platonic aesthetics, is in general negatively
disposed to forms that are difficult to grasp or retain.
Occasionally, however, positive value is ascribed also to ele
ments that supply a titillating taste of contrast to a prevail
ing regularity. Certain deviations from common proportion
or rhythm do just that. A bit of syncopation, a slightly
startling dissonance can enliven a conventional musical score.
Irregularity is a spice in the Platonic dish.
But even the greatest irregularities deliberately created by
humans are trifling as compared with the endless complexi
ties of nature. Nevertheless we have seen that nature can be
interpreted by human brains as functional and orderly. The
Hellenic concept of the cosmos actually equates the universe
to a great, beautiful harmony or order. In this view, on this
level of mental functioning, all the phenomena of nature
seem purposefully interrelated. But sometimes we feel we
must temporarily abandon the effort to understand the world
in such terms. Then, for an interval, we experience a peculiar
mental relaxation. We resign ourselves to the amorphousness
around us, as though we were listening to a conversation in
a foreign tongue that we have given up trying to understand.
We may sit serenely on the bank of a stream that rushes
along between boulders and numerous little wooded islets.
The sound of the current fills the air with diffuse and subtle
reverberations from rocks and foliage. Purposes are forgotten;
a few rudimentary ideas of cause and effect may, for mo
ments only, flicker in our consciousness. We have ceased to
place much value on cause and consequence or on simple
forms and ideas.
The creek in a rocky canyon may cause such and such an
erosion. It may be understood to have produced through the
125
ages a resounding hollow. And now the boulders and pebbles
in its bed make the bodies of water vibrate in their much
distorted movements so that the surrounding air transmits
a multiform, complex acoustical phenomenon. Well and
good, but causes, beginnings, and ends are forgotten. To us,
all has turned into a purposeless, yet pleasing, gurgling and
tinlding polyphony. A listener in leisure enjoys the voices of
nature as something casual, carefree, lacking any intention,
without that order or form which dominates human routine.
If he were listening sharply, certain sounds would seem to be
repeating themselves lawfully; the same rocks and boulders
cause the same deflections of the current over and over again.
There are sometimes baritone and again soprano strata dis
tinguishable to the ear. In the mood he is in, he perceives
no rhythmic laws or differentiated notes, but merely sound
agreeably diffused.
In their continuous transitions, their lack of cut scale,
these sounds violate all the simple rules of classical, orderly,
man-made music. Even if it were possible to distinguish a
pattern, it would prove much too intricate to induce the
kind of response elicited by plain Platonic order. The sound
remains gently confusing, pleasantly bewildering, undefined,
and the perception is melted together with a host of other
half-conscious sensations. The olfactory impressions caused
by the moist surroundings, the visual stimulations arising
from the manifold light reflections, blinding, mirroring,
dancing, and disappearing on the ripples and waves of the
water, the drafts of cool air over the skin all this cannot be
as precisely apprehended or communicated as, say, the image
of a clearly conceived circle. Such a static abstraction, a
product of our upper brain, is much more stable than those
fleeting impressions.
If we find such landscape surroundings attractive and
beautiful restful beyond words it certainly cannot be be
cause of order. There is no trace of Platonic regularity. In
terms of geology and botany or of philosophical speculation
the scene might perhaps be interpreted as an expressive part
of the admirable world mill that operates without end. Our
126
gratification in such an environment, our relaxed vacation
spirit, however, derives from no intellectualized approach,
but rather from the circumstance that we have been hypno
tized by incomprehensible irregularity, have given up our
usual effort to distinguish, our attempt at individuation, and
have a leave of absence from all human filing systems. We
do not perceive each boulder, each ripple of water, each tuft
of moss, each cloud overhead as a cog in that great machine
or attribute a distinct functional existence to each of them.
In a mood of mental inactivity, emotionally at ease, we ex
pend a minimum of neural energy.
If we should start to examine our surroundings, organic
and inorganic elements would at once again take on 'indi
viduality' and a separate operative existence despite all essen
tial interdependence. Each of them becomes or appears to
become forthwith endowed with its own life, function, or
purpose. It is as though a huge crowd of people were sud
denly articulated into a number of distinct personalities in
interplay but each demanding special recognition. Thus at
any moment we may look into a cosmos articulated by our
own making and everything emerges at once from the cha
otic vagueness that we faced while relaxed.
Whenever we are in pursuit of a program, mental economy
impels us to find, establish, and maintain order. This may
then tend to be an order of the Platonic variety. But even
beyond that, our propensity to discern organized entities,
recognizable arrangement in what our senses perceive, is at
work in many ways.
There is nothing in itself more chaotic than the infinite
space of the heavens above us at night, filled with remote
celestial bodies rushing and whirling at inconceivable speeds
and distances. Our early ancestors projected it all into one
ceiling, and made it over into the 'peaceful tent of the starry
sky/ They grouped stars in simple constellations of approxi
mately equal luminosity. To these groupings they gave
strangely associative names the Scorpion, the Lion, the
Huntsman. They found mental comfort in this ordering of
127
a chaos not otherwise comprehended. Here we have another
early instance of the practice of mental economy, derived
from simplified 'Gestalt/
Mental activity on this level is no longer fully relaxed as
in abandonment to chaos. It is also at ease, but after another
fashion; we feel different from the way we feel within a
setting of geometric regularity. Rather it is a state of the
mind corresponding to the state the Hindus call chit, or
chee-ta ; in which associative images follow each other in a
dream-like flow. They are very often illogical, unsifted, un
controlled, but for this very reason they represent an econ
omy of nervous energy. A dream yields its own kind of
gratification and saves nervous output. The ability to attack
problems on the high and strenuous level of controlled
mental exercise and operating inhibitions developed late in
the evolution of human thinking; mythologies, easily asso
ciating those dream-like images, came first.
Emotional gratification often reflects a profit-transaction
in expenditure of nervous energy; frustration reflects a loss-
transaction. How these problems are met, and whether the
approach is more that of primitive let-go, of mythological
imagery, of Platonic regularity, or of sharp operational dis
crimination, is instrumental in shaping the man-made envi
ronment of the time. Design has often reflected a strange
mixture of various types of mental background activity.
Still, the expenditure of certain guarded quantities of
energy offers a clue to the understanding and tracing of
nervous happenings on all their levels up to high mental
exercise, and especially it is a clue to the vagaries of produc
tion and consumption of design.
128
There is no 'PURE REASON/ just as there is
no 'PURE BEAUTY/ Emotion most naturally
tinges every mind operation, be it a mathe
matical task or creative design.
18
To the man in the street, an exact
scientist may seem a pure intellectual the 'heart does not
speak in his work. Closer inspection will confound that simple
picture. A mathematician as well as a schoolboy, when con
fronted with problems of computation that really tax their
respective capacities, seems to go through certain typical emo
tional reactions: blood circulation, glandular secretion, respi
ration, the peristalsis of the bowels, metabolism, all are meas
urably affected while supposedly pure reason is at work.
Let us remember our own feelings during a mathematical
examination. Can we say that our emotions remained unaf
fected and placid? We first perceived and identified with
timidity a series of chalk marks written by the examiner on
a blackboard. We located the unknown value in the series
with a noticeable amount of tension. If we remained puz
zled and did not know immediately from routine experience
how to start or how to continue, possibly that tension grew
and produced a feeling of despondency. Something like a
catastrophic reaction may have closed in on us, causing us
to 'flunk' the exam. Even mild panic is capable of blocking
129
the orderly innervations of the abstracting, differentiating,
associating cerebral cortex.
But let us assume that we composed ourselves somewhat.
Still embarrassed, we began to apply previously acquired
methods and at once felt calmed by doing so. The words we
use here obviously designate emotional, not merely intellec
tual, states. Through proper transpositions the equation be
fore us may then have taken on a more familiar form; we
succeeded in isolating the unknown value and grew hopeful.
Suddenly the full solution dawned upon us and we felt
elated. The schoolboy may loudly shout his little 'eureka/
just as old man Archimedes, overcome with emotion, jumped
out of his bathtub because he had an idea that 'clicked. 7
The person who chalks down the solution after having
gone through considerable nervous pressure is permeated by
a marvelous relaxation. He is happy; he feels a liberation of
the heart, lungs, and lower viscera; excessive nervous im
pulses, emotional tensions have subsided. Pressure or ten
sion, the rapids and blockages in the spread of nervous
energy, are registered emotionally even in the purest of intel
lectual operations. There is nothing really pure or unmixed
about them if we watch them in the making. Only a theory
post factum depicts them as unemotional.
Basically we cherish relaxation and, only temporarily, nerv
ous tension that readily can be resolved. We wish all to re
main within normal bounds. There are aspects of the flow
of innervations, of the nervous process itself, that are re
corded as pleasurable, and others that register quite regularly
as unpleasant.
A pleasure mechanism can also be assumed to operate be
hind the peculiar procedure of designing, which, like the
enjoyment of design, is a special case of the more complex
nervous transactions. The need for satisfaction, which means
relaxation after a given problem has been solved, is implicit
right from the start of a design effort. Such anticipation sup
plies us with the hopeful mood, the favorable emotional
tonus, the incentive to tackle the task and invest the required
initial energy. From hopelessness no inventor or artist could
130
ever derive either motor power or impetus. There is lodged
in him, from some similar past experience of systematic ap
proach, a hopefulness concerned with that pleasurable relaxa
tion which comes from a well-ended nervous exertion and is
its reward: the 'sabbath feel' of accomplishment.
Thus on one hand, an initial exertion is acceptable or at
tractive because its tension is finally resolved; on the other
hand, fatigue, exhaustion, and frustration are dreaded should
no happy ending be reached in the venture. The anxiety in
the face of a new problem of design brings to mind the
despair which, according to his own testimony, gripped
Richard Wagner each time he began to labor on the com
position of a new music drama destined to last four or five
hours on the stage but to consume a year or more of his life
in creation. The available storage of nervous energy and its
consumption, subconsciously gauged, are of great significance
in design decisions and procedure. A fundamental awareness
of the limits of nervous capacity might conceivably be oper
ating even prior to a completed actual experience of fatigue.
It may account for the avoidance of waste in a master's su
preme performance and in the restrictions he voluntarily
imposes upon himself.
There is a beautiful and striking economy in the move
ments of an accomplished golf player, horseman, or dancer,
in certain passages of Shakespeare, or in the instrumental
simplicity of a Bach suite for solo flute. Whenever economy
of design has been successfully brought to wide habitual
acceptance within a culture, a great age is ushered in and a
tradition is launched which will find admiration and yield
gratification even centuries later.
It has been pointed out, however, that routine will also,
by mere repetition, impart to any process the mechanical
economy that goes with production followed by reproduc
tion. Thus, even a very involved, seemingly wasteful design
may long remain in force, and it does not contradict our
principle if a tribe, a community, or a highly civilized nation
stubbornly clings to complicated formalism. Much nervous
energy is being saved by this very adherence, energy that
131
any change or sacrifice of pattern would unavoidably force
to be expended. For people who are used to tattooing, life
without it would be quite an effort.
A much-needed physiological understanding of habit and
tradition in design relates them to neuromental economics.
And economics, a term that sounds so quantitative and cold,
is here forever mingled with fleeting emotion. Our neuro
mental performance is acted out on a multiple level stage,
like a medieval mystery play. Emotion is near to all the levels
and never exits.
Almost without exception, we may say: Whatever can be
easily perceived or nervously assimilated, that is on a small
budget of energy consumption, appears from' the outset in
viting and agreeable. Something seemingly ready for easy
assimilation, however, may first be made the object of a little
experimenting that deviates interestingly from the norm.
There may be a show of some boldness in modifying the
norm, a bit of extravagance, a vent to our exploratory play
drive. Still, such occasional thrills picked up under way, as it
were, must not make us forget the fundamental law. A sub
sequent and ultimate relaxation seems the sweetest fruit we
can obtain. An intuitive awareness of our nervous energy
household makes us rather timid in expending such energy
too freely.
What is commonly called conservatism thus seems to be
an attitude derived from a primary survival mechanism,
which must not by any means be ignored or despised.
132
MENTAL ECONOMY IS MANIFOLD, from Simple
regularity to the ease that comes from even
complex habit; also 'magic' shortcuts have
been seen to supplement the more laborious
satisfactions of the mind.
19
The ancestor of our engineer and de
signer was the primeval toolmaker, builder of canoes, pro
ducer of early weapons. The contraptions man designed may
be found anything but perfect in their functioning, and as
his wits gave out a gap still remained between reality and
the goal set.
Whenever anticipation is unfulfilled, a remainder of neural
tension seems to disturb the mental comfort. As the designer
begins to stagger on his difficult path, in his wishful think
ing he looks for a detour or jumps the track of rationality.
He may slip out of his blind alley onto another level; some
times we could say that he gropes down to an underground
by-pass. The whole process then seems to play closer to the
lower brain levels of quickened emotional gratification, and
below the full upper brain possibilities. We have spoken of
dreamlike imagery and symbolism. They enter here, also, to
provide a shortcut, bringing relief and wish fulfillment where
the factual solution, the product, in its physical functioning,
had remained imperfect and troublesome. I have on occasion
noticed similar tendencies in my own mind while laboring
133
Dn a difficult design and tiring under the strain. It is neces
sary for a human being to arrive at a resting place and it
seems to be against the nature of a mental operation that is
emotionally sustained to stop anywhere before at least a tem
porary abatement of nervous tension has been reached.
It is fascinating to look forward to a future in which this
all-important phenomenon of inventing, and of fatiguing in
the process, may be interpreted in exact terms of brain
physiology. We have tried to state it from a psychological
point of view. A rational approach to a design problem is
followed just as long as the difficulties can be surmounted
and resistive friction does not develop to such a degree that
this rational inventiveness is brought to a standstill. With a
standstill-before-the-solution emotionally intolerable, a sub
stitute is sought, whether by that dive into subterranean
magic or a leap from the end of the firmer path onto the
flying trapeze of mystical satisfaction. Fundamentally it is
emotional gratification that must be reached by fair means
or foul.
There is, of course, nothing really fair or foul, nothing
moral or immoral in jumping the track when its end has
been reached. Within a certain historical constellation, the
track of rational design is simply limited, and no designer's
responsibility reaches beyond it. Ultra posse nemo tenetur.
Incapacity sets an end to responsibility, as the Roman
lawyers acknowledged.
A significant warning is in order, however. The survival
of a design idea will be impaired if the track is willfully
jumped by the designer who only makes believe that he can
go no farther. Such a situation occurs when he pretends that
he lives a hundred or a thousand years earlier, at a time when
the track actually was blocked, owing to then prevailing con
ditions. In this case, the designer chooses to indulge in
phony primitivism or childishness, without the excuse of
emergency or true contemporary limitations, but just for fun.
Probably here is foul play. His crawling on the floor, re
ferred to earlier, is not a true infantile survival aid, but
134
rather a futile adult pose assumed to prey on the charm of
a child. It is a pose that is sterile.
With this in mind we avail ourselves of a very practical
criterion to gauge and judge design, and design approach, at
any historical or current moment. A Chinese junk has a well-
designed prow to cut the waves. An engineering brain did
ingenious work as far as it went and as far as was possible
at the time. Nevertheless, deficiencies became flagrant when
a typhoon blew. All the painful constructive thinking did
not prevail, and could not always assure against wreckage.
Therefore a means of 'mental insurance' was sought in
dreamlike wishful association and symbolic links of design.
A triumphant-dragon ornament crowned the prow to give
victory over evil storms, and eyes were painted on to find
the way through the turbulent and darkened waters.
Once mathematical computations are discovered to gauge
impacts and to dimension hulls of ships for resistance, how
ever, once radio beams guide vessels through air and over
the foggy ocean, dragons and painted eyes fall gradually into
disuse. They must, because they are no longer legitimate in
the mentality, the neuro-energetic terms of design's current
phase. A different thinking and judging is now automatically
touched off by the same problem.
Today we cannot design a vessel such as an ancient Chi
nese junk without willfully reverting to a lower level of
nervous satisfaction; and to ignore our present level is to
stunt the mental potential for evolution. It means that sur
vival is impaired by maladjustment and by a disuse of our
mind, the organ that propels the race. Disuse will cause its
atrophy, abuse will make its performance doubtful, its prod
ucts harmful.
We see here in a nutshell a good part of the physiologi
cally determined history of design. Through the ages one
ancient economy of thinking, one earlier practice of neuro-
mental economy, is replaced by a later one. Magic must
again and again withdraw into fields not yet 'full-cortically'
plowed through; and, indeed, there seems a limitless back
country for ever-new retrenchments of the uninhibited, the
135
undifferentiated, the semi-controlled, the naively animisti-
cally conceived. Thinking on a level that is due to the most
recent evolution and perfection of the thinking process is
strenuous and we like to lapse into an easier, earlier practice.
Playfully, we may once in a while toy with old-fashioned
modes of association and attach to the front of our automo
bile a symbolic radiator figure, a dim reflection of that
trusted dragon on the prow of the Chinese junk. Someone
may still place a rabbit's foot in his pocket before boarding
a transoceanic sky sleeper.
In the world of modern design-economy, the radiator figure
is a relic. To hoard gold pieces in an old stocking may have
been the proper thing in the Thirty Years 7 War. Nylon
hosiery filled with our kind of token currency and stuffed
into a modern Beauty Rest mattress is a sham device for
fending off financial catastrophe in our times. Such 'atavism 7
is simply out of step with current economics, mental and
otherwise. Similarly, certain design conduct may, once upon
a time, have been quite well adjusted to an earlier mentality
and its economics; today it is an anachronism, which cannot
pay off in current coin.
Economy of nervous exertion, a basic principle underlying
neuromental phenomena, has consequences in form and de
sign which are manifold and varied. They are historically
stratified and depend on the level of mental economics the
designer and his public have reached.
As minds march on, one form of economy follows another
and each affects design activity and development at their
very roots.
The primary economy of simplicity may stand near the
beginning; a simple child's story built on symmetry and
rhythmical repetition may have that sort of economy to
commend its acceptance. On the other hand, a story, a song,
a form, a color combination may be very complicated and
devious and still highly acceptable. Tribal life is full of in
volved behavior and those formalisms which save and store
up energy once they are stereotyped. With the exception of
a few rebels man has always clung to his established econ-
136
omy. Rites and customs may be hotly defended against all
newcomers in the field because they yield the desired nerv
ous economy, although in quite another way than through
intrinsic simplicity. Thus there exists an economy of routine
that is well contrasted with the economy of simplicity. And
there is also the fascinating economy of the magic short cut.
Yet when magic degenerates from a dynamic instrumen
tality into static, humdrum ornamentalism, or when Platonic
simplicities, symmetries, 'axialities/ and rhythmical repeti
tions have been frozen in rigor mortis and have found eternal
rest in colonnaded post offices to give chilly aid and comfort
to the ever-orderly mind of the Procurement Division, sur
vival has not really been secured but rather impaired. There
is, indeed, a pleasurable, an almost libidinous accent to mo
ments when strain is relieved and inner mental pressure de
pleted, but such depletion must not gain infinite perma
nence.
Simple regularity can be granted general honor among
mental economy measures. It seems to have operated on a
subhuman level and Gestalt psychologists have made it their
point that birds and bees appreciate certain organized pat
terns. This animal preference stamps such features perhaps
basic, but it should not purport to make them supreme on
a human level of mental operation. In a way, it may even
be subhuman and atavistic to let simply organized shapes
govern our choice. At any rate, we must strive cautiously to
appraise the physiological function of consuming, absorbing,
assimilating forms, be they simple, organized entities, habitu
ated complexities, magic remnants, or novel and puzzling
technogen necessities requirements of the industrialized age
in which we find ourselves.
137
ARCHITECTURE IS ILLUMINATED NOT ONLY BY
LIGHT but by sound as well; in fact it is
brought into relief for us THROUGH ALL OUR
SENSES.
20
Traditionally architecture has been
conceived in visual terms, or in terms of visually perceptible
'Gestalt/ The human eye is much more developed and more
sharply focused than the ear. Its influence on consciousness
seems stronger than that of all our other sense receptors.
Some of these, e.g. the sense of smell, are perhaps not only
arrested on a lower level, but definitely regressed and atro
phied when compared with the corresponding equipment of
certain animals.
Yet we must guard against the notion that only those sense
perceptions that are easily and consciously registered really
count. One might say that environmental influences are only
rarely granted entry to consciousness, but may become par
ticularly pernicious when consciousness is lacking to correct
or counteract them. We should therefore be interested in all
the non-visual aspects of architectural environment and de
sign even if they are not customarily in the foreground of
our awareness.
The acoustics of a theater or assembly hall have become a
design factor of the first order, changing shape and surface
treatment in a manner that would never have been stimu-
138
lated through considerations of vision alone. In many cases,
the intentions of what may be called the Platonic or Eu
clidean architect are nullified by the acoustical expert, to
whom parallel or circular walls, domes, and other customary
formal elements are offensive.
The classical architect, it must also be remembered, does
not use the terms 'geometrical 7 or 'mathematical' in their
modern sense, which has been complicated and revolution
ized by recent generations of scientists. He may idolize
mathematics but to him it means always elementary, simple,
easily memorized relationships. In his eyes, even a fraction
that would divide out into several decimals does not belong
to comfortable mathematics. When it comes to curves, 'free
shapes' have been a recent daring introduction; the Euclidean
architect loved a circle or possibly an ellipse. Acoustics, at
any rate, do not happen to fit into this straitjacket of simpli
fied visual selectivity. In considering architecture as an acous
tical phenomenon, however, we have more in mind than the
mere audibility of a speaker on the platform or of a singer
on the opera stage. Acoustics affect much more deeply the
enjoyment of architecture itself and the perception of space
within an enclosure, or of voids between buildings.
When we walk throuh the nave of a medieval cathedral,
the impact of our steps on the stone pavement, or the re
verberation of a little cough, makes possible, or even becomes
in itself, a vital, essential impression of the architectural
space. Such sounds acoustically elucidate also the material
of their enclosure. Stone walls may echo, but velvet drapes
scarcely reverberate and signal nothing to the ear. Like light,
sound will bring into bright relief architectural bodies and
spaces and leave portions of them in shade.
As an auditory performance, the ritual during Mass ac
tually reveals the interior of the church to us. It is an error
to think of the cathedral as only containing or housing can
dles, singing people, a sounding organ. The choral modula
tions, the booming of the basses, the diminishing pianissimos
illuminate the grand interior acoustically just as the candles
do visually. Without the light, conditioned by the stained-
139
glass windows, the interior would be simply nonexistent in
its particular visual appeal. Similarly a design pattern that
modifies sounds makes possible a great part of our architec
tural perception.
Because of acoustics, the error of conceiving architecture
in abstract forms and of allowing its 'instrumentation' in con
crete materials to be an afterthought becomes impossible.
A motion-picture set of a cathedral, constructed for mere
optical consumption by the camera, is devoid of the archi
tectural impressiveness for all our senses that a real cathedral
holds. It is photographically, visually, faithful to the original
and an object of pride for the stage designer. But because
it is constructed in papier mache and studio board over a
flimsy wooden frame, its dull acoustical properties of rever
beration are so foreign to those of the original that they place
the copy on an entirely different plane of experience. Fine
visual sets may be extremely untrue acoustically. In the sound
picture, the acoustics of a real cathedral must be added. They
are produced separately in an electrically equipped sound
chamber and then dubbed in. By similar means, we can now
enjoy the acoustics of Carnegie Hall in our i2 / xi2 / bed
room by turning on a radio or record player.
Some of the newly developed electrical instruments, such
as the stringed instruments of Benioff, which have no re
sounding body of their own, may one day be made inde
pendent of the room's acoustics. This will permit us to enjoy
music that has a brilliance entirely foreign to the space and
enclosure in which we listen to it. It will even be possible
to adjust these illusionary acoustics while the piece is being
performed. In other words, it is then not merely amplifica
tion of the instrumental sound which takes place. The
audible dimensions of the room may change from a small
enclosure to gigantic space when the musician merely steps
on a pedal while playing a given phrase. A performance of
the last movement of Beethoven's Ninth Symphony is one
of many striking examples of the fact that the acoustics of
a room, kept constant, are an impediment to musical enjoy
ment. When the great chorus begins, thundering above the
140
still-restricted orchestra of the early nineteenth century, one
feels that the ceiling ought to be raised and the walls made
to recede. The future conductor may be able to effect just
that. In an acoustical sense, he may actually inflate and col
lapse the room about his audience. This is an acoustical
space mirage. It is space, visually unreal, and a merely ear-
imagined architecture brought home to us by electronics.
There are deceptive, illusionary methods that a designer
may employ, and certainly not only when he invests his
effort in stage sets. It should be emphasized that 'illusion' is
one of the designer's common instrumentalities, and that he
would do well to familiarize himself with some of the serious
research in this field. Possibly he could even exert a construc
tive influence on such research.
The well-known size-weight illusion is what Helrnholtz
called an unconscious inference. It is based on experiences
in which several senses originally contributed to perceiving
one piece of co-ordinated information. Later, only one sense
may elicit the same idea or cortical response, although this
may not correspond to the total facts in the case. Thus the
designer can, for instance, make a structural member seem
strong or heavy by giving it large apparent dimensions,
although it may be composed merely of inflated surfaces
around a hollow.
Experiments systematically conducted with children to
test capacity for illusion have yielded well-tabulated results.
For instance, a ball that never left the hand of the experi
menter was 'seen' in a counted number of cases, as though
it had been thrown and were traveling, and a perception
initiated by a movement of the arm was often seemingly
continued for the ball, while in reality that motion had not
been transmitted.
Often the designer operates unconsciously, employing
rudimentary illusions and suggestive devices, perhaps with
out even knowing it. A straight line is so strongly directional
that it takes on a seeming dynamism. To the observer a line
or a slender rod that runs up to a plane crossing its direction
141
does not really 'die out' there but gives the impression of
piercing the plane. The onlooker perceives the line as if it
were actually penetrating that surface and passing through
it into some conjectural space beyond. With skill, this can
be used and is being used to counteract our feeling of the
space-limiting character of a wall. It is a device of designing
that can make a wall into a mere screen by producing some
thing like a subconscious supposition of void space behind
a thin surface. Such a design can be called suggestive; it is
suggestive of things that are not really sensed.
Since Binet's suggestibility tests dealing with false esti
mates of comparative lengths of lines, many observations
have been made on similar subjects. Certainly, experimenta
tion on illusive and suggestive devices in design, visual or
not, would yield much useful information.
* Architecture is normally a matter of composite percep
tions which the designer should understand in their linkage.
While he has only recently gained rational command of the
acoustical means, calculated visual tricks and illusions have
been his stock in trade since antiquity. They may be seen in
Pompeian interiors and throughout the Italian Renaissance;
Bramante's Santa Maria delle Grazie is a famous example.
The false perspectives, the only optically raised domes, the
artfully deepened niches and vistas of the Baroque may now
perhaps find their counterpart in ingeniously widened and
gratifying acoustical perspectives.
Whether we are conscious of it or not, the constructed
environment either appeals to us or harms us also as a com
plex auditory phenomenon and is often effective even in its
tiniest reverberations.
The excitement of auditory stimuli produced by the life in
our constructed shell is a factor that the classical architect
ignored for the glorification of a visual and static abstraction
only. The designer of a physiologically conceived, constructed
environment can no longer ignore it. Architecture to him is
a stage for the dynamics that affect the ear as sound rever
berations, the eye as light reflected, and the other senses in
many forms.
142
The sensory phenomena which the architect anticipates in
a building makes him select certain dimensions, forms, and
materials to serve the consumer's comfort. Ill assembled,
these sensory stimuli may also make us suffer or make us
feel dull, listless, irritated.
Anyone who travels in Japan notices that Japanese speech
and behavior are less noisy, more subdued than the corre
sponding occidental expressions. Japanese children are trained
early to delicacy of sound and touch. In a Japanese interior
of oiled paper and thin silk, stretched over those incredibly
slender frames of cryptomeria wood, an American child
would seem noisy and destructive.
Japanese privacy depends on hushed voices in rooms which
can be closed off temporarily by sliding screens rooms not
acoustically insulated. Secret conversations are better held
visually, in writing, as in a play by Nakamura: a few quickly
brushed characters are in a mysterious way shown for a mo
ment to a conspirator and then silently thrown into the
hiabashi, the charcoal brazier. The Japanese home with its
acoustical and other specific properties is the nucleus of a
broad culture, with modes of living intricately dependent on
architecture and its many sensory realities. Other structures,
such as the store, the tea house, the Japanese restaurant with
its chambres particulieres, opening broadly onto lightly con
structed porches and subtly landscaped yards, closely imitate
domestic interiors and repeat their acoustical and other char
acteristics.
By way of adaptation, all Japanese living spaces are small
compared with ours, proportioned to the small stature of
the people. The subtlety and precision in dress, of feminine
make-up, building finishes, and joinery, the daintiness of
IcaJcemonos and roll pictures, of cherry twigs and chrysanthe
mums tenderly arranged in equally tender pottery of mani
fold refined glazing detail all this appears as concession, to
even myopic eyes, at any rate for close-range visual enjoy
ment. To see a few Japanese sitting in a small, almost empty
10- or i2-mat room patiently watching the dance of maikos,
young geisha novices in flowerlike costumes, is to realize that
143
they used to belong to a people of especially blessed eyes
whose surroundings had been liberated by plan from visual
clutter and interference.
Still, all this has its definite and significant acoustical cor
relate. Acoustics, too, are intimately built into this civiliza
tion. The subdued quavering, twittering sounds of stringed
instruments, such as the shamisen and the goto, the vocali
zation of Japanese songs and lyrics, are similarly designed to
carry no distance at all. Their vibrato, where it occurs, means
something entirely different from that of the Italian primo
tenoro. He, by straining his vocal cords, tried to reach cus
tomers in the fourth gallery of the Old Teatro dal Verme
or La Scala. He actually moves stones as Orpheus did
through his music, because his singing fits a structure of re
sounding masonry, to which the tradition of bel canto is
coupled. The Japanese house has no such resounding quality.
Its shell consists of paper membranes in dull tension. The
floors are covered with thick straw mats on which the
dancers 7 feet, in padded cotton socks, produce no audible
impact. And no such impact or acoustical stimulus is in
tended. The dance is almost stationary, almost silent. The
movements are flowing, not staccato. They do not call for
rhythmical noise.
In a Japanese house, a fandango garnished with Spanish
castanets would be a destructive turmoil and at the same
time a frustrated performance acoustically crippled. Equally
incomprehensible and puzzling would be a Japanese lyrical
poem of a few short, whispery lines, recited to an American
after-dinner party in a heavy fireproof apartment building
with glass windows vibrating from Park Avenue traffic.
Future instruction in environmental design and architec
tural training will instill detailed awareness of the basic
physiological actuality that the human nervous apparatus is
continuously stimulated through a large number of sense
receptors. Mutual interferences can cause trouble or all may
be planned to serve and to function through a wholesome
integration of design impacts, still largely unknown, and for
much subtle pleasantness, too often ignored.
144
THE DESIGNED ENVIRONMENT CAN AND DOES
PATTERN FOR US MANY KINDS OF SENSATIONS
which derive from air currents, heat losses,
aromatic exhalations, textures, resiliences, and
from the all-pervading pull of gravity.
21
There has been an almost customary
underevaluation of architectural design by a broad public.
This may often be traced to the simple physiological fact
that a great many individuals are visually much less endowed
and developed than we are inclined to assume. An architec
tural environment, discussed, as usual, merely on visual
grounds and treated accordingly, will, of necessity, leave
these individuals indifferent or only mildly interested.
Other sensory aspects should, therefore, be further ex
plored. The interior of the little red schoolhouse, with its
cast-iron stove glowing in an unventilated room, and the
classrooms of its great successor, the monumental brick box
of a metropolitan school district, with its wood-trimmed
blackboards and oiled or waxed floors, all had a peculiar sour
smell. Generations of boys and girls have been thoroughly
familiar with the schoolroom odor which attaches itself to
that wooden chalk rail with a wet sponge on it, the lockers
loaded with rain-drenched overcoats, and the lunch kit
scented by cheese sandwiches.
Books read near high-school library shelving retain olfac-
145
tory accents which remain emotionally associated with these
early experiences in literature. As a matter of fact, odors of
school environment, as of many others, are most intimately
held in memory and more quickly recognized again in later
years than are visual impressions of the architecture in
volved.
The hygroscopic cut stone of medieval cathedral masonry
has its peculiar gaseous exhalations, supported by those of
moist microbiotic life, which make certain ancient interiors
recognizable to a blindfolded person, more so than the
flavor that distinguishes one popular cigarette from another,
as advertised in a similar test.
Certain odors do not occur in well-irradiated rooms, but
are indigenous to dark basements. Porous materials, such as
softwood and stone, flavor interiors quite differently from
those where condensations, due to temperature drops, never
penetrate but merely flow off impervious surfaces, such as
marbles and metals and the ancient mosaics in the tomb of
Empress Galla Placidia.
The smell of a Victorian wood-paneled study might be
sensorially more distinctive to us than its stylistic profiles,
cornices, and moldings; and it will be different for highly
polished, lacquered walnut than for waxed oak or untreated
redwood or cedar.
The livability of a parlor might be more strongly affected
by the smells of upholstery, carpet, and draperies than by
the visual ornament of imitation Chippendale or Sheraton.
The rubber flooring, the enamel paints, spar varnishes, tung
oil, the banana smell of certain synthetic lacquers, even
varied sorts of dust, originating locally but not very con
sciously recorded, yield an inexhaustible array of odorous
impressions to be reckoned with in design.
Air polluted by a little cigarette smoke smells differently
from that of a guard house in which tobacco pipes are kept
going, and even slight traces of body perspiration (far below
the saturation standards of old-fashioned barracks and dor
mitories) give well-marked, though often subconscious, ac
cents to any ill-vented interior. Slums, overlooked or toler-
146
ated by many indifferent eyes, become repulsive to many
nosesno slum is 'picturesque' to the nose. It is perhaps
characteristic of the contempt in which this sense is un
justly held that even to discuss smells passes as ill-bred.
Future design of living environment may operate effec
tively with positive olfactory ingredients and not merely
guard against the presence of the most obviously obnoxious
ones.
Earlier periods used antidotes of scent in their interiors
and burned incense to overpower the attack on the nose of
tallow candles and chamber toilets. It remains open to ques
tion whether future designers will content themselves simply
to produce nose neutrality and abstract odorlessness, if this
can be achieved at all. Perhaps they will learn of the perti
nent physiological effects due to the integral exhalations of
their structural and finishing materials which form the en
closures of human life. They will not just add a nip or
sprinkling of olfactorial refreshment from their ozonizer;
and we should hardly anticipate the use of mere additive,
'decorative' smells.
Yet should hermetical air-conditioning prevail, we know
that there will be no such auxiliary as an uncontrolled
breeze from the garden. It will no longer help out against
the monotony of the interior with an accidental precious
whiff of nature's perfume, varied as the seasons unroll,
thanks to the blooming lilac bush, the night jasmine, or the
pittosporum in the neighbor's garden. Incidentally, it does
remain a significant precedent for constructed environment
that gardens at least have been sensitively designed on an
olfactorial basis too, not only on visual principles.
Dogs have comparatively dull eyesight. But if they could
speak up, they could tell a nose-inspired story of their mil
lennia of domestication. After having borne with us in caves,
in elevated, open, windy, neolithic lake dwellings, in the
tightly walled cities of the age of the Crusades, in farm
houses adjoining cow barns, and in apartments with dumb
waiters and laundry chutes, a history of architecture flavored
147
by smells could be revealed, a history that would be strik
ingly different from the one pictured in our visually con
ceived textbooks.
Intimately related to our reception of odors is our sense
of the moisture content of the air enclosed by architectural
space and of the movement of this air. The latter caters to
cutaneous receptors which record lower-than-body tempera
ture and are activated when evaporation of the moisture film
on the skin is accelerated. The degree of this acceleration is
sensitively perceived. It conveys to us a consciousness of the
speed and intensity of air movement about us.
Air currents are forced into certain perceivable patterns by
the shape of the enclosure and the locations of air vents pierc
ing it. One can even see this pattern in a Gothic cathedral
or a domed Renaissance church by watching those endlessly
self-repeating forms of drifting incense smoke which quiver
and change characteristically when the main entrance, or the
door to the crypt, or again the door to the sagrestia or bat-
tisterio, is opened.
Every constructed interior, every architectural layout down
to a simple cross-ventilated living room, is destined, and
may well be designed, to have its specific pattern of air cur
rents, which is normally perceived by our senses of tempera
ture and of touch.
Our physiological, our nervous equipment permits us to
notice the vital difference in near-by wall materials. Some
of them absorb the bodily warmth; some are mirrors which
seem to reflect our own heat rays and 'caloric image/ Some
materials are heat gatherers, such as wood or celotex or cork,
and these store warmth near our shoulders or our back or
our feet; some speedily conduct it away from us and thus are
cool not only to the immediate touch but even from a cer
tain distance.
A designer who places a built-in settee so that there is a
concrete wall on one side, a glass surface on the other, and
a wooden wainscot to the rear of the sitter has established
148
a definite pattern of heat loss. 1 And we must remember that
various parts of our body have a varied sensitivity to heat
losses; the soles of our feet and the back, or dorsal region,
are more sensitive than, for example, our chest and head.
The head again takes irradiation of heat quite differently
from, say, the palm of our hand. Anyone who basks in the
sun on the beach may painfully learn that much.
One can, from the very start, design a room, its orienta
tion and material selection, in such a manner that tempera
ture losses, irradiation, and air currents are salient parts of
the scheme. In this manner one can achieve a differentiation
richer and more pleasant than when a design is concerned
merely with visual perception and ignores all other potential
sensory aims.
Tactile stimuli have always been recognized as important
factors in producing responses to architectural environment.
Rough masonry on the front of a fireplace, crude-surfaced,
porous softwood, homespun upholstery goods, coarsely woven
rugs and blankets apart from all associations with rusticity
will yield effects profoundly different from smooth, evenly
polished surfaces. Material specifications have been per
petually influenced by such data of only vaguely conscious
sensory experience. But detailed experimentation is needed
before we shall know how certain tactile stimuli, combined
with resiliencies, for example, appeal to our fingertips, to our
toes and soles when we walk, to our back when we lean, and
so affect our total nervous system.
Here we must not overlook that sitting on an upholstered
chair, lying on a springed sofa, stepping on a padded carpet
or, for contrast, on a terrazzo stair registers certain inner
muscular perceptions that are quite different from tactile
impressions. Internal strains and stresses are produced by
placing our body in a certain position, by the deformation
of our muscular cushions at exterior physical contact and
^Many years after these lines were first written, the author is very
gratified to learn that studies on this subject, at least for classrooms, are
under way.
149
where our body is supported. All such stimuli find significant
response. They are first recorded by sense receptors, most
numerously distributed throughout our body and varied so
that some of them are stimulated by tension, some by com
pression of the organic fabric. (These senses are called pro-
prioceptors, pressure corpuscles, the 'organs of Golgi/) Inci
dentally, the image we have of our own body depends largely
on such inner and surface pressures. 2
From infancy, our ego is much concerned with support,
always missing the primary comfort of a floating manifold
suspension in the uterus. Rigid firmness is evaluated quite
differently from stepping, sitting, resting, or moving on sup
ports of marked resilience. The sense of gravity is alerted,
together with a large group of inner muscular senses, when
we stand or walk on a mattress or springy floor covering.
Yet there may be erroneous beliefs concerning the actual
lower threshold of perception in matters of resilience. Hard
wood flooring or resinous tile is assumed to be more resilient
than cement floors. In this case we may have filed our sense
reports incorrectly. It may be proved by measured experi
ment, and only precise physiological experiments can prove
it, that discomfort and fatigue here are caused rather by a
variation in body heat lost through our feet than by differen
tials in resilience, which in these cases are probably far below
what we can possibly perceive. It would take more than an
elephant to compress and deform a hardwood floor. How
could a housewife notice the difference in resiliency from
that of cement? Of course, we must not confuse this issue
with the possible deflection of joists under the flooring,
which in a flimsy building might well give us more concern
than pleasure.
It may be that much more pronounced deflections will be
tolerated, in fact planned and enjoyed in a homogeneously
elastic architecture of the future. At present, while we still
proceed precariously to sheath elastic skeletons with crack-
2 Paul Shilder, The Image and Appearance of the Human Body.
Kegan Paul, Trench, Trubner, London, 1935.
150
ing, brittle plaster and cement, noticeable deflections are
rather taboo.
In human dwelling places, complex inner stimuli derive
from the design of the rooms and the articles in them with
which we surround ourselves. The chair, together with the
desk, determines our posture; so does the couch on which
we read with a light source, either well or inconveniently
placed. Or, for example, that same couch may be planned
and placed in poor relationship to a magnificent window and
make us crane our neck in vain to enjoy the view. The prob
lems of posture relate a vast number of other sensory experi
ences to vision, which concerns and directs not only our eyes
but our whole body.
It is clearly the design of a room and its furniture which
call for certain habitual movements and placements of our
body. The taking and holding of a posture, the going into
any muscular action, in turn establish what is called a kin-
esthetic pattern, a pattern of successive and simultaneous
inner stimuli. Important responses are then elicited by such
stimuli, reflexes are touched off, conditioned by a routine
usage of furniture, lighting fixtures, and a thousand little
items which, in their placement and function, may be vari
ously right or wrong. The responses mentioned are frequently
not conscious ones, and in many cases not motor responses
directed toward a remedial action. Often these responses are
emotional but cumulative, so that lasting depressions or ex
hilarations may be their effect, and thus the effect of the
room in which we spend our time.
The discussed kinesthetic pattern established, inside the
body, is indeed in intimate correspondence with the layout
and design pattern outside. Architecture, in fact, is just such
a pattern, laid down about us to guide continuously the
movement and straining of our eyes, necks, arms, and legs.
A great deal of relaxation and emotional gratification may
come from it or may be prevented by it.
We ought now to touch a little more upon our complex
sense of gravity. It is this sense which, for example, makes
151
us prefer a horizontal plane on which to step. Standing and
walking on a ramp or incline requires many more trickily
balanced innervations than walking on a level floor. Our en
tire architecture, stratified as it is in level planes, is evidently
prejudiced by this circumstance. The physiological deter
mination of architecture by gravity is perhaps more worth
while to note than the often glorified external and mechan
ical triumph over it.
It is well enough known that architects are continually
dealing with the phenomenon of gravity and heaviness, and
that it has been their venerable job to support lintel beams
by means of posts or columns, and arches by means of pillars
and buttresses. But apart from these dramatic exhibitions of
resistance to the pull of the earth, the forces of gravity are
brought home to all of us and to the designer much more
intimately. They are continually recorded and minutely felt
within our bodies, within all the muscles we use in balanc
ing ourselves. We must remember, not only a tight-rope
dancer is engaged in a balancing act. Our own far-reaching
involvement in problems of posture derives from the salient
fact that we almost never react to gravity pull alone. Pri
marily, of course, we do not want to slump down and are
perpetually engaged in supporting our body; yet most of the
time we have some additional, some second task which in
our consciousness may well appear as the primary one. We
wish, for example, to turn our attention to another person
in the room or, if we are by ourselves, to a view window, a
radio tuner, or another contraption, which we intend to
operate. While we lie on a sofa and read a book by the
illumination of a wall light we must find and keep a suit
able support for our head in relation to the printed page.
All this involves simultaneous posturing for a task and
against gravity. It is not unusual to sit and try to write notes
while holding a telephone receiver. During our entire life on
this planet we endeavor to attend to so many things and all
the while the earth is exerting its pull. Gravity is incessantly
pressing certain of our organs against others as we go into
this or that position. These inner pressures, though they are
152
in the majority not consciously perceived, produce feelings
of comfort or discomfort, as the case may be. Furniture de
sign and placement, many interior arrangements and instal
lations of the architect must deal directly and indirectly with
this mysterious pull, which endlessly reaches into all our
activities, work, recreation, and rest.
Gravitational sensibility, then, deeply affects our apprecia
tion of architectural environment. Pews in which we sit,
sofas on which we lounge, tables from which we eat, desks
on which we work are either 'comfortable' or distracting and
fatiguing to us through a combination of sensations which
respond to gravity, though indirectly. We are much more
aware that our eyes are concerned with the light of a spec
tacular sunset over the sea or with a brightly illuminated
mural than we are conscious that our many inner muscle
senses are minutely reporting on gravity, even while we, re
clined in a club chair, intend to relax.
We combine these inner sensations with those of our spe
cific inner-ear organ of gravity and with our visual impres
sions of the up and down and of oblique perspectives in
which we often happen to see our room. Finally, we are
ready to pronounce our judgment on the comfort of the
chair and its position in relation to the fireplace or the
window which may give onto a mountain skyline up high,
or a lake shore beneath our feet.
Physiological research on posture may, as pointed out,
affect not only the designing of chairs, desks, and tables but
also the manifold relative arrangements of space, furniture,
and placement of appliances that make it so necessary for
us habitually to assume certain postures. Such arrangements
may occur in a vast variety of rooms dedicated to relaxation
or to specific tasks be it in the front seats of rushing auto
mobiles or at typewriters which swivel out into supposedly
handy positions.
It should again be emphasized that none of the discussed
responses occurs truly independent of each other. On the
contrary, they are tightly woven together in what is called
153
stereognosis. We have spoken of incorrectly filed sense re
ports; but, generally, indeed, the stereognostic cross-filing
system of the many co-ordinated senses is a miracle, worth
all study.
The wonders of electricity were exhibited at country fairs
and dancing froglegs were viewed with amazement long be
fore electric power was generated in giant plants. Pyrotech
nics will long have been an entertainment before rocket
ships take off to the moon. And so also the physiological
wonders of stereognosis are demonstrated as side-shows and
wrongly interpreted by the barker to sightseers who crowd
in to visit the 'Mystery House on Confusion Hill/
The architect who designed the out-of-plumb confusion
establishment off the highway for thousands of perplexity
seekers had in a way a job differing perhaps only by exag
geration from the job every architect has. There is always
an appeal to senses and mind in a strong interaction; an
architect entertains the acquired stereognostic adjustment,
strengthens it, or slightly disturbs it. In doing so he pro
duces habitual satisfaction or novel thrill, as the case may
be. The novelty on Confusion Hill might arouse sweat on
the forehead, uneasiness, mild seasickness, but as usual the
architect of the place is not even recognized as the trouble
maker.
In more normal houses he may be innocent by sheer igno
rance of the powers he wields over his victims, but in the
Mystery House he turns into a calculating torturer. By plan
he throws a monkey wrench into the collaborative working
of the senses. The floor, walls, ceiling, although tilted, keep
their usual relationship, so that the eyes are deceived and re
port the situation as normal. But the other up and down
senses differ in their report and are here brought disturbingly
out of joint with the eye. Gravity, always taken for granted,
becomes a surprising phenomenon of almost painful inten
sity and of a direction which makes it over into something
we believe we have never experienced before.
We enter with humorous skepticism the Mystery House
on the hillside, on which it and its yard fence stand at a right
154
angle to the slope. In the patio, water seems to run upward
in a slanting gutter, ping-pong balls apparently roll uphill
and ignore gravity. Chairs stand on an incline, lamps hang
stiffly out of plumb, as if charged with a strange magnetic
force. When pushed, they swing with astoundingly wrong
amplitudes, like a pendulum gone crazy. Our inner disturb
ance grows while we sit at a table, from which a strange power
seems to pull us away. We feel we could not eat a bite in
this place. We look around and notice, in a quiet seemingly
ordinary room, how dizziness overcomes us. We rise, and
the muscles of thighs, middle-foot, and toes strangely fail us,
we totter and tumble against a wall. Fortunately the com
mercially well-conceived Confusion Establishment carries a
liquor license and afterward can serve us a drink to counter
act the secondary shock to stomach and viscera.
The whole is a striking example of how deep down the
disturbance will reach if we break the co-cordination of visual
experience and gravity sense in the inner ear and the many
muscle-senses, which help our usual balancing act. This stere-
ognistic co-ordination is slowly acquired from infancy and,
through a network of nerve connections, governs glandular
secretion, blood circulation, the rhythmic intestinal move
ments. Reassured feelings are related to this established har
monization of sensory clues, termed stereognosis, and other
emotions arise promptly from a disharmony among them.
The compounding of sense impressions produces our gen
eralized consciousness of the environment, be it natural or
designed and constructed. Such consciousness remains emo
tionally tinged throughout and subtly flavored. It would be
hard to speak here. of pure or impure appeal in the spirit of
earlier aesthetics.
155
Einstein seems closer to our energy-bound
space-time of the senses than were classical
Euclid and Newton. 'PHYSIOLOGICAL SPACE'
HAS IN ITS VERY ORIGIN PRONOUNCED DIREC
TION AND RANGES onto which man has later
slowly planted his many meanings.
If architecture is an affair of many
senses, the stage assigned to it, space itself, is in fact also a
multisensorial product which begins to evolve for us while
we are still in the uterus.
The prenatal experience of shelter, floating in the evenly
warm liquid medium of the mother's womb, is a primary
factor molding our later reactions to an outer world, and
to the architectural compartments that we construct for
our later life. That early uterine floating is, however, merely
a tactile, a gravitational, a somesthetic experience, that is,
one based on general body sensations. It does not yet in
volve all other senses, and has, for example, nothing to do
with the important visual responsiveness which develops only
after the eyes are opened at birth. It is with our eyes that we
discern dimness and brightness related to narrow enclosure
and expanse. Thus, if some of us cherish darkened cave-like
interiors, often preserved in occidental dwellings, this cannot
stem from the womb. Agoraphobia, the pathologically pro
nounced fear of open spaces, has a strong visual compo-
156
nent and so, too, cannot go back to the period of living
blind which the embryo passes during gestation. Nor has
it descended to us from the earliest anthropological stages
where man freely roamed a tepid landscape and seldom
sought shelter. To all appearances, it must rather be a
product of later conditioning. Perhaps a memory still lingers
of the protected and comforting glacial cave in the midst of
frightening climatic cataclysm. Whatever it may be, the aver
sion against seeing a broad expanse uncurbed and space wide
open has stood rigidly against many an architectural design
of our day.
What the various senses bring in is by a practical life
time's experience worked into a space concept, studded
with diversified meaningful associations. It has also been
badly warped and depleted by controversial social condition
ing. The sense of gravity, for example, naturally and strongly
contributes to our awareness of the above and the below, of
the upward and downward in space. To the mind trained
to follow Euclid, however, this is all a matter of indifference.
To him space is nondirectional. For him all directions have
equal significance and lie grants no preference.
Yet physiologically conceived space in general can have
no such neutrality. It has natural Vector properties/ as a
mathematician would say. Without them it could not even
come into sensory existence. Stimulative impacts always
originate somewhere and from there reach our sense recep
tors. This at once does away with any possibility of direc
tional indifference. Different directions by themselves have
or acquire for a living being very different meanings and
specific emotional loads. Our nervous apparatus does not
register anything that we could call space without these
meanings and emotional overtones sounding in. They are
by-products and perpetual accompanists of all our space per
ception.
Up and down, right and left, forward and backward, far
and near these are not geometrical terms. If we really want
to fit the architecture of constructed environment to life and
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so put it on a physiological basis, we must decisively step
beyond and outside the abstractions of Euclidean geometry.
To the great seventeenth-century thinkers such as New
ton and Leibniz, space in its own nature was absolute, al
ways self-similar or homogeneous, not involved in any dy
namic phenomena. Now, looking back from our current
vantage point, we know that instead of saying, 'space in its
own nature/ Newton should have said, in his Principia:
'Space by current definition or by a convention derived from
classical geometry/
Space had existed naturally in the most intimate experi
ence of living organisms and particularly of man long before
all those conceptual crystallizations took place. We may con
veniently term space in its own original nature physiological
space. It was first nothing of stray speculation, but some
thing very intimate to the daily life of organisms as they
moved, grew, and exercised their senses. Physiological space
may be traced back even to the primitive experiences of the
tiniest viscous cell. The osmotic exchange of gaseous and
liquid substances, pressure inside or outside the enclosure of
its semi-permeable membrane: these were indeed a cell's
arch experiences in physiologically related space.
In the more recent developments of mathematical physics
there is something like a return from dangerously thinned-
out abstract conventions, back to our common organic base.
We are closer to this base in declaring time-space insepa
rable, a fourfold continuum. Strange as such a statement may
have sounded at first, it comes really much closer to ordinary
physiological life experience than the idea of a separate
space and time. This strange idea involved the arbitrary split
ting of a manifold that was organically fused and inseparable
in our very being.
Einstein's intimate interweaving of a spatial universe that
was formerly merely geometrical with the physical universe
of gravitational or accelerative fields, and with mass, light,
and energy, brings it much closer to the physiological space
perceived through our senses. Forces acting upon them in-
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trinsically fill the universe. This natural space was recklessly
left behind in the impoverishment of Euclidean abstraction
and made over into a lonely, empty space. Altogether, that
was a rather regrettable divorce if we consider the hapless,
loveless offspring of mere formal geometry in architectural
practice. These so-called classical structures, left around for
us to worry about from Buenos Aires to Bucharest, are often
orphans without near relations to life, each suspended in a
vacuum, each isolated and aloof in its symmetrical self-
centeredness.
To the lay person there may well be some strangeness in
contemporary mathematical physics, in 'curved, expanding,
and contracting space/ in the 'indeterminacy' or 'uncertainty 7
of motion, position, velocity. This strangeness comes largely
from one circumstance: all those concepts have their con
crete stage of action quantitatively outside of the normal
human sensory range. Planning and designing within sub-
molecular spaces is called chemistry and, on a still more ele
mentary plane, nuclear physics. Here new ideas must fit new
minimum magnitudes. On the other hand also the investiga
tion of vast magnitudes and velocities on stellar levels, and
of a correspondingly sized physical interaction, is, naturally r
unfamiliar to the man in the street. All this commonly re
mains outside the realm of planners and architects as well as
of those who use cities and houses on an ordinary macro
scopic scale. Investigations far beyond daily routine could
not well demonstrate to a general public how essentially
near the new scientific space concept has come to our very
physiological foundations.
Einstein deals only with operational concepts and the ob
servable to bear them out, but I have admired him in his
fascinating conversation and breadth of human interests.
He seems much closer to pulsing life than a teacher of cool
classical geometry, who deals with speculative, timeless con
cepts that are independent of matter and energy.
Our living space is the space into which we were born as
feeling observers and from which the geometrical abstrac-
159
tionists and some architects of a bygone or passing day tried
to expel us.
When we remember the moon high up in the zenith, and
suddenly have it in front of us, skimming the hills of the
horizon like a tremendous disk, it seems a different moon.
Experience is needed even to identify it as the same. If we
look upward in an elevator shaft, the space above us is very
different from the space below us, perceived through an open
floor grate of the elevator cab or a high landing platform.
Climbing the stairs in the observatory on Mount Palomar,
we see first the starry sky overhead; then we bend over, look
deep downward, and marvel at it in the huge crystal-clear,
two-hundred-inch refractor beneath. It makes a most strik
ing, almost terrifying emotional difference to have the sky
underfoot.
This difference is based on physiological circumstance and
functioning. Our subtle inner perception of body position is
called somesthesis, and that of muscular efforts to overcome
weight in every moving or cantilevered member of our phy
sique, Jcinesthesis. Both play their role when we bend for
ward or backward and if we do so in order to look, we
promptly combine the visual with these other perceptions.
The specific gravity sense housed in the semi-circular canals
of our inner ear makes its very important contribution. With
all this co-ordinated equipment, we sensitively record, for
example, that situation of stooping over the sky which so
unexpectedly appears below our eyes. It is a situation fright
fully opposed to our common over-all sensory experience. In
classical geometry and its space concept, however, gravity, of
course, played no role, and the vertical was not distinct from
the horizontal. Nothing more removed from life could be
conceived than such serene indifference.
A student of environmental design must fully and in
practical detail appreciate that ten feet measured vertically
is perhaps a sizable dimension when taken as the height of
a room. Laterally, as the width of a room, these same ten
feet suddenly appear to have another, very much reduced
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magnitude. Finally, as a frontal distance if we stand in a
cell with our back to one wall and find ourselves curbed by
another oppressive wall a mere ten feet away it may be still
more cramped space. All this is easily tested, but deserves
minute quantitative analysis through experimental attention.
Research on space perception may unroll problematics of
which most people had been only vaguely aware.
Simple physiological requirements have undoubtedly been
much sinned against when the design of cities and buildings
was considered a mere planimetric job. The neuromental
effect of a medieval town clustered around a hill crowned
by a romanesque monastery, the bishop's castle, or a spired
cathedral is not gaugeable in a plan only, and, of course, was
never conceived on planimetric terms. Organic space compo
sition transcends such terms by many ups and downs, by
impressive heavinesses and soaring lightnesses.
But the mentioned distinct values attached to the vertical
and the horizontal directions do not begin to exhaust the
treasure of space connotations that spring from physiological
grounds. When we perceive space in front of us, it is to us
something quite different than the space behind us. The fact
remains that the human species, like its more recent mam
malian ancestors, has its eyes, its visual receptors, lodged in
the front of the head, not on the sides or in the back of the
skull. Nose and ears are less clearly oriented in their func
tion; nevertheless, when stimulated, they make us turn and
face the issue. Arms and hands, legs and feet are so jointed
that the range of their effectiveness is greatest if we bring
our body into a frontal relation to events in space. Our inner
senses recording movement and posture tell us whether our
body squarely faces an event to gain such effectiveness, be it
facing a leaping lion or an approaching lover.
As a matter of course the meaning of 'ahead' and 'behind/
a space conception endowed with 'forward 7 and 'backward, 7
permeates our thinking and feeling. All things in front can
be controlled or tackled; things behind are out of such con
trol, but are better not left unsettled, lest they remain a
source of peril, or at least suspicion. There is nothing merely
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metaphorical about this. Perhaps a million years ago it pene
trated into primitive reasoning, and it has given emotive
color to all the aiming and struggling of the species and the
individual. The transition from the physiological cause ^ to
sociological consequence of accepted meaning is often im
perceptible.
The famous self-centered domed rotunda of St. Peter's in
Rome was, according to the original conception, a purely
geometrical, multiaxial, nondirectional abstraction. Yet na
ture slipped in again, against the wish of no lesser creators
than Bramante and Michelangelo, who had planned here
with ideological static purity. The Roman proverb, natura
semper recurret, held true for the grand building of Rome.
Two subsequent generations of architects, such as Maderna
and Bernini, bowed to nature and labored to revive dynamic
direction in St. Peter's design. A center of Christendom had
proved a mere figure of speech and something of an unac
ceptable abstraction, as a practical and spiritual facility. The
Christians of the world could not well close in from all sides
and form a ring about the building. Actually pilgrims had to
approach it, and through it, its tabernacle. A processional, a
gradual forward movement, a forward-facing toward the holy,
is an immortal part of all naturally founded ritual. In the
end an impressively approachable altar in the background of
the remodeled church interior, rather than a geometrical
center, was powerfully played up tq intensify this human
desire to face. The nave was elongated forward at a later
date; an 'afterthought fagade ? and the colonnaded foreground
plaza were added to prepare for approach; everything was
done to accomplish direction and so answer an organic need,
a dictation of nature.
In the process, the all-around visibility of the huge dome
was sacrificed, and it is now dwarfed to a mere background
feature. For hundreds of years, learned aestheticists who ap
preciated the superb centric geometricity of the original de
sign have regretted the changes. But physiologists may well
shrug their shoulders and state that front-back is a biological
tradition of long and powerful standing, with eye sockets
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moved forward and subtle brain functions influenced by this
profound fact. Even a Titan of the powers of a Michelangelo
will have to operate within biological necessities, or else the
chance for survival of his work will be impaired, will dwindle
under the pressure of basic counterforces, stronger than the
most potent human decision. Thus a symmetrical center of
the world has to remain precarious theory, an idea strange
to concrete feeling. The world, at least as we view and sense
it, can have no hub unless it is the little ego itself. Wherever
the Deity may be conceived to dwell, that ego, by its nature,
would have to face it, prostrate itself before the supreme, use
an actual and animated body in adoration, bend the head
down in humility or raise eyes and hands upward in hope.
The ritual will always conform with the tenets of physio
logical space, with its strong directional accents. Building
design must follow suit.
If we walk along a precipice or drive a car over a road
zig-zagging up a mountainside we notice a very marked dif
ference when the steep slope is to our left and when it is to
our right. In fact, the grip, strength, skill, and operational
precision of our right hand is different from that of our left.
Our entire nervous function seems to depend on whether we
are right-handed or left-handed, and the normalcy of right-
handedness has many obvious social derivatives. The officer
used to carry his sword at his left for good reasons. The tools
of the cobbler, the draftsman, the tailor, the window washer,
the chimney sweep, are placed about these people often in
a conventional and characteristic way, as are the forks,
spoons, and knives of the eater at the dining table. These
arrangements, originating from the normal functioning of
human bodies, bluntly disparage symmetry to which the
paper-planning architect so long allowed himself to be en
slaved. But in fact, he even cherished it as his perpetual
recipe. He would place buildings for government depart
ments, one here, one there, symmetrical to the mall, as
deafly as he would dispose the entrances to a post office, one
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here, one there, no matter from which direction pedestrians
were expected to come or where car-parking areas could
be provided. Fortunately, he was not given power to design
a motor car with the steering wheel neatly in the center of
the front seat.
Altogether we are not simply symmetrically bilateral, but
rather constitutionally asymmetrical. Important inner or
ganssay, the heart have grown lopsidedly in our body.
Even the two halves of our supposedly symmetrical face are
anything but fully corresponding at birth. By later nervous
and muscular function of facial expressive motility, they de
velop with advancing age to be more and more asymmetrical.
Students of personality and expression have prepared sur
prising photo mountings that illustrate this point. A face is
first frontally photographed and printed in the normal way.
A second print is cut along the center line of the face, and
then the right half is removed and substituted by the left
half, which has been printed from the reversed negative.
The same process is followed to produce a synthetic face
from two right halves. Thus two complete faces are artfully
obtained from either portion of the photograph. These faces,
as now composed, are far from resembling each other and
do not seem to show the same person at all, as first photo
graphed and presented naturally. We hardly can recognize
ourselves in these purely symmetrical adaptations.
Astounding at first, all this only proves again the fact, well
known to an attentive observer, that we are in form and
function anything but close to physiological symmetry in a
strict geometrical sense. And yet, endless exhibits of sym
metrical beauty and geometrical simplification from court
houses and railroad stations to footwear testify how de
signers have concentrated on this sort of abstraction and
how little concerned they were with vital reality. Their prod
ucts might fill a strange museum of physiological abortions
and miscarriages. Nevertheless, the fact that a human foot
has an array of unequal toes, of which the biggest one ap
pears on the inner side and the others taper off to the outer
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side, prevailed and Euclidean shoes of symmetry could not
last. Yet they have pinched many a foot. 1
If we position a writing desk not in the center of a room
but in such a manner that the major space remains in front
of it and can be seen by the person seated at the desk, or
if, on the other hand, we place this piece of furniture in a
way that it faces a wall with a good deal of space back of
it, which thus is not visible, we have obviously developed
two situations quite distinct in physiological meaning. If we
place the desk with its right edge to the window, we inter
fere with the physiological fact of right-handedness and pro
duce eyestrain through an irritating shadow cast by the writ
ing hand. In other words, physiological factors or considera
tions have little to do with geometrical arrangement of room
and furniture. Much of the time they are contradictory to
it. But these elementary examples prove the importance of
permeating environmental design with the use of tested data
of organic significance.
A physiological concept of space, then, is needed to posi
tion the various physical objects which we require and for
which we make allowances. In a bedroom, for example, the
first objective may be breathing air which is replenished
through well-placed window openings and passes through the
interior at will. Further, there are various items we desire to
have immediately within arm's reach. Other necessary things
must also be readily accessible, but for some we may well
allow two or three steps. Our breathing lungs, our stepping
legs, our reaching arms are physiological scales and furnish
modules of space.
All considerations of spacing derive, of course, from the
basic fact that no two solids can simultaneously exist over
lapping in the same space. They have to be placed outside
of each other and outside of the space we allot ourselves for
1 These remarks about shoes were written a dozen years ago and were
inspired much earlier by Adolf Loos. More recently, Bernard Rudofsky
(Are Clothes Modern, 1947) has, with humor, treated the strait- jacket
of symmetry and clothing as applied to the human figure.
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moving about and for using all the equipment. Any poor
arrangement in this respect may become a perpetual nervous
irritant in the routine of our daily life, an irritant quite
similar to a bad traffic layout in a neighborhood or a com
munity. Rush hours, jams, and parking problems loom also
in a family bathroom.
But this tactile side-by-side problem is by no means the
only one. Beyond and above the budgeting of space for ob
jects and for our own bodies, there is the important aspect
of pure visual space. When we open our eyes in the morn
ing to start the day or when we return home in the evening,
fatigued and desirous of relaxation, our home or bedroom
might be the stage for visual conflict, friction, and irritation.
No doubt the constructed environment as we actually have
it is generally full of such visual collision, of turmoil to the
eye, and of neglected optical litter. Nervously wholesome
surroundings, spaces in which nervous balance can be found
and organic life can thus be served and preserved, undoubt
edly have their own laws, tuned to a common human physi
ology. There is that stupendous whole of a constructed envi
ronment, which, like fate, envelops civilized life. It must not
be allowed to conflict seriously with those natural laws.
Physiological space must prevail in the end. It must be
helped to prevail over any other arbitrary notion on space.
It may have to overrule and rectify all these notions and
sociological concepts of space, to which the individual hum
bly, often amazingly, has submitted for many generations.
Sociological space after all is only what man as a social being
with all his cerebral teamwork of distillings and embroider-
ings has derived from basic physiological space and what
group life has superimposed upon it. The base must remain
to bear the superstructure.
Parceling fairly level land was an early part played on this
stage of the sociological space-drama. Out of it, and sprout
ing from the land surveyor's descriptive practice, grew the
entire subsequent tragedy of Euclidean geometry inadvert
ently turned into creative design. We have seen it, in the
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grandeur of its abstraction, often badly emasculate physio
logical space, even disorganize or, we should say, de-organize
it. When direction, organic distance, height, depth, up and
down, right and left, in front and behind were gone and for
gotten, space had become denatured, amorphous.
It may now be seen, however, that this sharply consistent
geometrical abstraction was only one of the multiform de
velopments of sociological space. Many other, less logical
space concepts and connotations, variegated and symbolic,
conflicted with it. Many were spun from the basic physio
logic fiber stretched along through the ages. Also these often
confused strands tended to tie down and hamstring design
until it could barely move.
There is influential meaning to the fact that the Victorian
hostess sat at the table often in the only armchair, the guests
on ordinary chairs one inch lower, while the informal Cali
fornia hostess in the current living room often cuddles on
the carpet beside the easy chair of the guest of honor. Social
space concepts may be controversial but they are of great
effectiveness in environmental make-up.
Seeing a person from above is, of course, different from
looking up at him. The deep curtsy or genuflection corre
sponded to the high baldachined throne seat or the tall tiara
or crown on the prince's head. As Adolf Loos used to tell
us students, everything about the venerable palace had to
be super-elevated the ceilings, the height dimensions of
windows and of doors with looming supra-porte decorations
over their tops.
The sky-is-the-limit sentiment has expressed the splendor
of kingly courts as well as the power of realty-finance com
bines which gloried in the verticalism of skyscrapers with
empire in their names as well as in the blood of their ambi
tion. The verbal convention of narrating the histories of
empires in vertical terms of rise and fall is anything but acci
dental.
To gain height against the eternal puU of gravity is the
supreme triumph of the living; only the dead must lie level.
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Their flatness is the prototype of all forced and final relaxa
tion. They have clearly resigned all vertical aspirations. In
pure classical geometry, however, common emotions which
the designer evokes with steep ascents or staggering precipi-
tousness do not count.
'Distance to be conquered' is another one of life-like ad
mixtures which will easily adulterate a 'pure' and static space
concept. As far as this concept is geometrical, there exists
nothing like the idea of accessibility or of a range of control.
Still, our different senses and the reach and power of our
arms and legs have distinctly such ranges. Indeed, the ranges
of possible control surround each individual in concentric
rings. The closer ones are, of course, more easily negotiated
than the farther ones. Starting from the near-by inner ring
and proceeding outward through the middle reaches into the
blue distance of the far and last horizon, conventionalized
connotations have settled and sedimented onto these zones
of distance. All distance is naturally reckoned from the sense-
equipped ego in the center. In time and through civilization
this entire centric space system seems to become barnacled
with symbolism. Its 'sedimental pressure, 7 we could say,
molds quite a bit the social being and its designs.
Physiological space is emotionally egotistic. Three steps
taken toward us are quite different from three steps away
from us, and it must not necessarily be real movement which
yields this effect; it may be merely potential. When physicists
debate expanding space versus contracting space, lay persons
feel emotionally touched by the very words, puzzling as they
may be.
Three steps almost within arm's reach again have a dif
ferent significance than the same distance a mile away. There
is a mental perspective of space values involved as well as
a mere visual foreshortening. And, sociologically, nearness,
if undesired, connotes oppression, perhaps danger, or in
fringement on privacy. However, if a king or superior per
sonage chooses to step near an ordinary mortal, it means
honor and flattering familiarity. When the Pope ends an
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informal audience, he withdraws from intimacy a step to
give his blessing. There is an accretion of rites concerned
with spatial action and layout.
Space enjoyment and allotment are linked with a wealth of
multiple sense reports. At low winter temperatures, we have
learned to value the smallness of a room's air volume which
needs only a reasonable caloric quantity to give us the pleas
antness of warmth. This smallness of quarters, restricted in
terior distances, together with low ceilings, thus generally
receive a sociological accent of coziness and economy. In
contrast thereto, the tall and wide room is, as we have seen,
associated with an upper societal stratum, characterized by
economic independence, cool and guarded distance, and
also by correspondingly measured patterns in gait and ges
ticulation. How differences in room size and height are ap
praised by the ear shall not be forgotten. If, in consequence,
the voice has to be raised or can be lowered, this all has its
established significance in human relations from intimacy to
formality.
Again sociologically evaluated, and so in the world of de
sign, space also has its distinctly inward sequences toward
more and more privacy, starting from the outer entry to
social living quarters, then to master suite, and finally to the
master bath, which may be the most withdrawn room. De
rived from the original organic fact of facing, there are
within space forward sequences of honor ritual, of dignity,
of progress, of interest in climax. We find such sequences
when we proceed through the sphinx alleys, between the
pylons, pass the outer and inner courts of an Egyptian
temple, or wander forward under the long fugue of high
floating groined vaults toward the altar triptych of a Gothic
church, finally to reach the secluded seats of the respected
clerical chapter, well removed from common laity. Spaces
are sociologically graded by a commonly understood and
accepted symbolism quite similar to that of martial parades,
.pageants, or religious processions, which in turn will often
move through such spaces.
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For periods the organic essence of space may have been
denatured, diluted, and adulterated by conventional bias. In
the light of a physiological understanding;, space will be re
deemed and recognized as a living experience instead of a
pale abstraction to be filled with arbitrariness, be it novel
fashion or the accretion of ages.
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DESIGN AS AN AID TO SURVIVAL HlUSt always
have an intimate kinship to the life processes
it SERVES WITHIN TIME.
23
Space is the stage on which design per
forms. But every performance is also contained in time and
its results extend within it. Design must serve physiological
and social processes. All its activity must be seen as the
human way of furthering and continuing life, the life of our
species.
If we operate with such a broad concept as survival, we
naturally need to understand the things that aid or threaten
it. It is a fundamental consideration underlying all specific
problems and concerning the organism in all its parts. The
great Verworn has stated that if physiology attempted an
explanation of vital processes, it would in the end have to
be in terms of cell physiology. 1
1 To take a phenomenon, considered truly elemental, basic, and gen
eral, the normal and the varying concentration of hydrogen-ion in living
protoplasms has, until recently at least, seemed to many the cause for
an avalanche of consequences: 'Biologists of every school of thought/
to quote Heilbrunn, *have postulated hydrogen-ion changes to account
for practically all types of phenomena. Thus pathologists have thought
that death and certain types of diseases are due to an overactivity of
the cells; embryologists have claimed that fertilization and cleavage are
due to a change in the pH; human physiologists have, at one time or
another, insisted that the contraction of muscles is due to acidity of the
muscle cells, or that the stimulus for respiration is a change in the
171
If aid and detriment to survival are to serve us as the truly
dependable criteria, as scale and measure for design values
and for judgments on the fitness of this or that environ
mental detail, there is no other way but first to study what
is called general physiology, and the factors that may be
intrinsically involved in survival will become increasingly
clear.
To be sure, various terms of survival or connotations of
the concept, such as adequacy of circulation, resistance to
fatigue and to infection, and capacity for recovery and re
generation are still rather sketchy. It is difficult at this time
to stipulate which of the connotations is decisive. If, for
example, the idea of unsrunted growth is considered, the
definition of it as 'a gradual increase of a living organism'
does not suffice, because it may seem to put the accumula
tion of fat into the class of growth. Growth means a surplus
of anabolism, of upbuilding. Yet the catabolic processes of
consuming matter produce a display of energy also very char
acteristic of a vigorously growing specimen. In certain organ
ismsfor example, in reptiles and fish growth has no defi
nite limits of space and time; it is in itself a controversial
concept. Nevertheless, we should not doubt, for example,
that any interference with the production of those hormones
which accelerate the healthy build-up of an organism into
the state of maturity would certainly be a clear-cut threat to
the survival of the race.
In all circumstances, consideration of survival involves a
time perspective. And characteristic of any design for living
is its fundamental temporal involvement. Design is always
meant to favor and preserve life processes and normally can
not be rigid or must not be conceived to fit static situations.
To look at time in terms of a wrist watch is basing it on
a man-made mechanism. Time may also be expressed and
hydrogen-ion concentration of certain brain cells; and, to continue but
not complete the list, botanists have argued that the tropism of plants
is due to difference in pH/ (Heilbrunn, General Physiology, 1938, p.
54.) Recently the recognition of certain action of phosphate carbon
protein 'buffers' has complicated some of these interpretations.
172
measured naturally by atomic decay, such* as radio-activity or
the million-year rock erosion due to the steady action of
water. These processes can be described as extra-organic.
Growing, aging, fatiguing, and recovering, however, are the
physiological clocks by which we actually gauge time and
by which it is brought home to us. By our own inner evi
dence, this concept of time is truly inseparable from life in
all its phases and, therefore, from a design for life which
we can grasp emotionally.
It has already been pointed out as unfortunate that a
formal, abstract geometry, divorced from physiological space,
has long dominated the minds and activities of designers.
Now we must emphasize the precarious timelessness of clas
sical geometry. Physiological time and geometry are strangers.
But a time-foreign design appears to by-pass life or cripple
it in its most important dimension.
One of the fundamental concepts with which designers
operate is proportion. Proportion seems independent of time
and also of absolute size. A large or a small design may be
similarly well or badly done because the same proportions
occur in both. Similarity is here spoken of as a term that has
deeply penetrated our thinking. Geometry held a monopoly
on its definition. Originally, as every school child knows,
similarity was interpreted or abstractedly explained by Euclid
in relation to triangles. Triangles that can be brought into a
position with their sides parallel to each other and with cor
responding angles of equal size are termed 'similar/ This is
a static and timeless way of looking at things. It is a view
eternal and at rest like the pyramids of Egypt which, also
are similar to each other, large or small.
What do similarities and differences amount to in the
world of the living, big and small?
A huge elephant and a little mouse are grouped together
as being similar, less in formal looks than in important life
functions say, in suckling their young. With this opera
tional feature in mind, they are designated as mammals. But
we could, for the purpose of strengthening our point, even
173
assume that their formal similarity and parallelism are much
greater than they happen to he and that the elephant loolcs
precisely like a mouse seen through a magnifying glass. Even
in this case, the physiological similarity hetween the two, the
big and the small, would be far from full or true; there would
remain a strange but vital difference on which we must dwell
if we are interested in life's function.
The ratio of surface to volume in the little mouse is very
different from the corresponding ratio of the elephant. This
means that the heat production in the mouse has to be
much more lively, granted an environment of equal tem
perature and conductivity. In turn, the high rate of heat pro
duction seems in the mouse to speed up all life activities as
compared with those of the elephant. And so these two ani
mals, assumed by us to be of perfect formal similarity, live
on two very dissimilar physiological time scales. No figure
will adequately describe this deep and far-reaching difference.
But we may notice that the elephant's heart beats 25 to 28
times a minute, whereas the heart of the mouse beats 520
to 780 times during the same period. At this rate the mouse
cannot possibly live as long as the elephant; it dies after
three years or so, while the elephant, living by a time
standard perhaps more 'similar' to that of the carp in the
pond, enjoys 80 to 100 years.
If an architect were called upon to design zoological
garden cages for a mouse and for an elephant, habitations
that would conform to no more than the minimum stand
ards these animals require for a healthy, happy life, he would
have to take into consideration more than just the conven
tional kind of proportions. Cold, static geometry would not
do where life is to be served. And thus the little mouse re
quires much more room for jumping about, and engages in
a greater 'motility 7 than an elephant. To bring the problem
closer to our own lives, even though a boy may be half the
height of his father, it would be erroneous to apportion half
the space to his bodily activities and life necessities. Again,
geometry does not apply; organic considerations must prevail
174
Through its operational relatedness to time, the suggested
physiological view drastically combats all abstracted formal
ism in our setting. It becomes clear that to life and to design
for life there can exist no empty, lonely space by itself, but
only a space-time manifold filled with heartbeat and warmth.
No frozen forms in void and emptiness, but matter-and-
energy phenomena changing vividly from one form to the
other such are the things that must be accommodated by
design.
Euclidean designers for thousands of years have innocently
borrowed "proportions* from a mammoth Parthenon to be
passed by many human steps and to be viewed while bent
over backward in awe. They have religiously reduced these
proportions in order to apply them to the Doric front of a
suburban branch bank, a little garden pavilion, or what-have-
you. The height and width of a door, the dimensions of its
ornamental moldings, may be multiplied by two or four or
ten and always remain 'well proportioned' to each other. Yet
even in such a monumental building as the palace of the
mightiest king or in the majestic board room of the first
national city bank, doorknobs and latches cannot grow to
ten times their size and retain a meaning relative to gripping
hands or living beings. If organic living forms truly become
our prototype of design or if they are only to be placed suc
cessfully within designed settings, then what used to be
identical 'proportions' often results in utter nonsense. 2
In spite of formal similarity and cherished and retained
proportions, organic operations may be found most dis
similar. In order to produce any similarity in and for life,
2 The beginning of the sixteenth century was an age of rules and
canons of proportions. The book that Luca Pacioli had printed in 1506
bore the characteristic title Divina Proportione. In 1567, Vincenzo
Dantf s Trattato delle perfette proportion! brought the old classical idea
of a perfect canon to the fore. In 1584, Lomazzo's Trattato della pit-
tura, scoltura, ed architettura chimed in: 'without geometry and arith
metic nobody can hope to become a painter/ 'Correct' measurements,
however, were certainly not the only contribution of that classical age.
Leonardo da Vinci himself, who in his Trattato della pittura established
their theoretical foundation, wisely warned against canons of any sort
because of 'the immense variety of nature.'
175
the emphasis on what has to be brought into the most suit
able ratio must be shifted very significantly. A cease-fire in
this abstruse combat against nature shall be advocated.
To live means being engaged in energy exchange and vital
contact with the outer world. All life processes moving
about, growing, aging, fatiguing, being nurtured, or losing
calories are closely related to problems and magnitude of
this contact. To those who live, there is no splendid isola
tion. There is give and take. These operational concerns are
superior to any kind of angular equality or a mere geomet
rical kind of eternal proportion.
Timeless non-physiological, abstract formalism concerned
with proportions of this kind has long been dangerously over-
stressed in its application to design and to the environment
in which life can be staged successfully. It is like a foul blow
to life itself, a danger threatening the vitals. There can be
no comfort in a world where stupidly the columns of a little
prefab's entry porch are made half as high as in a Georgian
palace while the corresponding proportions of other orna
mental trappings are proudly preserved to fit the reduction.
Artifacts must not ignore the dynamic dimensions of life
that they involve at every step. There can be no happy sur
vival where children are dressed and treated as little grown
upspoor-darling diminutive 'similes' of adults. We have
had too much of this sort of fallacy.
We should perhaps return for a moment to the design im
plications of growth to which aging relates. Growth affects
also our idea of self-similarity. We change, and this change
away from ourselves seems pleasant enough when we are
young; our faculties increase. But later on when we decline,
it becomes an increasingly wistful affair.
To use the physiological word, aging, also for inorganic
objects and 'constructs/ may be a loose practice. Yet, even
in the case of a house, self-similarity is pretty well impaired
when the various parts do not give out all at the same time
but at varying speeds. It is impossible to design it so that its
frame will droop at exactly the same rate as the paint wears
176
off. The entire structure becomes sadly and increasingly dis
similar to itself just like a man who loses his teeth and
takes on fat, while his hair turns white at the temples and
disappears at the top. Thus also the reverse process of grow
ing poses a corresponding problem. Yet it all spells a need
for design with a time implication, design to fit a bundle of
processes rather than a static state of affairs.
We are of course aware of the difference between design
ing shoes and pants for a rapidly growing little boy and get
ting footwear and clothing for a full-grown man. The little
boy like a grasshopper which changes its outer shell, the
chitinous case of its 'exoskeleton/ by a series of moltings
will have to have new shoes and pants periodically. There is
for this a more or less predictable rate of renewal, quite
independent of wear and tear but rather dependent on the
growth of his bone structure. Like anything else that keeps
growing, the little boy is and must not be thought of as one
item when it comes to design, working for survival. He is
really a series of items or what is called a 'serial structure 7
in space-time. As mentioned above, the youngster is by no
means growing to self-similar shapes as if he were being seen
through sets of ever more powerful magnifying glasses.
While every phase of that 'boy-series' very intimately relates
itself to the preceding and succeeding phases, there is no
easy Euclidean similarity between the appearances of this
sequence.
It is essential that the designer recognize and acknowledge
this organic condition. There is, for example, the significant
fact that the boy's head is relatively large at birth but grows
much more slowly than his hands or feet do. Of course, the
self-successive dissimilarity between what is in one moment
of time and what is in the next goes way beyond mere
forms. From month to month, the functionings of head,
hands, and feet differ in their subtle relationship and co
ordination to each other. And this is even more important.
There are, indeed, a thousand ways in which the designer
of a home, for example, can improve his design if he sees
the family group of his client not as a little snapshot to be
177
squarely framed and fixed, but rather in that serial perspec
tive of growing and aging. A garden architect cannot look at
the plants as if they were fixed in size and mutual relation
ship.
Bearing in mind the intricate problem of growth to be
accommodated by design, we may consider that a family
group has a twofold growth. First, we refer to growth in
number of children proliferation. Yet this growth is limited
and it is supplemented by another growth of the member
organs or member elements. Their interrelationship develops
with specific articulation of each. Similarly, a city should
be organically limited in its population figure, but having
reached a given numerical size, it still can grow in stature
by maturing, articulating, evolving its organic parts and
their relation, and all the urban living benefits that such a
process can yield.
It is interesting to contemplate that a type of growth,
proliferation, and articulation, characteristic for the nervous
system itself, should occur similarly in the most comprehen
sive product of the human brain, the cultural community
and the man-made outer shell of it the city.
178
SEEING, LIKE OTHER SENSING, WAS DECISIVELY
TRAINED WITHIN THE NATURAL SCENE; time
is of its essence, although seeing seems to
deal only with space.
24
The Dartmouth Eye Institute has de
vised impressive tests demonstrating that a large part of what
laymen consider a sensory occurrence rnay in reality involve
higher mental activity and represent a performance "based on
many preceding purposive experiences, sedimented in us over
a long stretch of time. The associative plus the emotive ap
paratus may play a great role through formative years in what
we call seeing. Experience sets in when a baby begins to use
his eyes and gradually learns to transform the surrounding
chaos of colors, brightness, specular highlights, and shadows
into a comprehensive perspective of 'objects/ such as we
have to handle while we grow up.
As designers, we should learn to distinguish on all levels
those physiological responses that are constant, not acquired,
and inevitably elicited by our design. From here we shall
have to proceed to the conditioned responses deriving from
experience, individual training, convention, and traditional
use. Our responses to color will illustrate this point.
It may be proved that certain sensory responses which we
regard as acquired are really primary and innate. We per
ceive a color such as blue as 'receding 7 and a color such as
179
red as 'warm 7 ; these impressions have been accounted for as
merely conditioned effects and as deriving from our experi
ence that distant mountains turn blue by air perspective and
that we have seen fire full of reds. This is probably an inade
quate' explanation.
The experimental studies made by Dr. D. B. Harmon for
Texas schoolrooms have indicated that so-called warmth in
colors may not be purely 'psychological/ For his attempted
establishment of brightness balance, Dr. Harmon chose
colors of almost equal reflectivity and wave lengthat both
sides of the spectrum center 1 colors ranging from greenish
blue to light orange. He also reports that the cream, yellow,
and orange hues reflected actually and measurably more heat
rays than the blue-green and blue shades, long regarded as
'cool' colors.
The idea that colors apparently recede or advance simply
as a matter of 'feeling' is somewhat altered if we pay atten
tion to the fact that the eye is not 'color-corrected/ Thus
only monochromatic light that is, light of one color and
wave length can be fully focused at one moment by the lens
of the eye.
Whenever the eye focuses on a white mark made on a
green chalk board, now often used in schools, it acts as
though it were myopic to the green color: the image of the
green surface falls into focus in front of the retina. This
makes the green seem to recede into a 'background/ A red
area, on the contrary, falls into focus behind the retina: a
red chalk board therefore would seem to advance toward the
beholder instead of remaining in the same plane as the white
chalk mark.
There is under these conditions another strange effect ex
perienced: a green or a red point, because it is imperfectly
focused, is also perceived enlarged as a disk, while a white
pinpoint in the same plane remains a pinpoint. Here, then,
are 'constants' of response that are antecedent to any expe
rience. It is obvious how much our space, which is a product
1 5500 angstrom units.
180
of our physiological make-up, appears affected by color
choice in design.
And we are confronted with still other complications when
we consider the time factor. For the act of seeing occurs not
only in space but also very much in time.
The focusing of the eye is by no means instantaneous.
And even more significant, various successive accommoda
tions are not equally swift, because of inadequate capacity
of the muscles to reverse the process that flattens the elastic
lens or, again, makes it bulge. Also, the opening and closing
of the iris and the onset of fatigue are dependent on time.
Let us say that a blackboard has a reflectivity factor of 9; a
green chalk board one of 23; a white book page one of 70.
Now, it is not at all possible to shift and accommodate in
the same time interval back and forth from one of these re
flective surfaces to the other. While it takes ^5 of a second
to shift focus from white to black, it may take twenty-five
times as long, or a full second, to return from the blackboard
to the white book page. Here is something for the designer
to ponder, especially since emotional reactions may accom
pany the processes of focusing and attempted attention.
Of course, design in light and colors by no means restricts
itself to problems of acuity, the sharp focusing for identifi
cation of objects. The eye is equipped to be stimulated not
only by light and color but by form and movement as well.
Any discussion of form, for example, will have to take into
account the aligning power of the eye. This is the specific
capacity that makes it possible to distinguish the demarca
tion between adjacent areas. For this task of demarking the
line between two shades, the visual organ is, it seems, not
rigidly directed, but is kept in a rapid vibration, the ampli
tude of oscillations being something like 50 angular seconds.
During this vibration, or relatively quick little swings of the
eye, a light ray, emanating from one point of the line in
question, is kept oscillating. An oscillation over one and a
half typical spacings between 'rod' and 'cone' positions on
the retina is perhaps a device to counteract fatigue of these
microscopic receptors of the sense organ, which have been
181
found to tire in % 6 of a second. Considerations such as these
remove any design at once from space into space-time, where
we actually pass our lives.
No thorough attempt is here intended to penetrate into
the quickly advancing and often changing physiological in
terpretation of sensory processes, which are being observed
in ever-improving experimental arrangements by ingenious
specialists. It must merely be emphasized that such experi
mental findings, rather than theoretical speculations about
aesthetics, will have to govern design motivation. Through
these newly developing insights we may expect to determine
true physiological constants in other words, firmer ground
for our planning.
It has been generally granted that certain constants exist,
such as the plain Platonic patterns, which we now are in
clined to interpret in the light of neuromental economy. It
is also conceded that we have, for example, a consistent pref
erence for rhythm, possibly reflecting rhythmic processes
within our body, such as those of respiration and peristalsis,
pulse and heartbeat. 2 This rhythmical disposition is a factor
on which any designer can count as a constant.
As to color vision and color schemes, we are often inclined
to regard them as involving mostly personal taste and pre
rogative. But this attitude is again contradicted by another
popular contention, i.e. that certain colors almost invariably
have certain 'meanings' and carry a specific cargo of emotion.
Serge Eisenstein, the great cinematic innovator, has discussed
such convictions at length in his book Film Sense. However
this may be, and whatever conditioning to unnatural black
and white abstractions we may have experienced through a
century of photography before the advent of color repro-
2 In fact, rhythm seems rooted in Visceral drives/ in which a school
of physiologically interested psychologists wanted to see the background
of practically all motivation or emotive events. Visceral processes are of
a rhythmical, cyclical character, owing to the gradual and periodic ac
cumulation of substances or to accruing deficiencies in certain parts of
the body. In regular intervals, a threshold is reached and then an
equally regular and repetitive reaction begins.
182
duction, color is at any rate a sensory stimulus of the very
first order. Sensitive and would-be sensitive homemakers, for
example, speak and worry a good deal about it as any archi
tect knows.
When, as a child, I occasionally overheard adults anxiously
discuss color in connection with 'decorating' some interior,
I often wondered why the innumerable hues in nature never
seemed to clash, never seemed to tire the beholder, as the
colors of man-made environment so often do.
Obviously the natural scene furnishes the first and most
powerful medium and precedent for man's acquaintance
with color and helps to account for his interest in it. This
natural scene has gradually been enriched by a few man-
added color accents. In a wide rural landscape an occasional
red barn and silo may meet our eye. Eventually we find our
selves completely surrounded by colors of our own making,
say, in a downtown business street or a Park Avenue boudoir.
The natural scene is crowded out by artificial colors. 'Our
paint covers the world/ is the formidable motto of a nation
ally known manufacturer, whose poster shows thick bright
paint spilling over the globe and dripping down into space.
Color superficially painted on is man's contribution. It is
more than a practice emerging from a need for protective
coating it is a contribution by free choice and for special
gratification.
We must keep in mind that color is a mere derivative of
light. All cows are black in the dark, says a German proverb.
Color simply does not exist independently of light, and is
light or light reflection of varied properties.
In order to understand the color difficulties of the deco
rator, we might compare an outdoor scene, naturally illumi
nated, with an artificially lighted interior. The first illumina
tion changes continually and dynamically from sunrise to
sunset. The western sky, for example, may be deep blue with
white cumuli floating in it at ten in the morning, and may
be pale lemon with orange or vermillion-edged dark clouds
thirty minutes after sunset. Also, these bold juxtapositions of
color do not last long; they change kaleidoscopically. Yet
183
they are repeated on other days or in recurrent seasons. Time
has a natural and important part in the experience.
When autumn comes, the natural vistas change their
color breathtakingly, or pale out, as the chlorophyll decom
poses more quickly than do the rest of the vegetative pig
ments. Every year the spreading cover of winter snow empha
sizes the few remaining patches of color or darkness in the
landscape before our window. This rock or that red barn
stands out quite differently now than it did only two days
ago, before the snow came, or two months ago, when the
aspens were such a bright yellow. It is the same landscape
but again not the same; sameness here is a misnomer.
In contrast to these color dynamics of the natural scene
our interiors are hopelessly static. If paints wear off, the
rooms merely look a little shabbier. This is almost the only
change that ever takes place, unless we do something about
it. And lack of change is sufficient to explain our resultant
color fatigue, a fatigue that hardly ever occurs in natural
surroundings.
The color receptors of the retina have been evolved and
conditioned in the course of ages by the combined color
stimuli of the natural scene. Static coloration can never as
sure enduring psychological satisfaction; it is unnatural.
If man-made color is to play its part as an aid to survival
in a fully urbanized environment, it is imperative first of all
to minimize static effects and rigid color arrangement.
Let us take the extreme example of a windowless, dust-
proof, air-conditioned hospital ward, perhaps with measured
ultra-violet irradiation to substitute for the health factor of
sunshine. Its walls are painted a soothing light olive green.
In the long ran, such a statically set interior will, from a
neural point of view, in some respects compare unfavorably
even with the dungeon of old. The latter had at least one
little grilled window opening, and so provided one important
comfort: an ever-changing play of light and color on the
walls, the floor, and the heap of straw on which the prisoner
rested. The wretched man could at least watch rosy or golden
184
reflections and wandering shadows as the hours and months
slipped by.
Any static color or color combination is, physiologically
speaking, unfit. Colors should set each other off refreshingly,
not only in space, side by side, but also in time, one stimu
lation following another. Any unchanging combination be
comes unbearable for an extended period, even if the initial
selection of colors seemed perfect. Color perception, like
form perception, takes place in the space-time continuum.
To treat it in relation to space alone is in itself a defective
approach.
Modern lighting technique offers tools to serve us physio
logically much better than we choose to let it. Thus future
interior design may spare us the ordeal of exposure to mo
notonously sustained color effects. It may pull all the stops
of an endless light organ, producing rheostaticaly controlled
variations in illuminative intensities and color. And these
changes will be planned to play refreshingly on opaque and
translucent surfaces, on surfaces selected to absorb or to re
flect light rays. Every partition, the ceiling, the flooring, the
furniture, and the accessories will be integrated in the scheme
of illumination. The play of elusive reflections and shadows
cast by semi-translucent and solid objects, and growing over
neighboring forms and textures, wfll then be no longer
wholly accidental. Provision for it may become an invigo
rating part of creative design.
Above all, a room will be much less just one room than
it is now in its rigid constancy. Even the smallest room wfll
be less confining. The visual -space that is psychologically,
neurally so important shall become modifiable at will.
All this may sound rather Utopian. *At present, it often is
difficult for a designer to induce even a wealthy client to allo
cate from the total investment a reasonable sum for more
subtle changes of illumination or for special construction
materials and furnishings that will respond planfully and
sensitively to this elastic illumination. The Joneses probably
have not done this in their new palatial home in Floral
Manor. Perhaps they have spent a much larger sum on ama-
185
teurishly handwoven and unreliably dyed drapes and on pre
tentious antique or modernistic furniture each piece a rigid
block of color and form. They have been high-pressured
into paying a fabulous sum for a fabulous loudspeaker and
record player, and now possess a much-admired, individually
constructed set that in tone quality and manipulative gadgets
rivals their electric organ and their unusual concert grand
piano. Still, the musical tastes of these owners may be not at
all unusual and may not, in fact, be any better than their
discrimination in regard to weaves and dyes. They have
merely made their decisions about spending according to
precedents prevailing in their social circle/ Unfortunately,
there exist few precedents for composing and rendering light
and color per se, as objects of enjoyment, except perhaps for
the recital instrument Clavilux, or certain crude contraptions
that play with a little amber and pink and blue, yielding
something similar to the color effects of synthetic syrups on
a drugstore shelf. But here we speak for an integrated, illu
minative space design integrated by and in its original con
ception. Decorative afterthoughts are beside our essential
concern.
Pioneering in dynamic illumination will probably at first
need 'convinced capital/ It will, of course, at the outset play
no part in the housing of the vast majority that so far lives
below even minimal standards of physiological satisfaction.
But the fundamental fallacy of static color and light ar
rangements in our dwelling and working places is a basic
offense to nature, and its remedy is by no means luxury. Once
its harmfulness is exposed, experimentation will advance,
constructive design will follow, improvement will spread to
lower economic levels by the propelling power of growing
demand and ever-broader acceptance. The manufacturers of
radios and record players have proved that appreciation of
fine sensory appeal can be fostered in a public that originally
seemed musically inert and largely undiscriminating about
acoustical qualities. A similar development in regard to illu
mination is not without reason.
186
Meanwhile, one very simple and practical principle
emerges. Artificial light sources, even when of a static inten
sity, must at least become flexible or varied as far as place
ment is concerned. If we are limited in our interiors to per
manently applied color coatings, we must reduce their harm
ful effects on the nervous system by giving these interiors as
much as possible the benefit of the natural changes of illu
mination outdoors. As a corollary, transparency of partitions
between interior and exterior becomes important. Victorian
hermetic enclosure, window hangings, dignified perpetual
dimness must go. With drapes open at times, closed at
others, large expanses of glass aid a visually conceived plan
of space for living; they add to its chances of yielding com
fort, lasting over the stretches of time.
187
COMFORT AND FATIGUE must be understood
within the picture of organic events and will
limit the possible scope of arbitrary fireworks
of design.
25
We have spoken of fatigue as a vast
subject of vital interest and George Nelson once correctly
observed that there is no reclining chair sufficiently well de
signed to insure comfort for a night-long bus or plane ride.
It is good to get up and stretch one's legs. For refreshment
the motflity of our limbs and trunk must every so often be
brought into play.
Even the best-designed stimulus becomes ineffective when
applied incessantly. Fatigue diminishes the conductivity of
nerve fibers engaged too long. The skin surface receptors, for
example, become numb very quickly. 1 But fatigue does not
depend simply on duration and intensity of stimulation; it
might be surprisingly postponed and diminished by such a
subtle device as rhythmicality.
1 Every nervous activity (according to findings stemming largely from
the experiments of Gerard and Marshall) diminishes the action poten
tial the conductivity and conduction velocity within the particular
nerves in action, which (as measured by Downing and Hill) give off
minute quantities of carbon dioxide and heat. Rather similarly to fatigue
conditions, the nerves can be locally suffocated' by want of oxygen.
This circumstance, which may, for example, be due to pressure, would
also reduce or practically stop their conductive capacity or alter their
rheo-base, the intensity threshold above which they go into action and
IBS
According to the fundamental discoveries of Adrian, pub
lished more than twenty years ago, the sense receptors, when
stimulation occurs, discharge a series of impulses, or volleys
of impulses. Each of these impulses has a minimum strength
below which no action can take place. Adrian actually pro
nounced something like a quantum theory of sensory dis
charges. The intensity of the sensation depends on the rate
of discharge of these individual volleys. The receptors, how
ever, as well as the nerve fibers, have a certain accommoda
tive capacity: when a stimulus is applied constantly, there is
no corresponding continuous discharge of impulses. Only a
few initial ones take place and these soon abate. This phe
nomenon of neural accommodation occurs quite apart from
muscle fatigue but has an equally basic significance for de
sign. It has an intriguing and practical bearing like that
of the older psycho-physical law of Fechner-Weber, which
taught designers something very amazing. This law exposed
as error any naive expectation that intensities of sensations
will show up in direct proportion to the intensities of the
wielded stimuli. They do not do so. In fact they are much
smaller and are related more closely to the logarithms of the
stimulus value. Certainly, to make a fortissimo sound twice
as loud as a forte, to illuminate a desk twice as bright, to
paint a wall twice as red become very controversial design
proposals if we try to measure their brain-functional corre
lates and repercussions.
The reduction of sensor} 7 receptivity through accommoda
tion means a great deal especially for the responses that our
designs can conceivably elicit. If we wish to keep design
'organic/ we cannot disdain learning a little about such fun-
below which they seem to ignore any stimulus or maintain indifference
to it. Likewise, their chronaxie or, differently expressed, the minimum
of fr'me they require for a stimulus to elicit their activation, may change
under oxygen starvation when, for instance, blood circulation is dis
turbed through other nervous effects. Such effects are often caused by
unfavorable posture and, as already pointed out, postures are frequently
the consequence not only of furniture design, but of furniture place
ment, tie relation of the pieces to each other, to the shape of the room,
window locations, et cetera.
189
damental functions of the organism that we desire to re
spond. The consumer of our design must have his opportu
nity for comeback through a certain amount of rest. His
minute accommodations or fatigues must at least be consid
ered by the designer, if not actually calculated. In stimula
tions such as our designs provide, balance between the cata-
bolic processes of consumption of energy and the anabolic
processes of repair and regeneration must be maintained.
These processes are implicit in all nervous and muscular ac
tivity to which an organism is stimulated. If stimulation is
too strong and repeated at too brief intervals, the processes
of repair will not keep pace with those of consumption, or
the waste products of the functional activity are not com
pletely removed/ as Howell expresses it.
The phenomenon of fatigue which deserves discussion also
for its many social implications, may purely from a physio
logical point of view be considered in three different as
pects. The first is the subjective aspect, I.e. the individual's
own perception of what is taking place within him, and his
emotional reaction to it. Fatigue results in secondary inner
stimulations that cause sometimes vague, sometimes distinct
feelings of discomfort throughout the body.
The second aspect involves what scientists call the mor
phological expression or the objective bodily symptom. This
consists of a change in the affected parts that can actually
be seen when the fatigued cells are studied under a power
ful microscope. 2
The third aspect is the functional one i.e. fatigue may be
defined as an "impairment in the rate of performance/ Func
tionally, then, fatigue means depression of normal excita
bility; this depression can well be measured by and probably
corresponds to electrochemical changes in the nerve cells
2 In advanced stages of fatigue, a disintegration and chromolysis ? of
the so-called Nissl granules has actually been observed in these cells.
These granules consist of the chromophil or stainable substance, tigroid,
which seems to disappear in the process of extreme exertion. Far pro
gressed fatigue becomes visible also when the increasing formation of
vacuoles, i.e. tiny gas bubbles, is noticed within cells that are exhausted.
190
and their appendages, the dendrites. Fatigue and fatigue be
havior as metabolic phenomena have been studied in many
types of tissue. The implications of these investigations
apply to the structures of the central nervous system as well.
In a brain, whether rested or fatiguing, millionfold combi
nations continue to flash on and off, as we derive enjoyment
or suffer from external configurations taken in with our
senses.
Monotonous repetition of forms and motions such as
accident or designers and architects often subject us to tire
our brain and our nerves. Just what doses or what durations
of exposure produce numbness or affect still-hidden inner
balances adversely? It may become possible to arrive at ac
curate evaluations in these matters. At any rate, comfort, as
a subject of physiological knowledge, dawns significantly on
the contemporary horizon.
A workable understanding of how our psychosomatic or
ganism ticks, information on sensory clues which wind its
gorgeous clockwork or switch it this way or that, undoubt
edly will someday belong in the designer's mental tool chest.
Yet we must not indulge in mechanistic metaphors and thus
oversimplify the issue of life, complex by the recurrent swell
ing of vitality and the ebbing into fatigue. Through more
useful interpretations of our day, we have outgrown an ado
lescence that enjoyed itself in a gross machine materialism
once considered 'so progressive/
191
In 'INTERIORS' AND IN OUR URBAN EXIST
ENCE, LIGHT AND COLOR CALL FOR A MORE
INFORMED WATCHFULNESS than eyes have
needed for a life outside in unhampered
nature.
Even with very moderate and simple
means, it is possible to contrive interior illumination that is
not static and thus fatiguing. The varying effects of daylight
can be enjoyed through large windows, well shaded by ex
terior overhangs. The visual sharing in the outdoor scene can
be moderated by means of sliding drapes that can be opened
or drawn to any point as desired. At night the room need
not be monotonously lighted. The illumination may be sup
plied from alternating directions, and from varying sources.
These can be partly or wholly concealed, so that reflected
light predominates.
The possibilities of directional effects may be subtly uti
lized. Diffused light coming from above is very different from
lateral Lighting. Concentrated light supplied by a source
near the floor level has an emotive quality of its own. It is
largely the unusual, changing light emanating from below
our eyes that constitutes the charm of a fireplace. There are
many modulations of direct or diffused lighting that can be
intimately related to shape, surface materials, and contents of
a room.
192
Illumination of interiors by means of pure white light,
supplied from fixtures which are concealed in the roof pro
jections over large windows, has long been a feature in my
designs. It results in a pleasing effect of openness to the
night. The interior space seems to be extended into an in
definite exterior space that only gradually recedes into total
darkness. Thus such outer space can be drawn on even when
there is no moonlight. Incidentally privacy within is secured
simply by means of the optical screen produced by reflection
on the exterior window surfaces. This arrangement does away
with inside reflection on glass panes, so long as no strong
light falls on them from interior sources. When exterior
lighting is turned off and the interior is illuminated, this
interior is promptly mirrored in the window glass. There re
sults a feeling of being enveloped by the night. We see noth
ing of landscape but only the room, duplicated by reflection;
this yields a very different, a phantomic extension. At other
times a sense of being intimately enclosed may be enhanced
by light-colored drapes to be drawn across the windows.
Thus the one room affords a number of refreshingly varied
experiences of space through illumination.
Selection of colors becomes here quite a different problem
from what it is under conditions of static lighting. Contrasts
of shade, intensity, brilliance, and, above all ? reflectivity and
luminosity often turn into paramount considerations. The
detriment and significance of great differences in distribution
of brightness have recently been made a subject of study.
Uniformity as well as steadiness of brightness is justifiable in
a space used for concentrated work over given periods. But
there are benefits in change and contrast. Steady illumina
tion can become oppressive even though it may seem attrac
tive at first. The strong vivid colors in nature, like those of
an impressive evening sky, would become hard to bear if
viewed indefinitely; here the factor of fatigue appears opera
tive. Undoubtedly, steady uniformity needs to be offset-
just as seasonal change is an important element in our enjoy
ment of nature. We like to look forward to the brief attrac
tion of the desert in bloom, or of hillsides miles away, flam-
193
ing in season with a carpet of cadmium yellow California
poppies.
The brightest reds and yellows in nature are not com
monly found over extensive areas, or if they are, they do not
appear for prolonged periods of time. Bright xanthophyll left
to color the autumnal foliage glows briefly before the leaves
drop. The brilliant fall colors of sumac and maple fade in a
week. Red hemoglobin may lend an emotional kick to hunt
ing, war slaughter, and bloody murder, but it rarely drowns
the entire field of vision. The great exception here is chloro
phyll, which plays such a decisive role in the assimilation
activity of green plants. It occurs over the landscape, all
summer long, even all the year around in plants, from algae
to conifers. Through countless millions of years animal and
human retinas have been conditioned to tolerate immense
expanses of green. Eyes have grown to relax in full view of
them. A similar prevalence of bright yellow or red would
indeed be unbearable.
It becomes apparent how greatly man puts himself at a
disadvantage from the standpoint of nervous health when he
limits the types of optical vibrations to a few in his con
structed compartments and surrounds himself with fully
stabilized, static color schemes. Moreover, he applies them
most often in a fairly limited space, an 'interior/
For primitive man in his semi-outdoor existence, such re
stricted choices for his cave or hut had no ill effects. He
could put up with them, just as he put up with the ob
noxious odors of his crude household, because most of the
time he roamed hills and plains. For modern man, living in
closed, compact, and almost constantly used interiors, static
color schemes are much more detrimental to well-being. A
limited field of vision forced upon us can be made sickening
with color, much like the inescapable air volume with its
chemical pollutions confined within our walls.
In advanced situations of civilized life, such as a teeming
metropolis with bewildering traffic and disharmonious neon
lights, multitudes become nervous sufferers. In 1952 nine
million Americans were mental cases. This is not accidental,
194
and systematic remedial study of new irritants and physio
logical requirements has become urgent. In contrast thereto,
life at earlier stages could and did succeed by simple, un
planned, slow natural adjustment.
If we cannot yet produce a biologically perfect interior by
technological means, our decision must simply be against
making an interior fully dependent on intricate technology.
We must still design living space, and a current environment
for the race, so that the neurologically salubrious agents of
nature outside are freely admitted and kept active to as great
an extent as possible.
We must not be blinded into toying with every technical
invention to the exclusion of natural biological benefits, be
fore we have made sure that we can artificially substitute for
those benefits something that is essentially equivalent. For
example, an electric light may illuminate a subterranean
compartment without oxygen consumption. That proved a
valuable novelty for an age accustomed to open-flame light
sources. But humans who needed light will still find need
for replenishment of air. When this air is pumped in by
machines, a deficiency of air-moisture control may again
make the place unfit, even for a short period of life. And the
longer one tries to extend this period of artificially served
existence, the more physiological factors and necessities must
be considered and satisfied by carefully studied special de
vices.
With our mammal lungs we might dive deep into water
and survive for some minutes. It is true that man can expose
himself to anomalous and unfavorable conditions and endure
hours, weeks, years under strains of maladjustment. But the
effects of improper environment are often cumulative, and
we pay a penalty for spending long periods of our lives en
meshed and entangled in unnatural, abnormal surroundings,
such as we now have to face every day.
If we design for long-range survival of the race, we cannot
exercise a primitive attitude, as if we were improvising for a
mere emergency. In the ever more complicated situations of
civilization, we have cause to remain on guard and not fall
195
victim to a short-sighted awe of and childish adoration for an
undisciplined technology, tolerant of all its toxic sequences.
Apart from stimuli eliciting immediate responses, we must
be interested especially in subtle long-range effects and what
they mean for survival. This leads us into exactly those fields
which the active man of affairs interested in quick turnover
has so often permitted himself to ignore. Particularly where
these fields seem to border on the realm of 'aesthetics/ he
is likely to shrug his shoulders and, dodging all such discus
sions or decisions as insignificant^ return to business as usual
and to precarious neglect.
196
MILLIONS OF MANIFOLD SENSE RECEPTORS de
termine what design can actually do for us.
27
The designer is often seen as a man
who cleverly meets practical problems and embellishes his
solutions by a few applications of his aesthetic acumen. He
is best appreciated where he deals with machines of produc
tion and new-fangled materials. He is the admired wizard of
electronically molded wood, modern glasses, plastics things
that have a recent but rich history of development.
But when the designer does anything essential for us, no
matter through what extraneous means and materials, he
deals primarily with nervous systems, and he caters to them.
He may well contemplate with awe and interest the huge
number of afferent, the in-bringing, nerve fibers half a mil
lion of them which enter the 'cord' through the posterior
roots of the spinal nerves. They are the sensory reporters
which keep us informed of our surroundings through all our
life. Nervous systems are the most complex material con
fronting the designer, vastly more complex than anything in
manufacturers' literature.
One needs a vivid imagination to picture the multitude of
dispatches and alarms that reach us every moment all the
routings and combinations of sensory impulses. Perpetual!}',
waves of excitation lead to the cerebellum, further to the
cortex of the upper brain, and from there outward to mus-
197
cles and glands. A great many in-flowing stimuli reach lower
receiving stations almost simultaneously and act on the cord
and its many antagonistic flexor and extensor centers. A vast
muscular activity is continuously innervated in us even while
we believe ourselves to be at rest.
The state of the relative excitation and inhibition in each
stimulated part or center can be called its neural balance pre
vailing at that particular moment. If a consideration of these
nervous phenomena is attempted, any narrow, nineteenth-
century mechanistic attitude will lead the designer astray. It
will more disarm than help him when he faces his audience
of nerves or tries to elicit nervous response, as essentially he
always does.
But what are these nerves a designer's life effort is con
cerned with? What can he learn about them and about their
anticipated reactions? What is their response to a stimulus?
What occurs in them when impulses travel down the length
of their path and hurdle synapses with a measurable speed?
Is a synapse, that mysterious connection between adjacent
nerve axons, something 'material/ permeable to the nervous
current, perhaps a film of the lipoid part of plasms, as some
scientists describe it, no thicker than two molecules? Or, as
others propose, is it perhaps better conceived as just an
'electromagnetic zone/ sometimes a roadblock, sometimes
passable? What might it be according to tomorrow's find
ings? How does it operate, how is it activated? Discoveries
follow each other and under their impact even terminology
changes quickly. And yet respect for what objective observa
tion has encompassed is already a gain.
It may be interesting to trace the supply lines and espe
cially the initial sources of nervous events. We find sensory
stimuli are the prime movers, and the switches that they
operate and activate are senses, the same instrumentalities by
which also design first becomes noticeable and effective.
If space design, architecture, environmental planning are,
as a whole, 'omnisensorial/ i.e. if they appeal to all senses,
perhaps we should here summarize the immense subject of
198
our sense equipment, to which reference must so often be
made.
Points of origin for the vast army of in-bringing, afferent,
sensory nerve fibers are the sense receptors, which, though
just as numerous, are unequal in number for each specific
sense. Compared with the theoretical and abstract client to
whom the inadequately equipped Euclidean architect thought
of making his merely geometrical appeal, the man with the
five senses already had a very rich endowment. Yet this pro
verbial small and round number of senses is itself superan
nuated now, somewhat like the world of the past that sup
posedly was composed of but four conventional elements:
earth, water, air, and fire.
Sense receptors have been newly counted and found al
most innumerable. Three or four million pain receptors or
pain points alone are distributed over the entire cutaneous
surface of man. Compared with this mass, there are 'only' a
half a million pressure points, one sixth of a million warm
points, et cetera that is, the minute spots on the skin, sen
sitive respectively to pressure, cold, or heat. The endowment
with these senses varies markedly for different individuals
and the different proportions of sensibility may account in
large measure for puzzling personality differences which the
designer is to please.
It is clearer, perhaps, to speak of several purpose-categories
of sensory receptors, most of them represented by a vast
crowd of sensory terminals or nerve endings. First of all there
are 'non-adapting* receptors of pain, which are most signifi
cant for survival and are distributed almost throughout the
entire body. When they are activated, the alarm normally
does not cease, unless we succeed in removing ourselves
from the painful attack or else liquidate it in some suitable
manner. Then there is an array of adapting receptors, capable
of accommodation, an adjustment, an acquiescence to pro
longed stimuli. Briefly listed these are:
Proprioceptives the inner muscle senses, numerous muscle
spindles, tendon-sense organs, and, as an important supple
ment, the gravity and acceleration reporter in the ear. All
199
these record for us the movements and positions of our body
and do it every single moment of our life. When we but
turn our head to fix our attention, this type of sensing at
once comes into play.
Interoceptives are recording impulses from various visceral
organs within the body. Indirectly at least, and vaguely, this
group of senses, like all others, may report design failures.
Here we are warned of situations due to faulty planning
which may affect our generally smooth and even inner func
tioning.
Surface senses, the cutaneous sense organs, are with very
irregular prevalence distributed over the skin surface and
record changes in the immediate environment of the body.
But, as we have indicated, parts of this environment are
much better sensed than others because the various parts of
our surface are endowed with very different degrees of sensi
tivity. These skin senses include receptors for touch, which
will record a tiny external pressure of 1/25,000 of a gram,
receptors for contact-heat, and many more for contact-cold.
Everything from an air heater to the texture of upholstery
goods on the sofa or the smoothness of a plastic doorknob
speaks intimately to the surface senses.
TeleceptiVes are concerned with conditions and changes in
the more remote environment. The ear, the eye, the nose,
and the receptors for radiant heat and cold constitute the
teleceptives so far known to us. The nose of man has rather
degenerated. Man, according to Broca, is one of the micro-
osmatic animals, i.e. those who are under-sensed owing to
imperfect olfactorial organs. Nevertheless, we remember
that smells mean much to our feelings and elicit strong re
sponses from our upper and lower viscera. A certain faint
smell may make a room almost uninhabitable, just as it can
render a person distasteful to us. The smell of a natural
cedar paneling has a nose significance distinct from that of
varnish and paints. Some exhalations and smells increase
with the warmth in the surrounding air and our nose thus
turns into a thermometer, crude but directly linked to our
emotional centers. Here the interesting fact should be
200
pointed out that a radiant-heat system may appeal to certain
of our heat receptors, but keep others, those for contact-
heat, more or less idle as it were, frustrated in their func
tion. Although in such a case our body receives its required
heat quanta by radiation, we are, at least in an interior, used
to having another sense make report on thermal matters, and
so we may in a first experience not be quite sure that we
feel comfortable with this sort of installation. We can term
such a frustration 'sensogen/ To what degree it may be
based on habit is hard to say. Somewhat similarly, indirect
lighting may call for the forming of a new habit because at
first we miss the accustomed glares in our vision field. While
suspended or bracketed light fixtures and hot-air grills in the
wall may be a nuisance, their visible presence gives a person
used to turning their particular switches a certain feeling of
assurance, quite apart from actual effectiveness. A substantial
fireplace assures us that a room will be cozy, that it is com
fortably beatable. But here we have clearly transgressed from
the realm of sensation into that of more complex associa
tive cerebration. The boundary line is for practical purposes
scarcely one that can be sharply drawn. Habituation and
frustration seem to occur on many physiological levels. They
affect simple cells, nerves, the involved functioning of the
brains.
With the exception, perhaps, of some of the interocep-
tives, a practical designer is, evidently, engaged to manipu
late almost directly the entire and manifold sense equipment
with which his client, the consumer, the human species is
endowed. Schools that train the student will be obliged to
familiarize him with this physiological keyboard on which
he must try to play with understanding and harmony.
201
Individual and social psychology will ulti
mately merge with BRAIN PHYSIOLOGY, TO
GUIDE THE DESIGNER IN HIS OBSERVATION
AND CREATION OF RESPONSE PATTERNS.
28
Neural events are not outside and be
yond our space and time. They have been observed to pos
sess spatial and chronological order and dimension. They
can at certain moments be localized; they can be watched in
their spread. They occur one after the other, always much
more quicldy than we could follow their progress in the com
paratively slow current of verbal expression. It may be noted
that their velocities are measurably different in the various
branches of the nervous system. Neuromental events are
fleeting to such a degree that we cannot adequately accom
pany them far, even with our most clever and ready intro
spective talk. This is also true when they can be called con
scious. We are habitually deceived by our own attention,
which selects and highlights only a few phases of the process.
'Single' neuromental events have so many ramifications that
there actually exists only an over-all entity of nervous hap
pening. This ever-unified function is perhaps also illustrated
by the difficulty of keeping any portion of nervous tissue
alive and in working order by itself after it has been sur
gically severed from its total system. Physiologists have better
succeeded in artificially entertaining life and living reaction
202
in cut-off parts of muscular tissue, even in entire organs such
as kidneys or glands. The main cell body of a nerve can hardly
be nurtured in isolation, so infinitely subtle and lively are
the energy transactions required.
The designer of our physical environment should not lose
sight of the fact that he is likely to stimulate our entire
subtly organized being, not just a specific sense or a par
ticular organ. Those who dealt with the soul as an incon
ceivably fine and indivisible entity were closer to these views
than the run-of-the-mill materialists. Contrasted with the
other organs and organic matter, the entire nervous appa
ratus could indeed be considered as one organ, of its own
kind and on a level of its own.
Nerves and nerve cells have grown. If we seek a truly or
ganic approach to design, we must have the desire to under
stand some of the implications of such growth.
Growth as such must be regarded as the expression of
an intrinsic potentiality of the cell. It is not exhausted
when the nerve cell begins to conduct impulses accord
ing to its definitive role. After this the cell continues to
grow, and seeks out new realms to conquer. The func
tional nerve cell is from its beginning a dynamic system
reacting to its environment after the manner of a living
organism.
Physiological conduction is, so to speak, its accessory
or secondary function. If it ever loses its potentiality of
growth and differentiation, we do not know when or
where. 1
Neural growth by cellular multiplication is, however, a
process that does not go on and on. It stops amazingly early.
According to Donaldson and research findings of the Wistar
Institute, Philadelphia, there is in mammals no further in
crease in the number of nerve cells from a time soon after
their birth. For the cell accretion in the cerebral cortex of
1 G. E. CoghiH, Anatomy and Problem of Behavior, Cambridge Uni
versity Press, 1929, pp. 85, 86.
203
a rat, for example, twenty days after birth was observed to
be the time limit. Growth after that concerns increase not
in cell number but in cell size, and in the amount of inter
cellular material, of axons and dendrites. It is for the most
part the coming into play and function of cell combinations,
morphologically already in existence or pre-formed.
Growth of our decisive neuromental equipment is not an
aimless process of getting bigger. It can, so to speak, be
lured hither and thither so as to form a link, close a gap, or
make a connection.
Forsmanns has shown that nervous tissue has a capacity
to grow directionally to meet other nervous tissue of specific
affinity or supplementary character. Peripheral and central
portions of severed nervous fibers 'find' each other while
growing. A peculiar sort of attraction, of chemotropism or
chemotaxis, is ascribed to them in the explanation of this
phenomenon. Ganglonic brain cells send out, by growth,
tentacles that find others with which to keep continuous
contact, and, as we have seen, this contacting, this liaison-
growth is the principal kind of growth, if not the only one,
which continues to take place during life experiences. The
liaison material' is in fact the bulk of the cortex.
Fine extensional growth and subtle linking of parts miracu
lously produce feats of function from what had seemed a
mere inert juxtaposition. In his splendid neuro-anatomic and
physiological parallel researches on the amphibium amblys-
toma, G. E. Coghill has shown that growth of nerve cell
appendages over less than one-hundredth of a millimeter
'have profound effect on behaviour/ By such minute growth
the animal 'transforms itself from one that must lie helpless
where chance places it, into one that can explore its environ
ment in response to impulses from within, or stimulation
from without/ And further: ', , . the conception that a neu
rone grows during a certain so-called embryonic period, or
period of maturation, and then ceases to grow and becomes
simply a conductor in a fixed mechanism, is erroneous and
wholly inadequate to account for the function of the nervous
204
system as a mechanism of learning. 7 2 In other words, the
24-hour-a-day, 365-day-a-year stimulus impact of designed
environment may perhaps 'physiologically teach/ by mold
ing the nervous make-up even of an adult and the alteration
may take place through continuously stimulated neuron ex
tension. Such a feat is certainly accomplished with a child.
We ought to ponder this view of learning 7 by induced nerv
ous growth when we try to fathom the potentialities of
design.
Apart from growth by ramification of a restricted number
of cells, the nervous system has another particular distinc
tion. It is above all differentiated by the dimension, the mini
mum magnitude, of its metabolism, by the very small quan
tities of energy that are negotiated within it. These nervous
energies have so strange an effectiveness in some of their
manifestations that they move societies and civilizations.
The required quantity of them is almost infinitesimally small
compared with that of the mechanical energies, observed
and measured in, say, the simple, muscular activity of chop
ping wood. Innervations seem to constitute the very highest
exploitation by nature of the tiniest sums of energy. Here is
something that makes them particularly interesting to the
designer. He and his enlightened consumers must keep this
important fact of minute actions and reactions in mind.
They will then fully appreciate the enormous effectiveness
and therefore the significance of the many stimuli which
the natural environment and the ever-increasing constructed
environment continuously apply to all of us. If we look at
these minimum energy quanta with the eyes of the practical
man in his day-to-day decisions, or even with the eyes of the
calculating engineer, they seem negligible indeed. But because
of the peculiarities of nervous energy economics, they had
better be valued on an entirely different level. As mentioned,
generations who led their lives in pre-materialistic times
have had obviously less difficulty understanding this special
2 Ibid.
205
requirement of the sensitive 'soul 7 than the rough-and-ready
mechanists who have for a century or two sprouted along
the path of a naive and popular 'scientism/
Even a mechanistic interpretation of events cannot over
look certain trigger effects which may change large blocks
of our situation. Chancellor Bismarck decided in 1870 to
scratch a few ink symbols on a telegram blank. A message
went from a health resort called Ems to King William of
Prussia. That telegram started a major war and ultimately
led to the creation of a troublesome empire to end other
empires. The incident has become famous in world history.
A diminutive brain action will help to release energies from
a vast storage in a specific manner perhaps to upset the bal
ance of mankind for decades. However, forgetting spec
tacular examples in nerve-dictated world events, if we are
earnest in our determination to construct an everyday envi
ronment suitable for survival of the race, we must never
sneer at tiny neuromental responses. We must neither over
look nor neglect the formidable significance of chain reac
tions and we must respect the modest stimuli which set them
going in sequence, and which sometimes may seem without
importance to us merely because we have remained unin
formed about their explosive or cumulative character and
fatefulness.
A powerful accretion of energy for releases similar to the
mentioned trigger effects characterizes the maze of events
that go on in the upper brain, the gray matter of the cortex.
Many influences, now dormant, now active, are there ready
to combine or to become mutually effective.
Anyone who in a creative capacity confronts man and
surely a designer always must do so instead of losing himself
in a play with his tools, technicalities and materials faces,
above all, this world of cortical responses. He can no longer
depend fully on his intuitive guesses, however splendid. Fa
miliarity with brain matter and function is no less important
for design than knowing the properties of steel, concrete, and
glass fiber for their successful employment.
206
Certain desired INNER DISTRIBUTIONS OF
FORCE AND STRESS within our nervous system
are THE REAL AIM OF ALL OUTER DESIGN
BALLISTICS.
29
Pavlov, the prominent physiologist,
was Nobel prize winner in 1904. His later work developed,
branched out, and was appreciated for casting a sensational
but systematic illumination on conditioned behavior. G. B.
Shaw, who doubted the accomplishment, wrote ironically:
'My late friend H. G. Wells was so impressed that he de
clared, that if he saw Pavlov and myself drowning, and only
one life-buoy was in reach, he would throw it to Pavlov and
leave me to perish/ x There has been other opposition to
Pavlov's assumptions and his illustrative word accounts.
"If we could look through the skull into the brain of a con
sciously thinking person, and if the place of optimal excita
bility were luminous, then we should see playing over the
cerebral surface a bright spot with fantastic waving borders,
constantly fluctuating in size and form, surrounded by a
darkness, more or less deep, covering the rest of the hemi
spheres/ Pavlov expressed himself in this metaphorical man
ner in 1928, after founding a solid school of original experi
mentation and pointedly planned experience with laboratory
1 G. B. Shaw, On Vivisection, Allen & Unwin, London, 1949.
207
animals. He has never actually been belittled in the one thing
that most interests us his systematic attempt to accumu
late an unprecedented body of verifiable data concerning
behavior. 2
Of course, as Menziers stated in 1937: It is not justifiable
to conclude cavalierly that all conditioning follows the prin
ciple of conditioned salivation in dogs/ On the contrary, the
field now open owing to these initial and sustained successes
is varied most interestingly. The attachment to and evalua
tion of laboratory methods may even have to be tempered
and kept under skeptical control which is the best part of
all scientific approach. Liddell sounds an important warning
when he states that the investigator, preoccupied with re
fined measurements of conditioned performance, may too
easily come to regard a living subject as a laboratory prepara
tion curtailing spontaneous natural activity under the test
conditions.
There seems little danger, however, that laboratory meth
ods of physiology when applied to design will become bur
dened at once with an overdose of narrow pedantry. The
present danger lies rather in roaming speculation not yet
brought down to earth by systematic experimental observa
tion.
Persistent and meticulous research into the energy phe
nomena, into the physical and chemical circumstances that
characterize nervous action, is in continuous progress. It un
derpins current views and will modify too-daring hypotheses.
A feat, for instance, such as the 'accurate timing of neural
events to the fraction of a millisecond is an enviable achieve
ment of the present-day neurophysiologist/ 3
Following the grand array of well-tabulated experimenta
tion, most interesting attempts have been made to interpret
the actual processes that go on especially in the cortex. This
precious outer brain blanket, when unrolled and unfolded,
2 See Dr. H. S. LiddelPs appraisal in his concluding chapter written
for John Farquhar Fulton's Physiology of the Nervous System, Oxford
University Press, 1943, p. 493.
3 Liddell, op. cit. 7 p. 521.
208
is 2000 square centimeters in size and measures 3 to 4 milli
meters in thickness. To observe brain processes in terms of
time and space is helpful, even if the characteristics of their
electromagnetic phenomena or energy transformations are
still quite obscure.
In the central, especially the cortical, region of the nervous
equipment, events of energy distribution become observable
which physiology has described as excitation, inhibition, dif
fusion, or irradiation, and finally, as induction of nervous
events. We may notice that these processes seem to yield,
occasionally but not always, products of more or less pro
nounced consciousness.
Design for human consumption depends in its possibilities
on the responsive behavior of the brain. A phenomenon,
which we would commonly call generalization, may be con
sidered first. It can perhaps be described as an excitation not
fully localized or not fully limited to a specific stimulus.
There is response not only to this specific stimulus to which
one brain area may have been conditioned by a series of repe
titions, but also to any similar stimulus. Or it may mean
that a stimulus becomes effective for an entire brain neigh
borhood instead of eliciting response at one spot. Innerva-
tion seems to show a natural tendency to spread, to diffuse,
to "irradiate 7 into adjacent or connected regions.
'Generalizations' have their psychological implications. If
we speak of them in physiological terms, in terms of nervous
function, they mean a broadening or "de-specification' of the
original response base. The results are most useful for con
duct in general and thus help sustain life. We cannot always
deal in singularities. Yet, generalization may well become
unjustified and impractical when it makes us jump to wrong
conclusions from one specific case, or produces a neurotic
emotional pitch out of proportion to an incident We sud
denly may see a dire situation at hand as hopelessly 'typical/
and the entire world turns gloomy.
A sound, a color, a word, or any special incident may elicit
an unwarranted^ broad response and misguide our conduct
or judgment. The traveler who, during a trip in Sweden,
209
hastily notes in his diary, 'Waiters in Swedish dining cars
are mostly red-headed/ may be acting erroneously but in a
manner quite close to usual practice that has its organic
causes.
Apart from things said or thought consciously, this physio
logical brain phenomenon of spread of response plays its
perpetual role in the silent, subconscious reactions to design.
Experimental observation of it in the laboratory is possible.
It can be intensified and complicated by other related phe
nomena that may also be tested in their elemental forms.
A 'dominant' focus of excitation absorbs the energy of
other stimulations for its own reinforcement. These minor
stimulations fail then to become competitive and to follow
up their own careers. And further, a dominant excitation
area dulls by 'negative induction 7 all other cortical areas.
Dominance seems to reinforce itself through silencing of
competition.
The meaning of dominance as a brain phenomenon effec
tive for life, and design for life, cannot easily be overesti
mated. Among other things, it means economy that a com
paratively small portion, well handled, could be made to
dominate the entire scene and satisfy us in spite of it. A long
indifferent highway may accidentally become a scenic route
in our memories. This is accomplished by the dominance
in our mind of only two or three profoundly impressive
stretches of a thousand yards each, where we happen to turn
a bend or pass a crest between two hills and joyfully behold
through the windshield a magnificent vista, easily memo
rized. If a person says 'New York,' he may think of only two
or three spots or overwhelming scenes, such as a glance
north from Times Square at theater-closing hour. This par
ticular view, taken in at a particular moment, may dominate
over a thousand other drab and insignificant ones which he
has seen in the same city but has failed to register so force
fully.
The bearing of dominance on design policies could be de
veloped interestingly. Dominant dramatic effect, shock, and
210
surprise have always been tools of the designer who wants
to stop or alter established reflex arcs or give backbone to
his composition.
However, it cannot always be tolerated that our general
judgment be overcome by just a few dominant impacts. We
must not be swept oS our bearings continuously. Concrete
life very often needs more equilibrium and finds it in de
tailed mental reaction. While we are sitting at the steering
wheel of an automobile, our life may depend not on gen
eralized notions but on a very minute fittingness of a number
of responses and a well-balanced co-ordination. Irradiated and
generalized cortical responses alone, as well as dominant
ones which absorb all others, would, in the long run, be sure
to lack the character of survival aids; in fact, they may harbor
danger on many occasions.
What we frequently need is to-the-point precision and
specificity. Therefore we are also endowed with another
'mechanism/ an elastic device to focus our responses sharply.
We are capable of narrowing them down progressively from
their spread so that, when well trained, they turn active only
upon a specific stimulation. The reaction then seems to be
come lodged in a particular spot of excited brain matter and
firmly limited to it. This counter-mechanism is called inhi
bition. 4
The conflagration first spreading over wide 'association
areas 7 (a term of Flechsig's) is being dimmed down in its
outer region by inhibition and dammed back to the point of
origin. Thus the original generalization has been partially or
fully counteracted by a new pattern of energy distribution.
* In the establishment of conditioned reflexes, Pavlov lays great stress
upon the part played by the process of inhibition. In his nomencla
ture, internal inhibition is used to designate that form of inhibition
which has long been known in physiology and through which the ac
tivity of any portion of the central nervous system is brought to rest
reflexly by the stimulus of some other afferent pathways the reflex in
hibition of a sneeze, for example, or of the tonic activity of the vaso-
motor center. An established conditioned reflex may be inhibited by
fhfs method through a sensory stimulus of any kind.
211
A dog trained by repeated laboratory experiments to a
combination of food stimulus and sounding bell will first
tend to secrete saliva not only when he hears the customary
bell, but also in response to any other abrupt sound. This
means that almost the entire central area linked to the acous
tical receptor is excited enough to elicit salivation. But by
further-continued training, when food is repetitively and con
sistently denied after other sounds, and when it is again only
given upon the one specific sound of a bell, the dog will
slowly learn to distinguish/ He will do so more and more
accurately, salivating only upon stimulation of the bell and
ignoring any other similar stimuli. The refinement of this
process of conditioning can go on with increasing selectivity
in the pitch of the bell until the experiment ends at the
threshold below which, for constitutional sensory reasons, the
dog can no longer distinguish. 5
A very significant cortical function, operated through in
hibition, is here touched upon: 'differentiation/ It is, so to
speak, the antagonist of what was described as generaliza
tion. The study of conditioned reflexes has cast light on the
problem of differentiation, and it holds some clues to the
differentiated perception of design the differentiation of
shaded colors, of detailed forms, and their subtle and willful
combinations. All judicious consumption of design is evi
dently based on trained differentiation.
Dr. N. E. Ischlondsky and researchers of the Pavlov school
have rendered explanations somewhat like this: distinction
and differentiation are response performances that are accom
plished when a widening and expanding excitation within
the cortex layer is halted and reversed by an inhibitory
counter-action. The ring-shaped wall of obstruction which, as
mentioned, dams the spreading of excitation, is thrown up
by a secondary process of conditioning. Such conditioning is
achieved by repeated combinations in time. Through con
tinued practice the ring of the inhibited area is then nar-
5 Incidentally, at this point, when further tests are forced on the sub
ject, a very irregular 'panic reaction' may set in and what has been
called by Pavlov an experimental neurosis is produced.
212
rowed down to a ringlet and finally the excited area within
is reduced to a fine point. The response is now sharply fo
cused; it has become specific. This phenomenon of responses
acquiring specificity has been observed in higher organisms
to evolve by natural life experiences from birth onward, step
by step. There is a vast variety of applications for this ca
pacity which is constantly refined by informal or formal
training.
Any differentiation once accomplished successfully is ob
viously an aid to life and survival. We can assume that the
capacity for learning to differentiate has developed as such
a survival aid by naturally selective processes, because organ
isms are thus enabled to cope better and more precisely with
the exigencies of environment. If design sharpens our nerv
ous tools for differentiation, it proves itself an exercise of
vital significance.
The capacity for differentiation seems to be an intimately
combined product of maturation and conditioning or learn
ing. Interestingly enough, experimenters have convinced
themselves that acquired maturity can temporarily be re
duced to an earlier stage. A state of de-differentiation can be
brought back when stimulation is made to reach the inten
sity of a shock and, according to some observers, also when
the mind is put into what has been described as a state of
frustration.
Experimental psychologists have ingeniously demonstrated
how a kindergarten child of five, when frustrated in expecta
tions to which he was earlier conditioned, markedly loses his
ability to differentiate. In general behavior such a child de
scends, for the time of this influence, from his level of ma
turity, or his 'mental age/ He then does not, for example,
use his toys with accustomed specificity, T)ut knocks them
about as he would have done one or two years earlier, when
he was less developed.
Both causes of reduced or reversed differentiation shock
and frustration are in measured doses very significant to the
designer, and he finds means to make use of both.
While a design composition may often require and invite
213
finer differentiation, at other times devices will be desired to
make us less susceptible to differentials or details that the
designer may like to suppress from our perception. There
are occasions when he wishes, for example, to eliminate from
our attention minor irritants and deficiencies in color com
bination, form, or texture. Strong shock-like overstimulation
adjacent to the questionable object, or a strongly felt lack
of expected stimulation' (which is frustration), will readily
help reduce the normal capacity to differentiate. Like a com
poser of music, the designer can lead us at will into a mesh-
work of aroused anticipations and fragmentary disappoint
ments or frustration. He also knows how to produce calcu
lated shocks here and there. Thus, by his intuitive gift or
according to a plan, he can raise and lower our momentary
capacity for sharp distinction.
Any new stimulation is only a fractional change of a total
environment to which the totality of our response pattern
remains geared. Also our designs and planned constructions
must never be conceived as piecemeal, losing sight of the
total life while engrossed in detail. Properly understood, plan
and design always involve modifications of the environment
as a whole.
To picture the effect of our design, we may theoretically
assume that there is inner equilibrium in a person before we
bring the design into play. When not stimulated by design
or accidental circumstance, the entire nervous system is kept
in a state of rest or, more correctly expressed, in a suspended
balance between the inhibitory and excitatory components.
These components are perpetually at work in a human being
and, in fact, his entire neuropsychic life seems to consist of
the manifold shifts of this balance. Whenever the quiet bal
ance is disturbed to a degree corresponding to the intensity
of impacts produced by our design, noticeable resultant
innervations occur at once. These constitute either surplus
excitation or inhibition. There will be significant sequences
of both and patterns of their combination.
We now return to another operational concept which has
214
already been alluded to briefly. Disturbances in one region
are often caused by an inductive influence from another
region. This is supposedly similar to the processes of induc
tion which transmit energy phenomena from one electric
coil to another or to the induction phenomena discovered
for antagonistic muscle groups. Reference is made here to
the great experiments of Sherrington, who proved that if we
excite the tensor muscle of a leg, the corresponding flexor
muscle is automatically inhibited by something like an in
ductive mechanism.
The inductive effects observed in the cortical region and
perhaps in other nervous areas do not seem to occur, how
ever, as 'stabilized' or statically localized. In this they differ
from the fixed muscle antagonism. In contrast to these
effects they are, so to speak, temporarily emergent antago
nisms. The phenomenon of 'induction' is quite distinct from
that of irradiation, and has intricately different results.
As stated earlier, if an excitation area is definitely domi
nant, it will succeed in dulling other areas through induc
tion so that other stimuli there become ineffective. If a per
ception causes a specific excitation which is sufficiently pre
dominant, energy transactions elsewhere become inhibited
and brain tissue numbed against innervation.
In contrast to this, irradiation is considered to be the cause
for disturbing interference of another kind. A well-elaborated
differentiation or, more correctly, a response, well specialized
and differentiated by appropriate conditioning, may be made
to lose markedly some of its perfected sharpness by the flood-
ing-in or irradiating of another stimulation. Under such cir
cumstances of confusion the obstructing ring wall of inhibi
tion seems to relax. When it gives way, we revert to more
vague generalization. Experimenters have ascertained that
the fine inhibitory mechanism of differentiation can be ren
dered ineffective by induction as well as by the irradiating
influence of competitive sensory impacts.
The bearing of all this on design is evident. For example,
forms or colors, either simultaneous or immediately succes
sive in the field of vision, will modify each other's impact
215
and impression. Often they will mutually reduce the clarity
of each elicited reaction. Their relationships correspond with
the physiological relationships of brain processes elicited by
them. Both are actually one to us and will in the end cer
tainly be best comprehended as identical. 6 We arrive at a
new understanding of design features through their corre
spondence with what goes on in our brains owing to their
impact. Experiments can probe into the operation, measure
ments, and intensities of these phenomena, thereby helping
us to see the problem more clearly in order to avoid acci
dental pitfalls and to support our design intention more suc
cessfully than by mere guesswork.
Before leaving the vast field of still incipient suppositions
on the phenomenon of cortical innervation and force dis
tribution, we should mention an interesting theory which de
velops the view that inhibition may be set equal to localized
sleep. This interpretation considers what we commonly call
'sleep 7 as nothing else but a generalized, far-spreading inhi
bition, gradually reaching out over larger cortical areas. The
velocity with which such a generalized inhibition recedes
and a person wakes up is measurably different for different
individuals.
The same individual difference in speed of responses
often as much as one to tenis observed in the small-area
inhibitions as well. Therefore, this personal factor holds true
also in the differentiation phenomena that were described
as produced by a contracting ring of inhibition. In other
words, here is an approach to the problem that one person
may be capable of distinguishing design subtleties more
quicHy than another. The phenomenon of physiological per
sonality is clearly and quantitatively brought home to us. In
deed, the ability to differentiate and to generalize, and the
degree of this ability and its rate of speed, is perhaps a most
characteristic trait of mind and personality. Another such
6 Wolfgang Koehler calls this the principle of isomorphism struc
tural and spatial likeness in the relationship of stimuli to each other
and the brain processes, thus elicited, to each other.
216
very personal trait is pronounced capacity for inductive phe
nomena. These traits may ultimately define also how indi
vidual personality, within the species, can specifically be
served by design.
It can well be anticipated from the relation of inhibition
to sleep that the study of hypnogene phenomena and sleep-
producing factors may give us a great deal of food for
thought-shaping design. Rhythmic and monotonous se
quence, even of painfully strong stimuli, have been carefully
investigated and measured in their diminishing power to
excite. 7 Non-rhythmic and intermittent patterns can do a
great deal to revive at once excitation which has failed and
can finally be completely overtaken by inhibition under the
impact of monotony and sheer repetition.
Original designers have often felt themselves engaged in a
struggle for acceptance or in a battle for conquest. If they
could grasp more fully all that is involved, the missiles they
devise would reach their aims more effectively and their bal
listics would be less accidental. They could conquer many a
now toughly resistant rampart. They could almost manipu
late at will cortical spreads of excitation and inhibition, as
well as inductive effects. All this is, of course, not done by
an unfailing stark and downright push button control tech
nique. Accomplishment will have to come through empathy
as through cautiously gathered judgment and the recognition
that elements of design are, after all, somewhat on the order
of extremely touchy switches which must be turned on with
subtle knowledge in order to elicit the desired processes of
response.
7 Russian experiments of Laporsky, Jerofeeva, Friedman, Schislo, and
Solomonoff, Roansiy, Petrowa, and others have become known.
217
ELEMENTARY MOTIVATIONS OF MAN become
complicated when conditioned and variously
molded in individual lives; they pky their
role in design as well as in the acceptance
of it.
30
Long before the physiologist of today,
philosophers and psychologists tried their hand in catalogu
ing fundamental motivations of man.
Survival is a primary motive, deep-seated, beyond all specu
lative exercises of the mind. Individual survival and even
more, survival of the race, is a normally accepted value in
the majority of known societies; most suicides would shrink
from their deed if they thought it would extinguish the
entire species. The brain physiologist N. Ischlondsky thinks
that to react against essential interference with survival, is
arch primary to all so-called primaries, those broad bases in
which responses have roots and footing. He hesitates to use
such evanescent, elusive concepts as basic drives and prefers
to speak instead of reflexive dispositions. Designing or fur
nishing a room seems to bring us right into the thicket of
these arch tendencies of response. For a person in the room
and exposed to the design, every so often these tendenceis
will at least be 'egged-on. 7 They may even become plainly
expressed and manifested by full motor action, accompanied
by pronounced emotional response.
218
W. A. Hunt and C. Landis in 1936 perfected earlier ex
perimentation to prove the startle reflex, a definite, stable,
ever-recurrent response pattern of an involuntary nature. It
is called forth when, for example, a shot is fired. Figuratively
speaking, a designer has many occasions to 'fire a shot,' to
use a startling feature and create corresponding reaction.
A relative or a milder derivative of this bundle of co-ordi
nated bodily responses, so conspicuous when we are startled
by something, is probably the orientation reflex which
Pavlov described to his students as the Vhat-is-going-on' re
flex. It can easily be observed when a stimulus of any kind
enters our awareness. A noise, a flash of light, makes a dog
and us as well sit up. The entire nervous system jumps to
attention, but the 'where 7 seems salient here. While recep
tivity is irresistibly stepped up, the receptor areas are turned
for best exposure to the stimulus or in the direction of its
impact.
The defense reflex may be pointed out next. It watches
over survival and secures it by counter-aggression, flight, or
protective effort.
Complications appear when the basic response has been
associated with secondary conditioned stimuli. Certain con
trasting but typical branch manifestations of the defense
reflex can serve as examples. From this same reflexive dispo
sition a twofold attitude may derive.
There is natural gratification in feeling visually unimpeded
and in being free for action, at liberty, not caged and incar
cerated. A person may look at large view windows of a living
room with their unobstructed panoramic possibilities, and
every time he does so he may feel like taking a breath of re
laxation, gratification, and relief. A division bar, a structural
post, or a wall pier introduced to interrupt this expanded
opening will dim this response and conflict with it. It will
interfere with the freedom craved; it will remind him of a
'cagp.'
To maintain clear visibility along the approach lines of a
remotely possible attack, or for a remotely necessary escape,
has been in minute dilution of the defense reflex an un-
219
conscious sub-motive of many a seemingly accidental design
decision.
But the defense reflex may involve something else. Another
gratification is to "be protected/ inaccessible to others and
to possible enemies to be screened off from a potentially
hostile exterior world. And so another person, differently
conditioned, may look at the same wide, unobstructed glass
front with anxiety. Division bars give him the feeling of se
curity, of protection against burglary, murder, danger asso
ciations to which the perception of a large window opening
invariably radiates in his cortex. These associations are in
the middle brain linked to negative emotions perhaps even
to visceral or glandular reactions that may emerge to a
marked degree of consciousness. It is obvious that the prac
tical desires and evaluations of the second person are quite
contrary to those of the first. As clients of an architect, each
will voice his concern, vaguely perhaps, but entitled to his
sympathetic 'feeling-in.'
We all can easily comprehend that it is a fundamental
defensive attitude which makes us, almost unawares, place
value on protective devices in our surroundings. For instance,
much of the time we welcome a solid or opaque enclosure,
especially a sheltering feature behind us. A wall back of our
easy chair where we want to relax, or back of our seat at the
desk where our concentration shall not be disturbed by our
sustained subconscious watching of the rear, has a specific
meaning in this respect. And so has the placement of plumb
ing fixtures. For protection against surprise, we are even not
indifferent about how the bathroom door locked or not
relates to these fixtures. We have come a long way from the
original pronounced defensive instinct which prompts many
animals to seek a screened and protected place for their
natural calls. Yet primeval motivations seem to persist faintly
in our designs, and can be traced there.
The cluster of general primary reflexive dispositions, to
ward defense, toward food intake, and so on, may have
varied proportions from one individual to the other. It may
become the foundation for a conditioned superstructure of
220
gradually acquired attitudes that we feel are specifically our
own. They may often be manifested in no more than a
mental tonus, largely cortical, but combined with a some
times very pronounced positive or negative emotional ac
cent. This can almost pass as a definition of what we call
likes and dislikes, so dear to us and also so conducive to
our feeling of being a specific personality as distinguished
from our neighbors. Design and the consumption of design
often become a conscious personality test, depending to a
great extent on all these phenomena that are still too vaguely
evaluated.
Individuals are always encompassed by a socio-economic-
geographic constellation. A Chinese in the southern province
of Kwantung may, by a lifetime of routine, be conditioned
to take hardly anything but rice as a gratification of the
feeding reflex. In contra** to this, the thought of meat as
daily fare will with its quite different sensory appeals start a
northern hunter's mouth to water. Similarly, by way of con
ditioning or 'canalization of response/ the defense reflex can
in one person be well gratified, for example, by an enclosing
wall of brick. For him this particular structural type has been
fixed and attached to the habitual solution of his shelter re
quirement, which can pass as a derivative of the defense re
flex. By dint of this conditioning, however, the same person
may not feel at all sheltered or protected by the snow wall of
an igloo, as would an Eskimo, nor by a fair thatch enclosure,
which, in turn, is all an Ashanti householder dreams of in
his African Kraal. 'I will not live in a glass house' may be the
expression of a person who shudders to miss the accustomed
feeling he found in his earlier residence that had a few win
dows less, and in each a few division bars more. But with a
proper police department, with heating and cooling provi
sions of today, and under the impact of current home maga
zine illustrations, we may gradually become conditioned to
an enclosure of glass and movable drapes as against one of
immovable brick. Secondary responses can change.
Shelter methods, like diet, are derived from attitudes
rooted in primary function. But by repeated experience of
221
combinations, specific stimulus patterns become affixed to a
basic response, so that they turn into regular instruments of
its unfailing activation. Then the process goes on, with other
and more specific conditioned reflex material of second and
third degree being added to that of the first until, finally,
predilections may become most personal or idiosyncratic. In
terior decorators are familiar with this sort of phenomenon.
The designer may have to explain to himself and to his
client the genesis of all pros and cons peculiarly superim
posed on basic themes in order to lift the matter out of the
realm of the seemingly arbitrary or again the sacrosanct.
At this turn, the consumership becomes an audience of
listeners, to whom a professional analysis is presented. The
problem is thus removed onto a new neuromental level, the
verbal level. In conversation the design is now demonstrated
to feature as yet unnoticed but plausible values that have
bearing on well-being and survival, and this oral demonstra
tion will often help toward a sound conclusion of the men
tioned conflict. Once initial willingness and acceptance are
secured, the rest will consist of progressive habituation and
adaptation. In other words, a new habit formation may be
undertaken by the consumer if he is first helped on the
verbal level to discard an older bias.
Having gained a vista into the intimacy between arch mo
tors and design, we return briefly to our parade of primaries.
We might refer next to the control reflex, which tends to
ward freedom of our body action and control of the sur
roundings by our grasp. An urge 'to possess' is but a deriva
tive of this primary.
Another broadly based and regular response is the preci
sion reflex. It generally makes any nervously well-developed
individual react negatively to vagueness or imperfection and
positively to accuracy. Such accuracy applies to perception
and to action as well and shows clearly their close relation
ship. It is obviously related to the acuity or sharpness of
senses and to well co-ordinated motility.
Whenever a gratification of such reflexive dispositions
222
seems not fully attained, purposeful action may promptly be
innervated to attain it. In frustration, an adverse emotional
tonus is produced, and this in turn is linked with various
measurable vegetative effects which on their part are felt as
unfavorable to well-being and survival. 1 We are irritated, dis
appointed, depressed. None of the basic cravings can be
starved without such punishment or a marked feeling of dis
comfort. Yet we must never overlook how diversified grati
fications can be owing to complex conditioning.
It may not be commonly accepted to isolate and speak of
arch phenomena, for example the tendency toward control
or defense as certain brain physiologists have attempted
in terms of reflexes. Earlier, this term was reserved for
much simpler repetitive nervous events, such as the footsole
reflex, which produces its manifest flexing of the toes as
neatly as clockwork. Those arch drives, however, regardless
of their terminology, often seem to lead merely to new cor
tical balances, and to other phenomena in the association
area, while further palpable consequences may be wholly or
partially kept in suspense. The result is not always an imme
diately flagrant external effect, although measurable inner
tensions are produced.
These inner tensions, however, make up the great realm
of partly suspended responses that design elicits. They con
stitute its most significant emotional yield.
1 The James-Lange Theory claims that emotional experiences are sen-
sorial, that is, vague impressions from our muscles, viscera, and so on.
223
In THE PHYSIOLOGY OF TRADITION tWO faC-
tors contribute: long habituations and also
brief but impressive shocks that become in
strumental in the constructive memory of
man and the race.
31
The physical shell required by a com
munity or a single family in a given culture shows condi
tioning of many kinds. There are variations, played on the
simple theme of human constants.
How do Values' come into existence, enter the life of the
group, and affect the self-image? How do individual habitua-
tion and social tradition, with which design is so closely
linked, evolve as powerful factors? Habituation, at the bot
tom of so many human phenomena, operates on numerous
organic and especially neural levels. Living tissue, cells, nerve
cells, and entire nervous apparatuses seem to form their
habits.
When it rains water diffuses, reaches a rivulet, a canal, and
follows it. Observant neurologists have compared this with
the flow of neuromental excitation which also spreads and,
where possible, discharges through a system that is already
in the process of discharging. Any stimulus is believed to
have a tendency to contribute energy to outgoing impulses.
A newly added stimulus causes responses to follow mostly
those paths which are already used in an existing excitation
224
and which are already effective in channeling nervous energy.
When such a canalization is established, a subjective value
has been formed, and a social one may be in the offing.
Values are potential satisfiers. They produce a chronic, emo
tional response which will heed all similar signals, even
those only faintly suggestive of the customary stimulus. The
acceptance of a value seems in itself to diminish protracted
inner tensions, which are loathsome.
The growing of a path, or the channeling of responses, is
intensified by what Holt has called 'adience 7 the principle
that any stimulation will cause the organism to act and
move toward more of the same kind. Water not only follows
a channel but in doing so accrues in quantity and deepens
it by erosion. The principle of adience has been considered
helpful in expkining the genesis of reflexes and of many re
sponse patterns such as inclination to acquisitiveness, gre-
gariousness, and so on. Any vivid experience tends in this
way to perpetuate itself, unless through special circumstances
a counterconditioning should set in.
A perpetuated response pattern is, of course, what we call
a habit. Habit on higher levels may work in two ways. Be
havior can be streamlined by it through elimination of
earlier complicating responses; the revulsion against a stimu
lus disappears, wears off. A mortician's apprentice will soon
not wince at his job. But behavior may also be relatively
amplified and complicated through addition of entire chains
of responses and again habit will account for such acquisi
tion. An acquired fixed sequence of actions in glands and
muscles begins to unroll, for example, when we sit down at
the usual place for the usual meal and begin handling spoon,
fork, and knife, followed by salivation and swallowing, all
in the usual way.
One thing must be firmly kept in mind. Habituation,
habit-forming on all organic levels, cannot really be separated
from constitutional growth or maturation, as physiologists
call it, since growth is not an isolated phenomenon. It
never occurs in a vacuum. It takes place through manifold
interaction with concrete surroundings. The child learns
225
while it grows and grows while it learns. A segregation of
acquired habit and sheer growth responses or, in other words,
an attempt at theoretical separation of nature and nurture,
is a most controversial undertaking.
Also, a handy distinction between cultural tradition and
innate 'instincts 7 cannot be established by setting forth bril
liant generalizations or preconceptions, but, if at all, only by
meticulous observation. A sparrow was observed to abandon
his natural chirps and to learn canary call notes when reared
in a nest with canaries. After some struggle and delay, he
imitated their song successfully.
Habits interconnect into a tough meshwork. Responses of
the first order can, by conditioning, be linked to secondary
and tertiary responses. The way these various sets cling
closely to each other and can, in fact, be made to disappear
in entire chains when one of their vital links is broken or
made to disappear these are mechanisms studied with care
by reflexologists. The best among them know, however, that
the organic regularities which they observe would be sorely
misunderstood as mechanical. Their studies have been mo
mentous in illuminating the processes of habituation and
learning as well as the chances for successful acceptance of
design.
Tastes' depend largely on the establishment of values
through the process of canalization. The satisfaction of a
drive or reflexive disposition which may be rather general at
first is accomplished in the end by one specific kind of
stimulus.
At the beginning of a baby's life, a great number of sub
stances put in his mouth cause swallowing. Later, the infant
turns choosy. Thresholds have become high for many stimuli
which were originally within the generally accepted class of
adequate stimuli. A two-year-old, after responding at first to
all tones and rhythms, will soon demand certain nursery
rhymes for satisfaction.
Among any set of original stimuli, there are, of course,
more or less potent ones. By conditioning, however, the
226
original degree of responsiveness may actually be reversed. It
has been proved that acquired tastes may replace sweet milk
with bitter beer, a rhythmic movement with a jerky one,
gentle combinations of color or sound with what earlier was
considered shrill dissonance.
Canalization is the psychological term for a particular type
of conditioning: a general, non-specific craving is given an
increasing and ever more specific satisfaction. Unlike other
cases of conditioning, however, canalization requires no
shifting of association to a new or far-fetched stimulus. It
involves instead an act of selection from among more or less
adequate stimuli to make one of them dominant in the busi
ness of eliciting response. In other words, for one particular
stimulus, the entrance has been made easy, the threshold cut
low, the door left open.
Experimental psychology can teach a designer that canali
zation is the most promising sort of conditioning he could
attempt, if he wishes to be an organic realist. He then goes
on, producing the same, 'but more so/
The designer must also know that it is not possible to be
come accustomed to everything; one merely adapts himself
to stimuli within a certain range of tolerance. Within this
range, planned or accidental circumstances begin to delimit
responses to a specific stimulus or set of stimuli. An emo
tional accent is then often produced through the repeated
exposure to the same. This has been called 'the pleasure of
recognition of the familiar/ The 'ethnocentrism' of the
anthropologist, Gidding's broad principle of social unity
through consciousness of kind, has much to do with 'the
love of the accepted/
The identification with one's own kind, e.g. where likes
and dislikes are concerned, may come first from attachment
in infancy to one's parent. Elders may be deified or revolted
against, yet generally parenthood is a basic device to preserve
tradition. Furthermore, a perpetual self-identification, an
identification with one's own cherished ego, calls for main
tenance of habitual values. These values are not just pigeon
holed, but form a sensitively balanced system that guarantees
227
one's personality and its continuance. Design and design
acceptance thus become eminent instrumentalities to brace
the individual by his adherence to himself as well as the
group to which he belongs.
Indeed, canalization preference acquisition is largely
what might even be called the forming of a personality. It
is distinctly felt as impairing the personality to give up a
once canalized response. To keep canalized responses intact
means to keep one's ego defended, its image untainted. The
insertion of a new value . . . may set up a sense of strain
and disturbance, a sense of not being one's self, a sense of
pressure to embark on an uncertain voyage/ x
Here is a plausible explanation for resistance to innova
tion in design, and for the time lag in acceptance so well
observed by sociologists. It is a problem cardinal to the de
signer.
No personality is so plastic that it can learn and again
unlearn things in a crazily checkered row. Habituation, so
intertwined with maturation, is, after all, a life process and
such processes are to quite an extent irreversible. It would
be unwarranted to predict that patterns of response, condi
tioned and reconditioned, will follow and replace each other
in an endless succession leading nowhere, and reflect only a
senseless sequence of offered fashions. The sociologist De
Sanctis is convinced that values are formed as the branches
of a tree sprout, never to grow backward into the trunk.
The picture of a slow and steady shaping as with a grow
ing tree, may have to be supplemented, however, if we turn
our attention to drastic episodes which may and do occur,
just as a bolt of lightning which may sometime strike that
tree.
Although habituation operates through frequency of expo
sure, there may also be responses fixated in quite another
manner. The shock of intensive emotion linked to the expe
rience of a single strong stimulation may be a decisive and
1 Murphy and Newcomb, Experimental Social Psychology, p. 230.
228
formative agent. Some very negative fixations may thus be
produced by what Freud called a trauma, the Greek word
for wound or lesion. But also positive vital experiences can
come and be fixed by way of shock, and this the designer
must never forget. In fact, great art could never do without
sudden impact. One intense delight, like one of mortifying
anguish, may become an almost unbeatable competitor to
many earlier or later experiences of the mild habitual kind.
A house, then, can be designed to satisfy "by the month/
with the regularity of a provider. Here it satisfies through
habituation. Or it may do so in a very different way, *by the
moment/ the fraction of a second, with the thrill of a lover.
The experience of a lifetime is often summed up in a few
memories, and these are more likely to be of the latter type,
clinging to a thrilling occurrence, rather than of the former,
concerned with humdrum steadiness. Here is the value of
a wide sliding door opening pleasantly onto a garden. It can
not be measured by counting how often and how steadily
the door is used, or how many hours it stays open. The de
cisive thing may be a first deep breath of liberation when
one is in the almost ritual act of opening it before breakfast
or on the first warm and scented spring day. The memories
of one's youth and of the landscape in which it was spent,
seem composed, to a considerable degree, of this sort of vital
recollection. There are in each life certain scattered quanta
of experience that may have been of small number or dimen
sion statistically but were so intense as to provide impacts,
forever essential.
The designer undoubtedly has to deal with both these
principles of fixation of memory values: habituation extended
in time as well as shock, with its characteristic brevity and
singularity. Not only a habit, but any fixation can produce
dominance, so that other responses are not only inhibited
but, as discussed, come to discharge their energy into this
dominant response.
But psychologists have also observed that habituation
often terminates in only a partial dominance, and other com
petitive responses do not really die out but linger on in a
229
repressed state. Such an internal split and prolonged under
ground guerilla warfare neurotically impede the organism's
activity stream. It produces emotional states usually unde-
sired by the designer, who must be on his guard against
them. If he truly wants a design feature to stand out as the
essential one, he must make sure that any and all stimuli and
responses possibly militating against it are not just repressed
temporarily but successfully silenced once and for all. And
so the study of repression, the meaning of incomplete con
quest by dominance, are most interesting to him. Concomi
tant are experiments on memory concerned with physical
forms or other stimulus patterns. It is often the designer's
business to stabilize awareness of features deliberately made
dominant. But whether conscious or not, it is the emotional
intensity and accent which seem to fix memory indelibly,
and to account for its effectiveness in subsequent attitudes
and motivations.
If we have learned to consider environment as the sum
total of all stimuli to which a neural system is exposed, it
becomes clear how the future development of brain physi
ology will aid and underscore with factual knowledge the
design of a constructed environment. The designer, the
architect, has appeared to us as a manipulator of stimuli and
expert of their workings on the human organism. His tech
nique is really with the organic matter of brains and nerves,
however familiar he should be with the trades of the steel
fabricator, the mason, the plumber, devoted to external in
organic tasks. Their outer arrangements, though, may further
or harm inner physiological developments. This is so except
perhaps where matters seem predestined by heredity. There
it is often assumed that things are removed from design
influence and determined by constitutional equipment and
genes. What seems hereditary, however, is often influenced
by the prenatal, the uterine environment, and the condition
of a child-bearing mother is not independent of the situa
tions in which she finds herself for the act of birth. Whether
she spends the months of pregnancy in a cave, in a nomadic
230
tent, or in a residence with controlled climate and insula
tion, whether she has her baby kneeling on two stones or
after being wheeled from the labor room into the delivery
suite of a modern maternity hospital, briefly encompasses
the designer's influential contributions to what may be early
death of the infant or later appear as its inherited constitu
tion. The limits of these contributions and so the formidable
powers of design often seem almost beyond scrutiny.
There are perhaps more severely defined limits to design
on purely socio-psychological grounds. Organisms are group
phenomena and human beings belong to a society. In alter
ing a tradition or in substituting something else for it, we
must bear in mind that new habits or fixations cannot pos
sibly be created in a vacuum but are sedimented by a novel
dominance over older, established habits. In general an en
tirely new response, one utterly different from earlier ones,
and one fully detached from a reflex basis, is not in the cards.
'New habits are not plastered on piecemeal; they are assimi
lated into the dominant pattern of a going concern . . .
each new habit can integrate with habits already present; it
can, under special circumstances, displace habits weaker than
itself (or weakened by its arising dominance); it can be as
similated as a member of a family of responses. . / 2
In a child, the assimilation of new habits need not waste
much energy on the displacement or remodeling of what
went before; and so habits formed at an early age are par
ticularly strong and stable. While adults may have the pur
chasing power for design, children are, biologically speaking,
the principal consumers because they are the most responsive
ones. They are easily affected by it for a lifetime. But mature
customers of design are especially difficult to serve. Apart
from the impediment already explained, they are liable to
resent subjectively any deviations from their ways as impo
sition.
Razran has made clear that human subjects, different from
2 Murphy and Newcomb, Experimental Social Psychology, Harper,
New York, 1937, p. 166.
231
Pavlov's dogs, often show something like an 'attitudinal con
trol' of the conditioning process. They prove capable of in
fluencing or even reversing it by a reaction against the experi
menter and a resistance against the conditioning setup itself.
Thus tradition may strangely stimulate an individual to rebel
against its continuance; or again, a would-be reformer of de
sign may easily induce or reinforce a reactionary attitude of
the public against his person and consequently against his
proposals.
Tradition could be considered as the social establishment
of stereotypes, for which the arch examples are gesticulation,
facial expressions, and verbal language made understandable
within the group. In the last analysis, all other meaningful
forms are also derived from self-expression and then social
ized into instrumentalities of communication.
It seems that a full absence of facial expression and ges
ticulation is to us socially tedious or even alarming. It is to
us Like muteness and silence, an intimidating blank, perhaps
because it leaves us without information or frustrates our
fundamental need for signals. This may be only one case
within our more general emotional reaction against empti
ness, referred to earlier as a mental horror vacui. Out of the
general craving for an interchange of signals, specific sounds,
gestures, and facial expressions are canalized into equally spe
cific satisfactions and become socially accepted. They may
be only partially understandable within another society, and
a Chinese student in an American college or fraternity has
to relearn to behave scrutably, not only to speak comprehen
sibly. Formal expression in design and all the arts seems to
follow out of a socialization process similar to the one de
scribed here for the organic prototypes of expression, the
expression by facial muscles and by general gesticulation,
using the members of our body.
A startled look or a baby's smile are probably primary.
They form the raw material on which the socialization proc
esses begin to act.
The socially accepted version of look or smile may become
so without words and by the suggestive action of the child's
232
elders. Autosuggestion may soon support the development,
and it hardly differs from other kinds of suggestion, except
in its origin. In most cases, however, autosuggestion is par
ticularly powerful, as it happens to be free of emotional bar
riers set up against external influence, and of those atti-
tudinal resistances that are activated so often by authority
situations. Perhaps the most profound effectiveness of a tra
dition is accomplished when it is no longer consciously dis
cerned as such. This occurs when self-identification with it
has become so strong through autosuggestion that doubt or
acceptance of anything else is felt as a personal affront. An
inner emotional evidence, not mere dutiful adherence to tra
dition, corroborates the conviction as if a spontaneous, very
personal choice were at hand.
Our issue has been to highlight the physiology of tradition,
the emergence of fixations as well as the processes affecting
a modification of tradition or its gradual replacement. Noth
ing illustrates these processes of social integration and disin
tegration so concretely as does the constructed environment,
the shell which human society secretes through its mani
fold, system-controlled but often individually initiated, de
sign activity.
The ultimate accomplishment of a constructed environ
ment, fully illuminated by bright biological comprehension,
is, of course, still far ahead of us. It will be obtained by de
grees only.
Our courage may be bolstered if we remember the meager
results of other sciences in their helpless infancy, for exam
ple, chemistry two hundred years ago, and if we realize the
difficulties that typify any beginning. We may then contrast
this picture with the present stupendous applications of these
same but now matured sciences to useful design.
A writer in the eighteenth century may have been pas
sionately convinced of the immensity of potential realiza
tions through the physical sciences. Should he have envisaged
for the future metal bridges which span a mile, building-
skeletons calculated to tower a thousand feet before any en
closure walls are installed, or metropolises housing millions,
233
with gas, water, sewage, and railroads piped underground, he
would have had greater difficulty proving his propositions
than we have with ours. We are convinced that patient re
search, starting from the elementary and progressing to the
complex, can indeed gradually remodel the constructed world
about us, to reach new levels of organic wholesomeness.
234
STRANGE IMPORTS AND MISAPPROPRIATION OF
CULTURAL GOOD are general human custom
of long standing.
32
Cultural evolution seems largely the
evolution of habits and comparable fixations. This makes
them worth the study of the brain physiologist but also a
crucial issue for the designer and his consumers. It is in diet
and dwelling that habits are hardest to react against. Moral
attitudes may also have habit character but are less hardy be
cause they are introduced later in life and are consequently
reflected upon more consciously.
The food our mother fed us as toddlers becomes a pre
ferred stimulus. The dwelling habits, whether acquired in
the tent of Siberian nomads, in the New Mexican adobe, the
Puerto Rican swamp squatter's hut, or the corrugated iron
shack of a Buenos Aires slum, are taken in by the still
speechless child as unquestioningly as the blue of the sky
and the warmth of sunshine.
Thus architecture, the bias in home building, the lodging
tradition, is the hardest to reform. Certain patterns of re
sponse have somehow been preserved from cave days to the
present. Mystically inclined conservatives may revere them
as quasi-sacred.
Conservatism, down to the aimless repetition of motions
which have lost their meaning, is a stratified and rather com-
235
plex phenomenon. Sometimes social tradition is its only sub-
floor and it reaches no lower; sometimes it has a strong "bio
logical foundation. Essentially and originally, it is a survival
aid of the first order, although it may turn nonsensical with
the passage of time.
We see a dog go to rest; he begins turning and spirals to
the floor until he lies ring-shaped with his nose under his
tail. This has been interpreted as precisely the way his an
cestors pushed down prairie grass, formed a little bowl-like
berth in which to rest, and protected their noses against
swarming insects. But our dog does all this on the firm lino
leum floor of a well-screened kitchen. No grass, no insects.
His behavior has become strangely misplaced and is an
atavism.
In cultural situations left-overs are not the only strange
inserts. When moved from one point of time and space to
another, from one constellation into another, anything can
become profoundly displaced with regard to its function.
Insular primitive society and more or less precultural ages
were perhaps less threatened by such strange insertions.
These ages may have been more successful in maintaining a
healthier, living continuity of habit and tradition than higher
civilizations that are wide open to cosmopolitan traffic. Still,
a variety of contacts between primitive groups, through the
jungle, over mountain barriers, or by paddling over oceanic
water from island group to island group, must have brought
not only armed combat but also more important clashes of
habit and, above all, a controversial borrowing from strange,
incompatible traditions. The history of design and design
enjoyment is full of such transfer. Ancestral action is re
peated, yes, but strangers can sometimes be imitated enjoy-
ably, even without comprehension.
There was, and still is today, much of stimulation in mis
interpretation. Savages enjoy looking around a dime store,
although they might misunderstand much of what they see.
A Zulu chieftain dons a top hat without possessing the
striped trousers; an occidental tourist may love Chinese char
acters so much that after his return home he will hang up
236
in his study a beautifully brushed but puzzling pictograph
that in Canton was pinned to a washroom door and, in
translation, reads: Tor Men/ Students of applied art will be
herded through ethnological museum collections and with
pencil and paint learn to exercise that ancient human gift
and prerogative of misappropriating forms and ideas.
Still, we should hate to miss all of this. Not unlike the
primitive society, the civilized one has been increasingly sub
ject to the external influences of interchange and to the lure
of misappropriation. Like curious Americans, the Greek tour
ists Solon and Herodotus traveled abroad, often to pick up
misinterpreted formal and ideological souvenirs. Plato, in
his Timaeus, narrates how an Egyptian priest congratulated
Solon on the childlike naivete of the Hellenic voyagers.
Former periods may have given more earnest thought than
ours, however, to the systematic benefits of a grand tour. For
a student seven hundred years ago, a switch from Salerno to
Paris was easier than is switching from Ann Arbor to the
University of Southern California today. It was certainly
more recommended to scholars, nor did they lose any credits
in turning to a new Alma Mater.
Traveling, learning and misunderstanding are old human
institutions. Since the neolithic days of forested Europe,
there has been a lively exchange of mental and physical com
modities and controversial contraband.
Civilized Japan was perhaps something of an exception to
such promiscuity, since for hundreds of years at a time it
was not only geographically but also politically an island.
We can repeatedly refer to old Japanese circumstances, be
cause the undisturbed and tight correlation of habits in dif
ferent fields used to be very striking in that country. The
traditional Shinto construction of the dwelling seems to be
tuned acoustically to a specific sort of music, dance, manner
of speech and poetry, to the indigenous clothes of men and
women, and to the peculiar customs in taking a meal or a
bath.
A good deal of that clarity of integration may have been
obscured earlier by Buddhistic imports, especially the wave
237
since the sixteenth century. But when Admiral Perry crashed
the sea gates of the empire three generations ago, an ava
lanche of foreign cultural currents rushed in, underwashing
the integrated structure. It is significant how things from
then on started to cave in, to go out of joint and out of gear.
Japan became an example of how tradition totters. French
banking and Beaux Arts architecture, German engineering
and military modernism, American mass production and
commercialism, permeated these traditional islands of 'noble
but simple' samurai, and humble and docile rice growers and
fishermen. All of them had been accustomed to liking one
kind of plum twig and one kind of lyrical roll picture. Soon,
almost suddenly, the Japanese themselves turned into enthu
siastic transoceanic tourists, kodaks and notebooks in hand.
They were bent on enriching their long-marooned islands by
pickings and imports.
When, a quarter of a century ago, I followed my first lec
ture invitation to Tokyo, Kyoto, and Osaka, I heard a girl
sing a song in one of those half-and-half American night
clubs. On the surface she was not a moga, which was then
the Japanese term for 'modern gal 7 and roughly corresponded
to a New York 'flapper' of the 'twenties. She was tradi
tionally dressed; for some reason her geisha name signified
'a thousand years' (probably of happiness), although she was
only sixteen. The song went on in quarter-tones with chirp
ing, quivering, shamisen accompaniment a true replica of
old-fashioned Japanese lyrics and the text was: 'Shall we
make love and go on drinking tea? Or shall we get out and
take the Odiwara Elevated Express? See, just now rises in
Shinjuku the famous moon of the Musashi plains, over the
roofs of the five and ten cent stores/
Poetic quarters of ancient Tokyo were soon strangely en
riched by a turmoil of neon signs to compete with that
famous moon. The sexes danced together (to the horror of
the old-fashioned), tapping loudly on hardwood floors. The
department of education prescribed that school girls dress in
airy occidental clothes and sit on benches so as not to become
bow-legged by resting on their heels; during the war, female
238
bus drivers and street car conductors were proud to wear
breeches and high-laced boots. Multitudes began swarming
on bicycles along Tokyo streets studded with millions of
telephone poles, or crowding the subway train Asakusa-Ueno.
Far from the metropolitan hustle, at the seashore of Kama
Kura, the giant Buddha statue Daibutsu still sat calmly, but
not much longer. A world's fair traffic developed all around
it, and near-by, under the native warped pine branches, ex
panded a fashionable modernistic beach club with upper-
class week-enders relaxing in the Fabrikoid upholstery of
chromed metal chairs, sipping American drinks on the view
terrace while inside a pianist, supported by saxophone, in
toned syncopated sound loveliness to reach the distant bath
ers through a powerful loudspeaker.
The breaking and supplanting of habits, the glory and
downfall of tradition are best understood by an unbiased
outsider, and it is by this token that we find distant Japanese
circumstances more revealing than corresponding trouble in
our midst.
We have spoken of pianos and leather shoes versus sound-
absorbent floor mats. The one uproots the other; they do not
go together. But there is always a whole string of causes up
setting the applecart of a once steady and lovely tradition.
Leather shoes with thin soles are themselves concomitants
to bicycles and automobile gas throttles that are hard to
pedal with thick, wooden-soled sandals. Closets are made to
hang occidental pants and evening gowns whereas this mode
of storage was never applied to kimonos, which are always
laid flat. Chairs and tables are introduced for wearers of
those pants and gowns, so unsuitable are the new Western
garments for sittting on one's heels and eating from a tray
placed on the floor. All the interlocked structural and func
tional standards started to go overboard, together with the
simple floor mats from which these and all uniform ele
mental dimensions were derived. Everything seems lost in
the shuffle of a dissolving past and in the novelties of the
present that call for installation by a host of new-fangled
239
specialists, such as plumbers, tile setters, glazers, electricians,
steel-sash contractors, heating and ventilating engineers.
The ancient Japanese carpentry builder as a prototype of
well-conditioned human functioning has grown sadly obso
lete. He used to lay out and execute everything by himself,
from wooden bathtubs to paper-covered screens. Now he is
contra-indicated and baffled. He does not know how to work
from these accursed but venerated blueprints, and less how
to co-ordinate eighteen or twenty subcontractors for trades
unfamiliar and unknown to him. He never could quite turn
his personality into that of a many-sided entrepreneur. Be
fuddled, the old man prepares to sink into his economic
grave.
Technical civilization rushes on. But a finely spun human
brain clings more tenaciously and painfully to its previous
conditioning than a magnetic wire recorder that is promptly
voided and refilled by every new microphonic impact to
come along.
An intensely interlinked complexity of causes and effects
may ultimately succeed in effacing neatly established neuro-
mental patterns. On occasion, and now more than ever,
habits and tradition seem to be blasted to bits and the table
is speedily cleared for a new game.
240
CONSCIOUSNESS MUST NOT BE OVERESTIMATED,
as so much occurs in our being unawares.
Still, to direct awareness remains a paramount
task of the designer.
33
A most practical question arises ever
again: How, and how drastically, can design and the indi
vidual designer operate on such a sociological product as tra
dition, stiffened as it has become. How tenaciously will the
consumer cling to it? Certain illuminating case histories will
have to help our understanding.
It should go without saying that the methods to recondi
tion a sufferer of any maladjustment must not entail brute
force such as locking up the cocaine, the opium, or the ad
dict himself. On the contrary, police power very characteris
tically tends to fail here. An order to be useful must seep in
and find Volitional' or spontaneous acceptance. A proposed
environmental change through design must be carefully pre
pared for such acceptances. This is often achieved by pre
conditioning through verbal explanation or what has been
called enlightenment. It works through a frequently repeated
intellectual appeal that must be accompanied by one of emo
tional nature and is best introduced wtih judicious gradual-
ness.
Yet, we deal with the brain phenomenon of automatic
association, and conscious control here is only minor. A de-
241
signer's arguments on a conscious level will therefore never
be completely effective but will remain precarious. At many
a turn we have to consider the restricted powers of con
sciousness.
We said that layer upon layer of conditioning must be
placed to build up our habit structure. Like the earth added
in the site improvement for a building project, each layer
must be compacted to form a firm terrace. It must be
tamped repeatedly and stabilized until higher reflex struc
tures can rise without danger of collapse.
Conscious affirmations seem to come frequently post
factum, not as ground work. They are rarely decisive at the
beginning and are often hardly more than the additive
satisfaction of final solidification. They appear after little
accounted-for emotions have already established a strong at
titude, pro or con, toward a design. At any rate, our respon
sive contact with a design often operates in a more direct
physical manner, such as actually sitting on a designed chair.
Mere abstract meditation just thinking about it does not
even begin to exhaust our essential relation to a design.
A great many of the simple and co-ordinated reflexes are
as unconscious as they are involuntary. Even the initial sen
sory reactions involved here are accompanied by a conscious
ness that is frequently very limited. Visual and auditory sen
sations are often clearly differentiated, but the multitude of
our inner and muscular sensations are for the most part
vague and beyond the orbit of consciousness. The smallest
dental surgery or repair suddenly alerts in us a brand-new
awareness, formerly quite unsuspected. Only now do we learn
that the position and exact shape and surface texture of
every tooth had evidently been known to the tip of our
tongue, and every bit of strain which the tooth exerts on its
socket while we chew had obviously been minutely recorded.
Sensory reports have been coming in always, but now they
happen to be different in a few tiny details, which are at
once noticed exaggeratively. There is a similar experience in
store when we sit down on our favorite upholstered chair
242
and find it almost a stranger even with only one of its
springs broken.
Sense impressions have a resistance that is graded against
eclipse from consciousness. Their peculiar hardiness in this
respect is something to ponder. It is well demonstrated in
increasing anaesthesia or when we fall asleep. On such occa
sions these sense activities, not all at once but one after the
other, lapse into oblivion with the auditory sense usually
enduring to the last. Even in our slumber we retain a bit of
hearing.
Consciousness, or lack of it, in the sensory realm is inter
twined with that of reflex life. Yet to be aware or not is by
no means the vital issue that decides well-being and survival.
The warning can only be repeated that, as designers and as
consumers or users, we must guard against any over-evalua
tion of consciousness. And the warning is extended to in
clude here the world of conditioned responses as well. These,
too, are largely characterized by unawareness of the processes
that generate them. A man may become attracted to a cer
tain musical selection by hearing it repeatedly during lei
surely vacation breakfasts at a pleasant resort hotel. He may
later recognize the music with similar pleasure, but not re
member the casual incidents of becoming first attracted to
it. It may, of course, be different when this same music first
came to him on a significant boat ride in the moonlight with
the young lady he adores. In such a case, the event of linkage
may always remain spotlighted. Likes and dislikes, once ac
quired, may be rationalized in many ways, but circumstances
of which we are completely unaware are often connected with
their acquisition. We can never be certain whether those
likes and dislikes are originated quite by accident or whether
they are essentially valid and deserve to be abided by. They
are always fateful even though sometimes rather ridiculous
considering their genesis. To permit acquired likes and dis
likes to govern design of consequence, without screening
and interpreting them skeptically, is more than hazardous.
Of course we do not favor only such decisions that are
made in the limelight of consciousness. On the contrary, we
243
should become convinced of the overwhelming importance
of minimal values in sensory and neurocentral energy trans
actions. Stimuli below the threshold of awareness are our
daily fare; they move us continuously. Such subliminal im
pacts and conditionings may account for what we call intui
tion. They may make for our greatest wisdom. Certainly the
best judges of personality, and an architect should be one to
serve it, seem to work through intuition and in exceedingly
short periods of time, on the spur of the moment, not know
ing exactly how.
Our deep faith in intuition, however, must not prompt us
to disdain the research that aims at objective yardsticks so
as to insure against the most appalling detriment and waste
in cases when false or faulty intuitions are trusted and fail.
No matter what was said on behalf of the subconscious,
awareness remains a great issue to the designer. He has to
acquire a vast operational knowledge of it and must learn
that, according to experiments, awareness of almost anything
can be strengthened or blocked out if appropriate means are
used. He may often have to wield these means. It is up to
him to distribute highlights, emphasize essentials, and oblit
erate distractions.
It is in this era of brain-physiological research that the
designer, who wields the tools of sensory and cerebral stimu
lation professionally, can perhaps be recognized as a per
petually and precariously active conditioner of the race and
thus acquire responsibility for its survival. He acts, in a way,
as a guardian of such survival, and students, as practitioners,
will gain in moral stature when they come to consider what
is entrusted to them.
Seen from this vantage point, any short-range commercial
role of the designer appears not 'practical' at all. His prac
tice reaches down so deeply that to look at it as a mere busi
ness proposition is foolishness. He is not just a caterer to
already established responses, he is a grower of responses
and even of the plant itself which can be cultivated to re
spond. The fact is that certain pathways for nervous impulses
244
grow and can be made to grow. Such pathways can at least
be 'facilitated' functionally during an individual lifetime, not
only during that of the species.
Colt's experiments with animals, whose life he succeeded
in maintaining after removal of their upper brains, give a
practical demonstration of the simplified and more predict
able psychic material a designer would have to deal with and
to cater to if the vast assortment of acquired conditioned
reflexes could simply be set aside. But it cannot and will not
be set aside. If the functions lodged in the upper brain
render the picture complex, we must gladly accept tins com
plexity in spite of any puristic, aesthetic creed. As it is, the
designer will, in the richer human world, have to employ
consciously the involved responsibilities of his job as a gar
dener of nervous growth. The amount of good or harm he
can do to mankind is staggering. The potentials have not
yet been exhausted in the curriculum of the industrial art
school or the college of architecture.
The designer will be most useful to his consumership if
he does not let himself be side-tracked into reduced sub
human, merely sensory aesthetics. To aim at mere impres
sionism is by no means normal. On the contrary, it is ab
normal and artificial to relegate oneself to a sort of primary
perceptual abstraction. It takes self-denying exercise to do it.
To be all eye for light and color and bring them onto the
canvas was just such an abstraction and was, for a time, a
wonderfully refreshing theory. The common man never
went along with it, in spite of its superb accomplishments.
It may be dangerous to let such interesting indulgence in
sophisticated primitivism lead us astray. It cannot do so for
any length of time. Nature cannot be overcome. Nervous
excitations travel at a velocity of eighty or ninety feet per
second from peripheral receptors to cortical centers. We can
not intercept them at will or easily cut off their later asso
ciative involvements and enrichments. Upper brain processes
and sensory events interact continuously. That is funda
mental human nature and you cannot be 'all eye/
245
Impressionists beware: upper brain processes can even
cancel out sense impressions. An elaborated conditioned re
flex, secondary as it is, has often proved in experiments to
be more powerful than a fresh and primary sense stimulus.
A dog trained to run ? upon hearing a bell signal, for his dish
of food in the corner of a room will do so even if there is
plainly no food to be seen in that corner! We may lift the
left hand with a silly stare at its wrist, although it is perfectly
visible to us that our watch has been transferred to the right
hand. The acquired reflex is not simply neutralized or elimi
nated by a mere sense check-up of circumstances. If this
were possible, the sense impression would expose the par
ticular action as patently useless and consequently inhibit it.
To be sure, the planner or designer has to manipulate sen
sory stimuli, but he must deal and must learn to deal with
upper brain phenomena which are, in terms of practical
physiology, the true correlates of important human adjust
ments, whether or not they actually emerge into conscious
ness.
246
'CONTROL* CRYSTALLIZES IN OWNERSHIP. The
map of towns, architecture, and the entire
constructed and fabricated environment have
actually been dyed in the wool by ownership.
34
We consciously register ourselves as
the helpless victims of surroundings that are not controlled
by us. Without control of environment, our actions seem
submerged in helplessness and passivity. This is a situation
on which we always tend to place a negative emotional ac
cent. The 'space behind/ for example, that space outside of
our visual control, has just such a negative character. The
space near the grip of our right hand, or in full view, has a
definitely positive, emotionally satisfying character because it
is under our control.
Portions of the constructed environment that we are physi
cally able to modify, and later, those that we have the right
to modify or to make use of at will, have pleasurable associa
tions.
Through practical experience, humans and animals high
up in the evolutionary scale have further developed what has
vaguely been called the "instinct of possession' and, when
concerned with latent or less-used property, 'the collector's
drive. 7 But in simplest words, ownership means control if it
means anything at all in rational terms.
It is characteristic of architects to speak of their clients as
owners. The question of ownership of buildings, which are
247
the most significant part of constructed environment, opens
a vast field of discusion. How and to what extent have atti
tudes of ownership influenced and penetrated architectural
production through past history? Here architecture turns into
a gauge and a demonstrative expression of socio-economic
systems and controls. What interests us even more, it deals
with matters of socio-psychological significance, which may
have become almost divorced from truly practical economics.
The natural precedent for ownership is perhaps the con
scious 'possession 7 of our bodily and mental faculties. First,
we have a naive way to divide our truly indivisible person
into parts: hands, feet, a head. Then we say, 'This is my
head, these are my feet, my hands.' If a hand becomes para
lyzed or is amputated, the assumption is upheld that it is
still the hand belonging to a certain individual; when we are
speaking of higher organisms, there is of course psychological
justification for this assumption. Had man remained as re
generative as lower animals whose cut-off member can repro
duce itself and even has the capacity of adding on an entire
new 'individual/ our so-called possessive instinct might well
have developed in a strange and different way, or be less
marked.
When human beings began to provide tools to supplement
their physical faculties, and in general to produce commodi
ties for their use and consumption, they obviously extended
the concept of possession further, to include these products.
In a transcendental way, they extended their own egos, their
self-images, into them.
Apart from 'phantom pictures' that we may retain of lost
limbs or belongings, however, it is evident that the primary
concept of possession is a functional one and clearly refers to
actual use, or at least the freedom to use. Permanent ab
sentee ownership of an empty house can only mean that its
use by the owner, while not actual, is possible.
But beyond this simple beginning of the ownership con
cept lies, added, a vast psychological development into less
and less functional meanings of possession, which have
tended to endow it with an almost mystical character.
248
Long before human beings, nesting birds staked out and
violently defended claims to their hunting grounds. In na
ture, however, this seems to be merely a use claim of the
first comer and is often restricted in time to the breeding
period only.
We humans condition our children by handing them
goods as gifts on a long-awaited festive day, telling them:
"They are now yours/ 7 This magic phrase and ritual connotes
a transference not merely of use but of ownership which
undoubtedly is deeply impressive to a mind in the formative
stage. Strictly physiologically, it seems incomprehensible,
and such transference is merely a symbolic act. The presen
tation of use rights proper becomes inextricably intertwined
with this rather mystical rite of transferred ownership, and
only adds to its emotional complexity.
A mental picture of possession is thus far from being ra
tional. It is marked by a magic extension of the individual
ego beyond its natural boundaries, beyond its time limits,
and even beyond the grave. As a further matter of mystical
fact, possession of a granite tomb, or of volatile fame, is felt
to insure continuation of existence in some occult way. And
finally, possessions, buildings, and furniture are conceived as
falling to heirs; they are inherited like organic properties,
like physical and mental qualities. They are also seen as
agents that have the power to bridge time and bind it to
gether for us.
In the family group, a possessive extension of the male
ego over its mate and offspring existed for a long time.
Later, together with other related concepts of ownership, it
was partly dissolved but not fully liquidated by tribal com
munism of a prehistoric age.
The concept of ownership has reflected the various socio-
economic systems developed by man to fit varying types of
production. It has acquired certain colorings during the more
recent stages of feudalism or of industrial capitalism, and
these colorings are significant because, although slowly fad-
249
ing perhaps, they continue to characterize to a great extent
the currently prevalent picture.
Designing a building means inherently dedicating it to
specific controls. But man has claimed ownership of various
parts of his natural surroundings as well. A great portion of
them the land, the water, the woods, if not the clouds
'belong 7 to an individual, a community, a nation. Especially
constructed, man-improved environment is a crazy quilt of
belongings. This is very apparent when one flies in a plane
over France, Guatemala, or Canada, and finds the land divi
sion pattern in each case strikingly different. It became what
it is as a result of multiplied specific ownerships and design-
dedications.
With the spread of purchasing power, and its concomi
tants, mass production and supply, the picture changes fur
ther. Developments such as prefabrication of houses, based
on collective rather than on individual design-dedication,
profoundly modify the situation. First- and second-hand own
ership, for example of an automobile, become less distin
guishable when the owned commodity has been designed
for no one in particular, but rather for general use.
Also, that ingredient of the ownership concept which de
rives from origination, authorship rights, will undergo marked
change when choice and design do not tend to any singu
larity of initiative, but to multiple manufacture. Ownership
and authorship cannot but change in an increasingly prefab
ricated world.
In architecture, however, the concept of 'title by author
ship' has in the past been cloudy to start with. Medieval
anonymity of creations was preceded by doubtful ascriptions
of authorship in antiquity. The architect as an 'author' might
then have been the building manager and contractor. Indi
vidual inventing was comparatively infrequent and usually
not emphasized. Also in our day, the balance between author
ship and ownership is not untroubled in architecture. Own
ership and authorship titles seem somehow to conflict and
appear occasionally inimical to each other. Home owners,
perhaps justly, often like to claim that they were really the
250
authors of their home designs and seem to begrudge author
ship rights to an architect, because they sense that these
rights are somehow competitive with their full enjoyment of
ownership and basically infringe upon it. There is unques
tionably at least an element of physiological truth in this
curious feeling. A substantial design control, a domination of
shape and forms to live with, cannot well be relinquished if
one wants to own them.
Many complications of this theme and a variety of views
occur in fields other than architecture. A piece of music
belongs to the composer. In the Andaman Islands a song
may receive applause and find popularity but no one has the
right to sing it except the inventor. Later on composers trans-
fered rights to publishers. Now, finally, a song is a packaged
commodity which can be traded to many, a neatly micro-
grooved prefabrication to be enjoyed in an identical perform
ance on a million record players while royalties flow to the
composer. Such commercial provisions and legal definitions
of an author's possessive right are to this day quite vague in
architecture. In music, they go back no more than three
or four generations. As recently as the lifetime of Philip
Emanuel Bach or even young Mozart in fact, throughout
the entire eighteenth centuryscores were habitually pirated
like building design today. Yet in that same period, a piece of
chamber music might also pass by dedication into the own
ership of a patronizing prince without his holding any com
mercial monopoly.
Quite apart from an artist's signature or the wilful trans
ference of his product to an owner, however, a possessive
earmarking of building and architecture is the custom and
its beginnings are lost in the most distant past. Beyond com
parison with any other, this art and its companion, design of
cities, are indeed deeply permeated by ownership concepts.
Ownership of buildings is almost as old as the hills which,
themselves, early turned into 'property/ Aside from personal-
use considerations, this has most strikingly colored design
procedure and appreciation, much more so than is thinkable
in any other art.
251
THE 'ETERNAL* CHARACTER OF A MONUMENT
IS ADMIXED TO ARCHITECTURE, MAKING IT A
TOKEN OF GLORIFIED DEDICATION AND BE
LONGING. Fixing this idea over ages is all the
function a monument is expected to have.
35
A building can "be dedicated by design
to a specific function, which again is characterized by tie
palpable use that the owner makes of it. Or it can be in
tended as a symbolic monument which has no practical func
tion but mystically, by its mere existence, means something.
These two extremes rarely occur in their purest form. On
the contrary, most designed buildings contain both elements,
but in a widely varied proportion of mixture. It seems quite
involved, but dedication, or belonging, never fails to be part
of the mixture. A man might also dedicate a building to
the guardian spirit of the place, the genius loci. 'Joint con-
troF and a more practical co-ownership may nevertheless be
retained by the builder or granted to another party. For
example, a tire factory in Los Angeles, may on practical
terms be assigned to the latest type of tire production that
is introduced to this locality by a concern from Akron, Ohio,
where rubber is at home. The building, however, is symboli
cally dedicated by design to the new home-site in California,
and so, queerly enough, is made to have the outward appear
ance of a Franciscan Mission. Dynamic function and a be-
252
longing to an assumed or revived cultural background are
fused here in commercial innocence. A regional community
is given some mystic in this particular case even mystify
ingpartnership claim to the building; the legal and prac
tical ownership, of course, being retained by the Ohio con
cern. Nevertheless, California is granted some co-ownership;
the genius loci is given a specific share of influence and
control.
The triumphal arch has only a restricted and short-lived
dynamic function; in fact, it was developed as a structure for
use on a single occasion. In Rome, such an arch might have
been erected so that King Jugurtha, or the surviving captives
from destroyed Jerusalem, could drag themselves through it
before being put to death. Once this dynamic and functional
event was over, the arch was retained as a commemorative
symbol and exacted its main effect by mere static existence
as one of the monumental paraphernalia of the Roman Em
pire which owned it and had its official monogram, SPQR,
most conspicuously stamped upon it.
There are other and varied cases of such ownership by
design-dedication -the burial structure of a Pharaoh; a tem
ple consecrated to Apollo, Vishnu, or Buddha; a church be
longing to Our Dear Lady, the Queen of the Angels. There
is the Circus Maximus and the Thermae dedicated by Cara-
calla 'to the people/ that is, the former electorate or, later,
the political mob of metropolitan Rome. This bathhouse
particularly appears much more as a conspicuous property
than is simply explicable by its mere function of providing
showers, sweating compartments, and pools. It is one of
those gigantic toys, ownership of which was presented as a
demagogic love token and paid for by the exploitation of
far-off provinces and the booty of devastating colonial cam
paigns.
There are countless types of control and belonging, and
an almost unlimited number of shadings of the concept of
ownership, ranging from the kind exercised by an entire
community, to the one of Mr. and Mrs. Jones, or that of
Louis XIV who was France. They have grown with and
253
through the body of architectural production of all times
and completely permeate it.
For purposes of clarification, one may well endeavor to
differentiate between the prestige of ownership, with its con
spicuous representation of investment and the expression of
well-controlled use or specified function that the owner may
rightly expect from a building. In the first case, the emphasis
rests on a static aspect, in the second on a kinetic-dynamic,
or operative, one.
The distinction will remain serviceable as long as we con
fine the concept of functionalism to things strictly outside
of human nature. There functions have a physically opera
tive meaning. Mystic or symbolic connotations may also be
functional, but on quite a different level. They remain a
matter of specifically human interpretation.
We have tried to characterize human motivations in the
field of ownership as brain-physiological phenomena. They
are difficult to break down into their basic constituents. The
most basic of them has been described as the control reflex,
or the automatic response attempting control of the situa
tion around us. But the freely controlled use of a property
has often degenerated into a few rudiments, such as the
mere prevention of trespassing. If ownership does not imply
operational availability and actual usage, it appears without
organic precedent in the extra-human world and, in such iso
lation from facts of nature, it possibly impairs the survival of
the design in question. Anything that seems to have turned
anorganic, unelastic, and calcinated demands close scrutiny.
Our environment is in need of careful, biologically keyed
planning to aid our own survival. It must be guarded against
permeations of dead matter which remain outside of vital
circulation.
At any rate, devices expressing or celebrating possession
per se are something foreign to nature's architecture, which
does not rest on static significances. They rather appear as
supra-functional elements in man-made design. Sometimes
they are very prominent, sometimes receding, but they are
254
almost omnipresent in historical monuments such as can be
found among the illustrations of architectural textbooks. The
most remembered and discussed products of past architec
tural design derive their significance at least partly from just
such a static character and from the original display of a
now often long outdated dedication and ownership. Their
message to us seems, by this token alone, definitely beyond
the mere expression of sheer operative function.
In the age of income tax, it seems predictable that indi
vidual patronage or a conspicuous private-ownership dedica
tion can hardly be the grand theme 'with variations' and the
favorite inspiration it has been to architecture and planning
of the past. A physiologically sound, dynamic integration of
the constructed environment now often appears hampered
by it. At least, it is known to clog urban rehabilitation,
which the individual owner himself longs and hopes for
when he happens to live in a district blanketed by blight.
An economic deadlock produced by blight perhaps we can
call this typical condition 'blight lock,' to coin a term for
something common to our cities must often be resolved
by condemnation of such helpless, obsolescent ownership.
Mere magnitudes and the ever more powerful industrial
trends have veered very noticeably toward a new relativity of
belonging, and design cannot help but express it.
The ingenious mass economies of engineering and the
comparative ease of toilproof technology tend to transgress
both the practical and spiritual confines of the ancient own
ership principle. Nevertheless they can be most gratifying
to the combination of responses to which the term control
reflex has been applied.
The erection and upkeep of structures by masses of ex
ploited humanity no longer add to the dedication of a build
ing and are presumably fairly foreign to future architecture.
They were obviously unavoidable in bygone days and thus
have characterized and flavored many monuments of the
past. Imitation of such monuments would indeed be a
spiritually impoverished and meaningless performance today,
255
when the related sacrificial toil and production scheme has
come into disuse.
The Cheops pyramid erected by electrical derricks would,
we have felt, be but a shallow offering to the gods. The dedi
cation to eternal divine ownership would remain unconvinc
ing. In order to be awe-inspiring, such piled-up monumen-
tality of deadloads has to crown a construction period of
awful backbreaking effort, or else it becomes a mere miscar
riage, emotionally misplaced, as it is, in the scheme of cur
rent events.
We realize very well that to touch off associations valued
by the individual, the community, or the race, physical
structure buildings dedicated to commemorate desired and
esteemed concepts will remain in demand as important ob
jectives and design programs. But while concentration of
power and mechanized effort are now stupendous as regards
operational potential, they are also too impersonal and fluid
to lend themselves easily to connotations of static dedication
or eternal belonging. Monumentality will have to be truly
of our own version to prove successful in an age which has
such different and staggering time perspectives into the in
finity of past and future.
Gigantic fossils are impressive. Once they may have, alive,
fitted their scene superbly and owned it, but their strength
declined. Their chance of survival vanished. They are no
memento to eternity. On the contrary, they prove to us the
implacable passage of time, which like space is no one's par
celed possession, but our physiological playground of per
petual change.
256
We no longer cherish treasures kept buried
and in abeyance, our choice is a continuous
handy control of what we need; OUR BELONG
INGS SHALL BE OURS AFTER THE FASHION OF
OUR WELL-EXERCISED LIMBS, and we hate
atrophy, decked out and splendidly draped.
36
Ownership, glorified by formal design,
is not merely a keynote for the impressive exterior of palaces
or the spacious mansions built to please the old or the
newly rich. It permeates and determines also the interiors of
even modest dwellings. With the possible exception of the
barrel that sheltered Diogenes, the cynic philosopher of self-
chosen absolute poverty, abodes are conceived as containers
not only of inhabitants but also of their belongings.
Storage requirements to fit possessions are not merely sec
ondary subjects; from the start, the architect has to discuss
them at length with his clients. Properly understood, posses
sions reflect the individual's personality, his personal biases,
and those generally current at the time.
"A list of storage requirements, as to quantity and diversi
fication, is highly illuminating. Completely voiced by each
member in a family group, it implies an analysis of the life
of all the partners, their contribution to the pattern of total
activity, and their proportionate influence.
When father, mother, and children speak up before the
257
architect who seeks to learn something about the family he
has been commissioned to house, when they begin at once
to advance and to argue their storage rights, or when either
husband or wife seem to grow resigned and fall silent while
the other party subtly or brutally asserts predominance, a
lively and eloquent family portrait is unrolled v
Where housing projects or rentable apartments must be
designed for anonymous tenancy, the architect is most likely
to go wrong on this point of differentiating and proportion
ing storage facilities, since he has no chance to give a hearing
to the multitude of his unknown individual consumers and
must often decide on an oversimplified solution of his own.
'The tenant in the abstract' is a nebulous client.
The storage of possessions and the role of furniture in this
connection have their own expressive history. During the
more recent part of this history, mere ownership ownership
with a supra-rational, mystic tinge has receded, while handi-
ness for usage has tended to prevail. Control asserts itself.
Listing man's movable belongings, one cannot but notice
that they have, generally speaking, increased in number but
decreased in permanency, in replacement value, and in spe
cific bulk. The daily use of all personally owned articles
seems to have a markedly upward trend.
In former centuries, a dresser in which clothes were stored
over generations by nobility, burghers, and peasants was
usually kept locked and was opened only on special occa
sions. Treasured books, family silver, or china were preserved
by the wealthy in safe and ornamental compartments, and
at times proudly exhibited or exposed behind leaded glass
for an admiring glimpse. Every article reflected the primary,
treasured value of a statically possessed object, and was given
a psychological accent accordingly.
The feeling of having, of owning, things was very con
scious and permanent, while use (the act of putting them
into operation) was rarer and more intermittent. To have
inherited or acquired such belongings was what was coveted.
It gratified more the possessive instinct and certain repre-
258
sentational needs than it yielded frequent functional enjoy
ment.
The storage containers themselves reflected exactly this
attitude in various periods of design. Tall, sculptured dressers
with conspicuously elaborate locking devices indicated the
value of the treasure behind the doors. Carved linen chests,
ornate china closets, closed book cases with transparent
fronts were cherished monuments to possession and, at the
same time, inaccessibility to strangers and guests was often
played up to emphasize ownership.
To our generation, these artistic documents of permanent
ownership are flavored with a wistful quaintness. We must
admit that possession has become less enduring, more fluc
tuating, and in more and more cases it tends to be super-
ceded, even obliterated, by the idea of use/There is a long
way from treasured family china to cardboard picnic dishes
and Lily cups, from grandmother's linens to paper napkins,
paper handkerchiefs, and perhaps paper underwear discarded
after a single use. There may well subsist an ingrained aver
sion against such pronounced impermanence. Yet this tend
ency to impermanence is unmistakable and seems unavoid
able in a civilization of inexpensive, mass-produced com
modities^
The compensation offered for the abandonment of perma
nence, however, is carefree and abundant use with less sub
sequent toil to restore, to repair, to clean. Our ideas of clean
liness are broader, more scientific, and more intricate than
those of any former period, but we want to spend a mini
mum of time and energy in achieving it. We discard rather
than labor to clean, we detest dirty work and time-devouring
chores, although some of us may become embarrassed at the
problem of how to utilize the time gained by the increasing
simplification of our household duties.
Concealed chutes for refuse and soiled linen; easily washed
receptacles; smooth, impervious interior surfaces; letter files
and waste compartments to hold an unprecedented amount
of largely insignificant mail and literature' on its way to the
incinerator; diversified and adequate storage space within
259
arm's reach for neckties, cosmetics, mouthwash, magazines,
typewriter ribbons, pipe cleaners, pajamas, and recorded
music; revolving hat racks, ventilated shoe closets, dumps for
cigarette ashes all these were not found in the palaces of
the past. They are desiderata of the contemporary home-
dweller and in time may become a matter of course in even
a modest housing scheme.
Significant statistical curves of commodities produced and
consumed, as well as of resulting waste matter consequent
to consumption, can be plotted for the last hundred years
and projected into the future with astounding results. In
each subsequent period, more shirts, more pairs of shoes,
more hats, socks, cans of preserves, anthologies of detective
stories, dictionaries, hot-water bottles, perambulators, tooth
brushes, automatic pencils, collapsible bridge tables, golf
clubs, skis, and fishing tackle must be allowed per head of
population but static ownership per se, possession pure and
simple, is dwindling in importance.
We like to see belongings change to usables, to life tools,
and habits are geared to this change. In the past, possessions
were significantly buried treasures, kept in a cave, or even
secured, like the ill-fated Rhinegold, at such an unhandy
place as the bottom of a river. Treasure-and-storage psychol
ogy then dealt with irreplaceables; to gather unique objects
and to preserve impressive quantities was itself a pleasure
and a gratification.
Thus a mansion or palace appeared as a collection of
suites and expensive rooms, filled with splendid, statically
arranged furniture and possessions. If, however, the floor
area of .a small future house for the many is no more than
a limited number of square feet, well and conveniently
planned, its usefulness will have to be tested by the inten
sity of easy, logical, flexible usage of each part of this floor
area during the day. So-and-so many 'square foot hours' of
usage per diem will be its livability index, an index of dwell
ing value. The bigger the better seems to us for many cur
rent reasons a fallacious maxim concerning a house, a city,
and almost any other article. The original physiological
260
factor of handy and sensitive control counts, the factor of
actually and frequently putting to use every item in our col
lectionbe it a public museum, a library, or merely an ar
rangement of diversified cooking pots.
In the same way, present and probably future generations
are committed to a sportsmanlike interest in the systematic
exercise of their own human bodies. Atrophy of muscle
groups as a result of failure to practice them is dreaded. We
all are less content than were the Victorians merely to own
our body and to drape it for dignified presentation.
261
ONLY THAT MEAL IS 'OURS* WHICH WE CAN
DIGEST; a house, a neighborhood, a huge
megalopolis, all beyond our organic controls,
are not our house, our neighborhood, or our
city.
37
The bigger the better' seems a falla
cious maxim in scaling the value of an owned object. To be
owned in a physiological sense, an object must be assimilated
organically. There is a limit to bigness if we want to keep it
within the possible capacity of nervous and generally organic
assimilation.
A dinner cannot have innumerable courses and still be
digested and controlled by our gastric juices. A megalopolis
may be too gigantic to be wholesome for the nervous con
stitution of its individual inhabitant. A vast quantity of bric-
a-brac in a Victorian room is heavy, over-rich fare compared
with a sparingly furnished Japanese room, making one plum
twig in a simple vase its only decoration.
The capacity to assimilate, to control nervously, may of
course be impaired by many factors other than that of sheer
bigness. But in all such cases of indigestibility, ownership is
merely claimed. Food is not my food if I am physiologically
incapable of eating it. We are reminded of Balzac's mad
pawnbroker whose back room contains a gruesome agglom-
262
eration of many platters and dishes with rotting fish, meat,
and fowl, which he gluttonously collects but never eats.
All objects can and must be considered as food for our
nervous consumption. Indigestible, unassimilable, they can
never be ours in any workable way. An ownership that is not
organically operational is fictitious. The safest way to achieve
belonging would seem to design our environment with a fine
sense of our ability to assimilate it with a degree of nervous
comfort. At least, we must try to control design with this
aim in mind.
A suit of clothes that we order from the tailor to fit our
requirements and measurements exactly, and which we con
trol during production by repeated fittings, thus becomes, in
a physiological sense, our own suit of clothes. The increase of
nervous comfort and effective co-ordination caused by well-
fitting clothes and shoes is measurable and beyond doubt.
Men and .women engaged in sports are distinctly aware of
the fuller control over their bodily properties when dressed
to suit their particular sport. The articles of clothing they
wear are thus owned by them in a deeper sense than merelv
because they bought them in the sporting-goods store and
paid cash.
Ownership in architecture, home ownership, for example,
is, as has been discussed, a symbol that comes down to us
from earlier periods when it did mean a full-fledged control
over design, layout, and specification. Louis XIV did own
Versailles, because he actually and truly expressed in that
project his will and requirements. Moreover, through the
construction and through his selection of talent to execute
it, he created a style and a distinct architectural school as
well as the entire manufacture of glass, furniture, and tapes
tries to serve his purpose. He drew on no given market for
any of the articles, permitted no financial agencies to tell
him how or where to modify his original intentions. He
went so far as to discard existing surroundings and to create
new ones imperiously. In fact, he produced a region of his
own every time he chose to build anything. Ownership here
was indeed the last word in self-expression. The frugal
263
American pioneer in his forest clearing owned his humble
cabin in very much the same way.
In contrast to this, there is the home ownership of a
person who has the limited choice of a fifty-foot lot in a
standard, previously established subdivision. He has to have
his house built from standardized, marketable materials, with
plans approved by the building department, and an appear
ance dictated by the bank appraiser and loan insurance
agency, all of whom are already considering a resale after the
'owner's' anticipated default and eviction. Such home own
ership has indeed shrunk to an almost empty verbal symbol.
There is little spiritual content and no exciting nervous ap
peal to its dry legality, only the ever recurrent irritation of
meeting financial obligations connected with it.
An owner of this sort merely acquires the privilege of car
rying capital charges and amortization over twenty years, a
period so long that under contemporary conditions of general
insecurity, and in view of the flimsiness of the house, final
possession is but a dim promise. A mere word, though cun
ningly adapted to minds long conditioned by this stimulus,
ownership approaches downright fiction in such a new con
text because from the very beginning the loan is granted
under the mute proviso that the owner's self-expression
through this project be kept negligible, that he conform
strictly to the financial guardians' idea of standard remarlcet-
ing and ready repossession.
Any attempt at reselling Versailles at its original cost
minus depreciation would be as successful as selling the
moon. But the house of today is often designed from the
start with the idea that the owner will make place for an
unknown successor.
In the current world, home ownership has in many cases
deteriorated like other symbols, ornaments, and trappings
superficially borrowed from periods in which princes and
pioneers could find self-expression in a building activity that
they themselves truly determined from the bottom up. Own
ership has now become, semantically, a confusing word and
264
misnomer. It connotes an idea that must be reanalyzed to
be at all constructive and fruitful for physical design.
A comparatively ^mall, ever-dwindling number of persons
may remain who build with their own funds and so do not
have to dread rejection from the Federal Housing Adminis
tration, the moneylenders, and intermediate mortgage ped
dlers. A still smaller minority try to employ an imaginative
designer of their own choice who is invited to create a minute
miracle on a fifty-foot lot; the execution of his pkns is then
entrusted to commercial contractors and subcontractors who
often enough may have to bewail their loss of profit in an
individualized job to which they are not geared. Such a phe
nomenon, such home ownership, if it ever comes to pass,
remains an erratic block in the general scene. The appraiser,
the realtor, the neighbors shrug their shoulders; people in
passing automobiles shake their heads in amazement. And
the two adjoining buildings may still go up cloaked in the
shreds of standard style, English cottage, or modified French
provincial, with their bathroom windows giving on the break
fast room of our homeowner. Individual ownership is piti
fully pinched in such a helpless and self-contradictory situa
tion.
Still, in spite of frustration the word 'ownership 7 retains its
magic power. It has a psychological impact dear to millions.
Governmental policies reckon with this conditioning of our
minds and even contribute to it. They claim it is a stable
factor in the midst of an economic order of fluctuating em
ployment markets and a shifting population. Yet contrary to
all the advertisements, buying your home on the monthly
installment plan is not like paying rent. It actually is paying
rent, plus, however, the added responsibility of maintenance,
which commonly would not be the tenant's burden.
TulT ownership, after twenty years of payments have been
endured, and even when no economic shift or accident has
interfered, often proves illusory, we have already hinted. In
the meantime, the structure has become obsolete long before
amortization is completed, so that the chances of equitable
sale will admittedly have evaporated unless some abnormal
265
housing shortage gives fictitious value even to decrepit shacks.
Self-expression, the only thing that could possibly survive
vulgar obsolescence, has in the vast majority of cases been
blocked from the very start, precisely in order to produce
that drab commercial value of a certain date and datedness.
The whole matter is ridiculously complicated by the loan
agency's insistence that the speculative builder avoid repeti
tion and achieve a sort of pseudo-individual expression by
varying, from house to house, windows, doors, porches, roof
configuration, and the synthetic coloration of asphalt shingles.
The number of people in the United States who in normal
times have sold their jerry-built houses for a profit is micro
scopic, as every expert will testify. War booms and devalua
tion of money may falsify this picture just as they do with
everything else. Those who have seen their property become
burdensome and depreciated by undesirable neighborhood
developments are legion. But again, men do not necessarily
live by actual experience; more frequently because of early
conditioning, they respond to what looks or sounds like a
magic formula.
Generally such neuromental conditioning represents a
greater problem to designers and planners than all the tech
nical difficulties or resistances of physical material. It can be
changed by gradual retraining, but hardly by argument.
At the speaker's table of a housing convention, years be
fore the last war, I was seated beside a nationally known
labor leader who explained that American workers cannot
wholeheartedly embrace the idea of rental projects. Tn their
souls/ this speaker concluded and his poetic expression was
profoundly justified 'they carry the nostalgic longing for a
home of their own/
In my heart I wondered whether the speaker had in words
of the past oversimplified the involved circumstances of the
present, and when asked to express my thoughts, I answered
essentially in this vein: "We do and should deeply respect
this longing for a setting that gives anchorage to the soul.
We must also understand and respect a love for the words,
266
the revered symbols, and esteemed and cherished ornaments
of a bygone day which at a distance we are often inclined
to interpret as a better day. But let us in fairness consider
the following quite common and current example, although
there may be notable and more ingenious exceptions to the
rule.
'A new industrial plant is nearing completion; employees'
families will be attracted in great numbers and it is statisti
cally plain will find no dwelling places ready. So, several
hardboiled and fiercely competitive subdivides rush site
plans for row upon row of small lots for approval by the city
planning commission, borrow or secure humdrum stock plans
worth less than twenty-five dollars apiece, variegate them in
appearance with blue, green, and maroon roof shingles, try
to lower specifications to any permissible minimum and,
often without competent contractors, execute things as much
below that minimum as they can, short of detection and
trouble from the authorities. They obtain maximum bank
loans to cover practically all construction cost, and are
backed by obliging officials of a government that is sup
ported by other taxpayers to insure this speculative scheme.
'There may be notable exceptions. But commonly every
thing in such an involved transaction is done for the quickest
possible turnover, and, anything else lacking, the houses are
actually sold like fresh doughnuts. Each small dwelling with
its ridiculously detached garage is a double speck in the
landscape, within a crowd of other double specks. It pretends
to be an "individual" home, owned, like a diminutive casfle
by an independent man who happily looks up at Iiis supply
wires descending from his own dear power pole placed by
the utility company on an easement in his rear yard. He
hardly understands the complex legalities of the situation
when he signs up for his down payment.
'The subdivision burdens him with the paving of over-
dimensioned and costly 5<>foot wide public traffic streets
paralleling each other in a heartless grid at intervals of 250
feet to intersect obnoxiously and dangerously with the noisy
267
boulevard on which the sales project, for more convincing
commercial value, abuts.
Without all these concessions to rigid routine there would
be no prompt promotion, no loan insurance, no rushed sub
division, no cheap dwellings. This is a wonderfully scien
tific, systematic age, and we know things beforehand. We
know the percentage of yet unborn children who, by law of
accident averages, are doomed to die under wheels or be
crippled on this sort of street system after a brief roller
skate through life, unless these children can be conditioned
to play unnaturally, each in isolation on his father's "own"
lot, between his "own" gas meter and his "own" garbage can
that is waiting for the municipal collection truck.
'Commercial subdivides even when willing cannot easily
provide recreational area, however small, because they see
no ready way to its maintenance. And why bother about it
anyhow? The developers rightly want to be out from under
when they have sold the individual parcels. They usually
cannot afford to create an unsalable patch of green, nor, if
they are wise, do they laboriously try to file a dedication to
the municipality or the county. These local governments
shun like the plague the liability of a little park crowded
with tots. It would call for supervision. And the upkeep of
a somewhat isolated bit of landscaping by their staff of
maintenance crews is cumbersome. The general run of voters
would be stunned, the politicians say, by the cost of such
new-fangled neighborhood play lawns and spray pools main
tained for others. Why, practically no old established tax
payers enjoy such provision for their own children. How
could they be expected to bear the cost of such luxuries for
recently arrived families of laborers who contribute little to
revenues, but mostly burden the budget?
'No, these new houses are not built by "owners." If they
were owners, they would want to protect themselves more
carefully against leaks in the cheap plumbing fittings, or in
the flimsy flashings of their roofs, unnecessarily but pictur
esquely intersected to catch a prospect's eye, or against the
hundred and one other repair items that are bound to crop
268
up as time goes on. These houses are crammed down the
throats of people who, willy-nilly, are promoted to being
owners on rather weak financial legs. The devil take the
hindmost, that is the fellow who, after a few repossessions,
will by chance "own" the property, and will do so at a time
when those repairs are liable to mount up every month to a
most uncomfortable outlay. And if toward the end of amor
tization, the whole dilapidated subdivision degenerates into
a slum, it is the funeral of those unlucky ones who then
happen to be the owners.
'Summed up, it is ownership in quotation marks; it is as
far from the real thing as a "Mexican ranch" in Hollywood,
California, is from a real Mexican ranch.
'In contrast to this depressing picture, let us look at the
tenants of a unified project conceived and managed as a
truly integrated human neighborhood. In addition to the
psychological misappropriation of a word and the applica
tion of cold financial instrumentalities, other creative and
more biological considerations have been at work and have
yielded a lovelier product, not for turnover but for the per
manence of lasting life. The homes are arranged about a cen
tral park in the core of a well-landscaped super block, kept
free from rolling traffic, with recreational facilities for all
age groups, with day nursery, kindergarten, pool, and picnic
grounds, built through a blanket loan or other over-all
scheme of financing. If, by their payments, proportional-
benefit tenants acquire a share, a vote, and a say-so in the
neighborhood community, they can decide and keep in mind
a wider setting beyond their restricted four walls. Are they
not more justified in flattering themselves with the idea of
ownership, a true and contemporary sort of ownership, be
cause, it again spells influence on one's environment?
To be sure, it would not be the ownership with potential
speculative profit that is so often promised and so rarely
realized. But it would be an ownership with natural teeth
in it, so to speak; that is, with neighborhood control a con
trol and a nervous protection that even fairly wealthy owners
of individual property today can no longer enjoy. We could
269
then speak of modified, mutually insured, mutually condi
tioned ownership, such as seems the only possible one for
the many in this age of pronounced interdependence.
'Leaving aside economic terms that have ceased to describe
correctly the facts of life, the natural, physiological terms of
symbiosis (or living together for wholesome survival) can
apply to such a scheme and such a design for a well-fused
neighborhood. Biologically studied and restudied, this design
will probably grow to be more assimilable and digestible for
human beings and their nervous equipment than what we
now try to swallow and absorb of surroundings that are often
very hard to take/
270
THE PROBLEM OF DESIGN ACCEPTANCE IS
BASIC FOR HUMAN EVOLUTION and foreign
to evolution in nature. Nevertheless, natural
laws do govern what minds can assimilate;
there is no use lamenting these laws but
much use learning about them.
38
Conservatives are rightly worried by
novel design. Designers always add something to the natural,
the organic equipment of man; something that is outside of
it and extra-organic. By contrast, the shell of a snail, the wax
constructions within a beehive, or the mud structures of
beavers are considered to be, in a certain sense, organic, and
the result of reflex actions. However one may express and
value such a distinction, one thing seems clear. Only man
applies some degree of what could be called individual initia
tive in form of design, and the practical difference between
animal and human products can be grasped readily enough.
For human production one distinct rule holds true: there
are frequent innovations, and they seem to originate with
t individuals. Newly modified patterns, pieced together from
various sources by an associatively gifted brain, are after
typical resistance taken over ready-made, imitated, or ac
cepted by the rest of us who are non-inventive, at least so
far as the particular subject in question may be concerned.
Only faint precedents for such a phenomenon exist in the
271
animal world, and proof of them may be interesting but diffi
cult to give when they are rigorously judged. 1 A peculiar and
pointed drama of design is being acted out on our human
stage alone. An individual serves as the protagonist, the
mass of consumers is the critical or accepting chorus.
At any rate, an immense number of devices, contraptions,
and conceptions are in current use within the typical human
environment. Yet the overwhelming majority of those who
constantly use these things have taken no initiative in their
creation, except perhaps by acceptance. What is equally
striking, structural understanding of an automobile, of elec
tric power supply, of the intricacies of financial operations,
is not at all necessary or common with those who drive a
car, turn on the domestic washing machine, or play the stock
market. As the anthropologist Hooten says, perhaps unchari
tably: 'Contraptions are termed "foolproof" because they are
intended for the injudicious use of morons/ Anthill and bee
hive are foolproof, but without an ingenious effort to be so,
without inventive protagonists, without acceptance problems
cropping up around novel design.
The division of the human species into producers, percen-
tually perhaps a shrinking group, and consumers, less and
less able to grasp production methods behind the scene, is
strikingly and specifically non-animal. Even early in the
game of civilization, there was a tendency to close the shop,
to exclude the bulk of consumers, the hoi-polloi, from cer
tain secret procedures, and thus to stimulate and increase
their awe for the marvels of professional and creative prac
tice. Some mysterious and exclusive magic and secretiveness
characterize the methods of ancient producers.
Constructed human environment reflects the conflict of
two initiatives. First, the initiative of production and pro
ducers, often enough individuals not at all working in uni
son. Second, the initiative of acceptance, wielded by a fre-
1 Ernest Thompson Seton, observer of wildlife, describes modifications
of hunting methods used by wolves and prairie dogs, as originated by
one superior specimen and imitated by the pack. This would fore
shadow the role of the leading designer.
272
quently amorphous, non-organized mass of consumers. This
second group is for the most part so inert that the term
'initiative' seems badly chosen. Nevertheless, consumers do
act, in various degrees, from a flagrant yielding when faced
with the dominant, compelling force of authority, to some
thing that looks like convinced consensus. Often it is more
the unconscious tuning-in on a powerful new constellation-
mere acquiescence. Rejection and resistance are more fre
quent, however, and indeed they sometimes take the form
of very vociferous initiative. Cultural evolution or progress
is thus infested with a continuous struggle, hardly ever fully
conscious, between two unequal but complementary agents
without analogy in extra-human life. Perhaps we can now
better understand the friction that every progressive step in
arts, science, technology must overcome. It is a basic phe
nomenon in the evolution of design, in the intertwined lives
of designers and consumers.
Bernhard J. Stern, in a well-documented study, The Re
sistance of the Adoption of Technological Innovations/ 2
analyzes general receptivity to inventions and reformative
proposals. He adduces an overwhelming array of carefully
analyzed cases to illustrate an opposition that has its roots
entirely outside of technology proper, and reflects that an
tagonism between creative producers and the mass of poten
tial recipients.
In 1762, Galvani was trying, with his experiments on the
reactions of frogs' legs, to take the first steps toward an
understanding of electricity and a mastery of its immense
potentialities that have won such common application in
our day. 1 am persecuted/ he said, 'by two classes, the scien
tists and the know-it-alls. Both call me "the frogs' dancing
master," Yet, I have discovered one of the greatest forces of
the universe/ This last sentence must have sounded like that
of a madman in an asylum. Yet it was a brilliant appraisal
by a genius of a new scientific vista.
2 Technological trends and national policy, including the social impli
cation of new inventions. Report of the Subcommittee on Technology
to the National Resources Board, June 1937*
273
Two generations later, Fulton, the inventor of the steam
ship, wrote: 'As I had occasion daily to pass to and from the
shipyard while my boat was in progress, I have often loitered
unknown near the idle groups of strangers, gathering in little
circles, and heard various inquiries as to the object of this
new vehicle. The language was uniformly that of scorn,
sneer, or ridicule. The loud laugh often rose at my expense;
the dry jest, the wise calculation of losses and expenditures,
the dull but endless repetition of "Fulton's Folly/ 7 Never
did a single encouraging remark, a bright hope, a warm wish,
cross rny path. Silence itself was but politeness, veiling its
doubts, or hiding its reproaches/ 3
Catherine Bauer quotes an English socialist as saying: 'All
new proposals go through the same process with pundits:
Firstly, it is said, the thing is impossible. Secondly, while it
is practically succeeding, it is pointed out as being against
the holy scripture. Thirdly, when it has jumped the hurdle
and is honored for its general usefulness, the experts make
clear that they "always told you so." 9
Our purpose here, however, is not to joke or complain
about the 'stupidity 7 of people who opposed a break of habit
and a threat to vested mental or financial interests. Rather,
we want to make it clear that the unequal struggle between
the creator and his public is physiologically sound, unavoid
able, and fundamental. An original designer in his harassed
life may well draw comfort from the recognition of this truth
instead of quarreling with his contemporaries. Cultural or
technological progress is not achieved by means of intellec
tual persuasion; rather its fate is determined piecemeal by
the laws of nervous economics which underlie affirmation,
acceptance through habituation, and resulting emotional
gratification.
The friction concomitant to the human way of advance
can be followed back into neolithic times. Still, whoever is
in the heat of battle commonly ignores its physiological back-
3 George lies, Leading American Inventors, New York, 1912, pp.
60-61.
274
ground and typicality. This subject is so overwhelmingly
important for the story of design and invention that exem
plification should be instructive. If practical inventions come
to be accepted slowly, by force of habit, rather than as a re
sult of rational argument, how much more must this be true
for the formal, 'impractical/ aspects of design, which are
less easily argued. It is proof for our contention that we must
also here strive for new objective yardsticks instead of ex
pecting placidly that logic will solve acceptance problems.
When, in the Stone Age, metals were first discovered and
the attempt was made to introduce them into general use,
an uproar must have risen and split men into the few who
accepted and the many who rejected. Argument and hesita
tion have continued for a long time; almost up to this very
day, we can perceive the faint reverberations of the straggle.
According to the Biblical story of the building of Solomon's
temple, the sound of iron tools was not heard, 4 and the
Mormon temple at Salt Lake City had still to be built with
out iron. No bolts of iron were permitted in the repair of
the Publican Bridge across the Tiber as kte as the fall of the
Roman Republic. 5 Stone knives were used by the Jews for
circumcision and by Egyptians for embalming long after
they had become familiar with iron. The first successful cast-
iron plow, invented in the United States in 1797, was re
jected by New Jersey farmers on the theory that cast iron
poisoned the lands and stimulated the growth of weeds. 6
Metal chairs have still not found an acceptance comparable
with that of chairs made of wood. A new material, a new
energy, or source of energy, a new principle of operation is
very disquieting. The opposition encountered by an inventor
or designer of a useful improvement is of an intensity which
subsequent generations, having seen the success of those
proposals, often find incredible and quaint. Still, the con
temporary scene is infested with exactly the same type of
4 1 Kings, 6:7.
5 E. W. Burgess, Tlie Function of Socialization in Social Evolution,
Chicago, 1916, p. 16.
6 Bernhard J. Stem, op. cit.
275
opposition, the same type of bitterness and ironic 'humor'
directed against the protagonist.
In England, resistance to the railroad was largely from the
landlord class which, with its feudal privileges, arrayed itself
against the aggressive industrial bourgeoisie. The temper of
the opposition is to be seen in the remarks of Craven Fitz-
hardings Berkeley, a member of Parliament for Cheltenham,
pointedly dwelling on sensory stimuli and conditionings that
affect his own emotional tonus: 'Nothing is more distasteful
to me than to hear the echo of our hills reverberating with
the noise of hissing railroad engines running through the
heart of our hunting country, and destroying the noble sport
(fox hunting) to which I have been accustomed from my
childhood.' It was in protest against the mounting spirit of
industrialism that Ruskin, rejecting the 'nonsensical' railroad,
drove through England in a mail coach. 7
Anticipation of trouble is typically elicited in us whenever
something new threatens to upset our balance of neuro-
mental economics. Subjectively judged, both moral and phys
ical safety seem then in dire jeopardy.
Twenty miles an hour, sir! Why, you will not be able to
keep an apprentice boy at his workl Every Saturday evening
he must have a trip to Ohio to spend a Sunday night with
his sweetheart. It will encourage the flightiness of intellect.
All conceptions will be exaggerated by the magnificent no
tions of distance. Only a hundred miles off! Tut, nonsense,
111 step across, madam, and bring you your fan/ 8
In England, Nicholas Wood, whose position was that of
'railway expert,' said that Stephenson's claim of a possible
speed of twenty miles an hour was absurd, and added, 'No
body could do more harm to the prospects of building or
generally improving such coaches than by spreading abroad
this kind of nonsense.' In Germany, it was proved by ex
perts that if trains went at the frightful speed of fifteen miles
an hour on the proposed Rothschild railroads, blood would
7 Ibid. Quoting Emil Ludwig,
8 Bernhard J. Stern, op. cit.
276
spurt from the travelers' noses, mouths, and ears, and the
passengers going through tunnels would suffocate. 9 As late
as 1834, the average rate of speed on railroads was not much
greater than that attained by horses on good roads, so that
mail contracts were sometimes given to stages for making
better time. 10 Almost universally there was a stress on haz
ards and imperfections, and a failure to realize the poten
tialities of the railways. In Germany, for example, it was not
until 1860 that the use of railways for the transport of troops
in case of war was considered. The derogatory attitude to
ward the locomotive is reflected in the bantering designa
tions given it, such as 'hell on wheels/ 'devil wagons/ and
so on.
Each improvement in railroad equipment and organization
has been marked by opposition and delay, especially when
it involved costly equipment rendering the older stock obso
lete. Commodore Vanderbilt dismissed Westinghouse and
his new air brake with the remark that he had no time to
waste on fools. 11
Sir Goldsworthy Gurney's steam coach made regular trips
between Cheltenham and Gloucester in the iSzo's, and al
though it was financially successful, it was abandoned be
cause of the opposition of landowners, stage coach proprie
tors, and the breeders and users of horses. All animal lovers
were marshaled in defense of the horse by vested-interest
groups.
It is interesting to see how the resistance skillfully availed
itself of lobbied legislation. In 1865, a drastic act was passed
requiring three drivers for each vehicle, one of whom should
precede the carriage at a distance of 60 yards, carrying a red
flag by day and a red lantern by night. Speed was reduced
to 4 miles an hour for the country and 2 miles an hour for
9 E. C. Corti, Das Haus Rothschild in der Zeit seiner Bluete,
1830-72, Leipzig, 1928, tr. Brian & Beatrix Lunn as the Reign of the
House of Rothschild, New York, 1928, pp. 77, 94.
ioBemhard J. Stem, op. cit.
11 Hornefl Hart, The Technique of Social Progress, New York, 1931,
p. 631.
277
the towns, and the local communities were given the right
to tax the operation of vehicles and to prescribe the hours
of operation which they did in a discriminatory manner.
With such restrictions, not repealed until 1896, the steam
carriage was doomed. 12
As late as 1896, A. R. Sennett read a paper before the
British Association for the Advancement of Science, in
which he maintained that the steam engine rather than the
internal-combustion engine would prevail and that petro
leum propulsion had to improve a great deal before heavy
loads could be dealt with or passengers conveyed 'free from
excessive vibration and offensive exhalations and with a de
gree of luxury at all comparable with that which we have
come to identify with horse-drawn vehicles/ He likewise con
tended that horseless carriages could not be widely used be
cause they required great skill, inasmuch as the driver 'has
not the advantage of the intelligence of the horse in shaping
his path/ 13
Lord Montague vividly describes the prevalent hostile atti
tude toward the early motorist: 'Among our friends we were
considered mad. In the press we were held up to public de
rision, sometimes as fools, sometimes as knaves; and every
accident that happened, even remotely connected with the
motor car, was attributed to the "new Juggernaut," as it was
called. The papers were almost without exception hostile/ 14
Songs such as 'Get Out and Get Under' had a match
in 'My Merry Oldsinobile/ European monarchs delayed
long before they admitted that an automobile was dignified
enough for them. Emperor Francis Joseph I of Austria, who
died in 1916, never entered an automobile.
The financiers exaggerated the numerous mechanical im
perfections that existed in the early cars, stressed the absence
12 F. B. Hunt, 'Self-Propelled Cars Sought 500 Years Ago/ The New
Yorlc Times, 27 April 1930, p. 11.
13 Quoted in L. H. Robins, 'Old Cry "Get a Horse" Echoed in the
Sky/ The New Yoik Times Magazine, 23 Dec. 1928, pp. 4, 13.
14 Robins, op. cit. p. 4.
278
of good roads, were deterred by litigations and quarreling
over profitable markets.
Changes in the automobile that would increase its sales
possibilities by making its use simpler and its power greater
were accepted slowly. The self-starter was invented in 1899,
and installed on one make of car in 1902. It was impossible,
however, to get manufacturers to spend money on such re
finements, and by 1912 less than 5 per cent of the manufac
turers were offering cars with self-starters as standard equip
ment. 15
Bernhard J. Stern shows how the resistance against the
railroad, steamship, and automobile was matched by that
against the airplane only a few years ago. There is an almost
equal opposition from inside and outside vested interests,
from inside inertia and outside friction. The owners of exist
ing transportation services, the railroads, steamships, and bus
lines, as well as automobile manufacturers, have propagan
dized against the extension of air routes. Not long ago in
Alaska, the drivers of dog teams and those who sold them
fish were vigorous in their opposition to air mail service. 16
The opposition of what is called vested interests may
easily be interpreted as 'selfish,' meaning emotional on a
narrow score. Yet, in order to appear warranted, to succeed,
and not to die down as fallacious and against the common
interest, this opposition must undoubtedly find deeper and
broader resonance. However ridiculous it is in certain in
stances, there exists the fundamentally sound attitude that
unless an innovation in design is assimilated into a well-
integrated order, it may upset the entire applecart and be
a threat to survival. The individual designer seems less in
terested in fending off such a possibility than he is in his
own pet invention and this is natural. There is, though, a
dim public consciousness which our argument wishes to
develop and to stress of the need of objective criteria to
15 R. C. Epstein, The Automobile Industry, Chicago, 1928, pp.
105-7, no.
"Business Chronicle, 1930, vol. xxx, p. i.
279
judge all newcomers in design and help to absorb them
safely.
The roots of such a public attitude are found in that basic
physiological conservatism where inertia equals the most
coveted good, nervous economy.
Strange as it may seem to us in retrospect, people who used
to hand-crank their motors did not at once recognize that
suspicious-looking, new-fangled self-starter as a nerve-easing
device. On the contrary, nerve-easing was found in the daily
dozen of hand-cranking motions which otherwise were some
how missed every morning. A new habitation must be the
first objective of any pioneering in design. It has been shown
that inventions, obviously operational, do not convince in
themselves. Yet revulsion and rejection may testify more
against the injudicious methods of introduction than against
the design product. All its chances rest in happy integration
and assimilation. It will take a harmonious fitting of the new
elements into existing patterns of neuromental operation. A
carefully arranged training by exposure to the novel elements,
a slow feeding of new or improved dishes into our 'total
diet' is the true means for a planful forming of habits.
The pioneering designer, therefore, will always have to
engage in a series of steps rather than in fust one design, or
disclose its new features and consequences gradually instead
of in one stroke. There is no need to point out how much
this applies to the physical facilities of a human community
so much in need of contemporary renewal.
280
THE VESTED' EXPERT VITTY' OR JUST
SOUR RISES AGAINST INNOVATION more often
than the common man. On the other side,
innovators frequently have one-track minds,
and cannot comprehend all the doings of
their own brain children.
39
It is often assumed that the chief ob
stacle to progress is the inertia of the so-called common
people. The fact is, however, that the man in the street is,
as conservative leaders are likely to say, gullible enough to
be swayed by even the most novel programs and designs. He
may open the door to poor developments as well as to quite
magnificent and constructive ones. This is particularly true
when the proposed innovation is not in conflict with his
own operative set of habits, although it might be with those
of the expert or specialist Old salts of the sailing era natu
rally resented the steamship more than common landlubbers.
A conservative connoisseur or art critic may react to a new
ism as if it were a direct personal insult.
Soon the proponent of a new design will find himself un
easily face to face with reputed, often ponderous personages.
Their prestige, so typically instrumental in human cultural
developments, is of course utterly foreign among the broad
forces found effective in the evolution of the natural scene.
Sociometric graphs have shown how complicated human
281
groups are in their psychological constitution, and how values
are formed owing to leadership and followings. The leader of
opinion, more than anyone else, is sensitive and skeptical
when an innovation comes before his eyes. He acts with re
luctance even without any specific vested interest except
perhaps the one of the recognized expert who considers him
self entitled to imprint his stamp of oracular approval and,
where necessary, to exercise in rejection a celebrated and
caustic 'sense of humor/ Many artists and men of technical
design ability may suffer at the hands of a renowned spe
cial expert or, in fact, any grand and generally accepted
authority whose established mental patterns and imagination
are weighted backward rather than forward. When illumina
tion by gas was first discussed, the great romantic Sir Walter
Scott wrote to a friend: 'There is a madman proposing to
light the streets of London with what do you suppose
with smoke!' Lighting with candles and torches was lauded
as picturesque. Opposition to gas lighting was not restricted
to England, but arose in some degree in all countries. 'Napo
leon characterized the idea as une grande folie and when
Paris finally attempted to introduce the new system in 1818,
it met with little favor. Later on, of course, gaslight was
again tenaciously clung to when electricity threatened to
break in; dim gas streetlighting was characterized as romantic
as contrasted with the glare of electric lighting, and the
lamplighter was sentimentalized. 7 x
Sentiment, emotional habit, more than rational reasoning,
is kept active and thus effectively mobilized for resistance
against any novelty. A continuous emotional accompaniment
to upper-brain response drones on like the undercoloring of
a basso sostenuto. The history of writing and printing casts
a vivid light on the nature of this emotional resistance to the
unfamiliar.
Writing as a conserving instrument is in itself extremely
conservative. Scripts acquire highly emotionalized attach
ments and have become identified with cultural and national-
1 Quoted by Hart, op. cit. p. 629.
282
istic symbolism. The result is that styles of writing and alpha
bets become tenacious. The ancient and medieval scripts pre
vailed for over five centuries, the Gothic for over eight cen
turies, and was being revived in Nazi Germany. Even when
one script displaced another, the older form persisted in use
for special purposes. Organized resistance has been made to
changes in alphabets, as when the elimination of three letters
from the Bulgarian alphabet in 1922 provoked the resigna
tion of two ministers/ 2
"The same conservatism is evident in numerical notation.
In 1229 an edict was issued in Florence forbidding bankers
to use Arabic numerals, and Roman numerals are still widely
used, especially for ceremonial purposes/ s Opposition to the
enforced or even optional use of the metric system of meas
urements in the United States has been based on senti
mental appeals to a poetic tradition and postulated supe
riority of the English system as well as upon arguments
based on the costs of the change.
As we have seen, such conservatism often represents, to
use popular expressions, a mixture of selfishness and of un
imaginative impatience with the necessarily imperfect begin
nings of every innovation. The end of the world as a result
of such innovations has been predicted on innumerable oc
casions, also merely on moral grounds. It was feared that
starting the ball rolling would upset all stability.
The introduction of printing was delayed for twenty years
in Paris by the hostility of the guild scribes. The first printed
books were considered mechanically crude, costly, and infe
rior to the artistic work of the skilled calligraphers of the
guilds, and the resistance is therefore easily explicable. A
widespread sentiment against printing was expressed by Gov
ernor Berkeley of Virginia, when he said in 1670: "... I
thank God there are no free schools, nor printing, and I
hope we shall not have them these hundred years; for learn
ing has brought disobedience and heresy and sects into the
2 B. I. Ullman, Ancient Writing and Its Influence, New York, 1932,
p. 121.
3 Isaac Taylor, The Alphabet, London, 1883, vol. 2, p. 263.
283
world, and printing has divulged them and libels against the
best governments/ 4
Innovators often unwittingly violate old taboos, and thus
their proposals acquire a symbolic significance that the inno
cent designer may not have foreseen.
Questions of the status of women and of etiquette became
involved in the controversies over the utilization of the type
writer. The girl typist rose to be a symbol of woman's eman
cipation and aroused responses accordingly. As for etiquette,
it was and still is in some quarters bad taste to use the type
writer for personal letters.
Emotional attitudes have acted especially as a brake on
the progress of architectural design and delayed acceptance
of useful innovations. To quote again from Stern's excellent
study: 'Architecture has always been conservative. When the
early dwellers on the Alpine lakes descended into the Italian
plains, they continued to build pile dwellings, even when
they settled on hilltops. Churches and public buildings still
cling to ancient and medieval forms/ 5 We have seen that
'there was long delay in using iron in building, and when it
was used it was either hidden or, when unavoidably shown,
employed with no idea of its esthetic possibilities/ Accord
ing to Giedion, steel construction as evolved in the nine
teenth century had to follow devious channels until it was
honorably received by the official architectural fraternity. The
quaint proceedings of the London Architectural League one
hundred years ago the time when Charles Dickens wrote his
humorous passages on an architect's office in Martin Chuz-
zlewit were recently unearthed for a centenary celebration.
They throw light on this fierce struggle against metals as
design element. As a rule, new materials are allowed to worm
themselves into an established architectural canon when they
preserve formswhich are the most stable of all things that
4 Quoted in A. M. Simons, Social Forces in American History, New
York, 1911, pp. 47, 48.
5 V. Giuffria-Ruggeri, *A Sketch of the Anthropology of Italy/ Royal
Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland Journal, 1918,
vol. xrvni, pp. 99-100.
284
are stable with consumers. Many a 'practical' inventor has,
as consumer, not seen or believed in the aesthetic possibili
ties of his own design and has volunteered to conceal its
intrinsic features.
Not only did it seem revolutionary and inappropriate to
utilize new material media, but the public was made to be
lieve that certain items of the new environment were alto
gether outside the province of aesthetic treatment or archi
tectural design. The commercial profit-making drive of the
railroad builders did much to augment the revulsion of the
agricultural groups to this symbol of industrialism, for its
pushing executives were not concerned with remedying its
ugliness, smoke, and grime. When a famous artist volun
teered to paint a mural in a railway terminal in London, his
offer was refused on the ground that art had nothing to do
with machinery. Utility had, unhappily, become divorced
from beauty, and the two engaged in independent careers.
Appliances and equipment wrought into buildings have
gradually taken a place equal in importance to structural
elements. But until very recently any attempt ta integrate
such 'utilities' with the structure, and to see their problems
combined for mutual benefit, was rare. Architects took a less
lively interest in plumbing facilities than did politicians and
moralists. In the 1840*5, the bathtub was denounced in the
United States as an epicurean innovation from England, de
signed to corrupt the democratic simplicity of the Republic.
The story has been told that when President Ffllmore in
stalled a bathtub in the White House in 1851, there was an
outcry against it as a monarchical luxury that could well be
dispensed with inasmuch as former presidents had got along
without them. 6
In conclusion we might say that those who have made it
their trade to back industrial enterprise and building involv
ing design soon see their investments tied up in more or less
obsolescent objects. They naturally hate to have this obsoles
cence quickened by the introduction of other and newer de-
The New YorJc Times, 21 November 1926.
285
sign ideas that upset a precarious equilibrium. 'Bankers re
gard research as most dangerous and a thing that makes
banking hazardous, due to the rapid changes it brings about
in industry/ 7 Bankers, seen at close range, simply partake in
a common human denominator. Although 'men of facts and
figures/ they, too, are prompted by their emotions and by
the craving to have their lives simplified and prolonged
through a nervous economy that flows most easily from the
status quo.
7 Stern, Report of the Sub-Committee on Technology, National Re
sources Board, June 1927.
286
THE GRAND, GODLIKE ORIGINATOR MUST
THROUGHOUT CIVILIZATION DESCEND MORE
AND MORE into a merger with a co-operative
team which then reveals its own peculiar
physiology of production.
40
Sociologists and historians of technol
ogy have pointed out that there is a regular and fairly pre
dictable time lag between the conception of a new idea and
the acceptance, i.e. application, of it. There are no doubt
numerous causes of this time lag; we shall briefly discuss one
in particular, the design acceptance by co-workers. It is the
basis of creative co-operation and the collaborative process,
and tends to assume increased importance as our techno
logical equipment becomes more complex. In early periods,
designers were relatively independent; their work required a
minimum number of co-workers and auxiliary subdesigners.
The producers of the Stone Age flint implements may have
been isolated individuals, but the number of people who
must collaborate in the production of a television transmitter,
an airplane carrier, or a fully equipped prefabricated house
is, of course, incomparably greater and more highly differen
tiated. Inventors, draftsmen, shop superintendents, skilled
workmen of many kinds, must, in their collaboration, each
accept and utilize the services and finished products of the
287
others. Only in this manner can they implant their own con
tributions in the common pattern of advance.
Within the framework of this productive process, a man
may play a passive, receptive role at one moment, only to
become an active producer the next. It is a chain of responses
and creative events. And the whole series of contributors and
contributions must be visualized in advance of the process
and during its progress. Thus successful design can hardly be
divorced from production planning. To make clear the
mental workings of a creative team would be a most signifi
cant example of sociometry the graphic, illustrative study of
productive human group relations.
The history of architectural design and its realizations is
therefore much more complex than a history of art, in
which great originators are singled out and cited for their
independent creations. The fanciful tales of individual art
heroes, such as Giorgio Vasarf s, probably falsify the record
of architectural accomplishment even in his period, although
for various reasons the exuberant hero worship that prevailed
during the Italian Renaissance was then less contradictory
to fact and more genuinely characteristic of the time.
This Renaissance myth of genius, which has colored much
of the subsequent writing on the history of art, reflects the
recognition that true initiative of production is not a com
mon property of the human species. Many mythologies let
ingenious inventor-gods usher in civilization and teach its
skills to ordinary mortals, who do not themselves have to
be inventive.
The latter-day originator, however, has little opportunity
for such godlike freedom and solo creation. His supreme
gift consists rather of anticipating realistically the necessary
chain of collaborators, and also the trying tests of acceptance
that his product will have to meet, first in every succeeding
stage of production and, finally, in the market place.
No such limitations are imposed on the creator in the
Book of Genesis; but we are told that even God soon met
with the disappointment of the innovator, that customary
lack of acceptance and co-operation on the part of his public.
288
Because of this failure a new start was undertaken upon
cleansing the earth by the Deluge. To shallow critics, this
seems a surprising turn after the self-assurance of the first
seven days. Yet how true it all is to life. And it sounds
equally true that, in spite of his saddening initial experience,
the Lord in the next attempt firmly adheres to his original
design. What he decides to improve is not his design of the
world but the consumership of his product.
We really have here the archetype of the tragedy that en
velops creative man himself and innumerable incidents of
his history. Through many and all disappointments a creator
must stick to his guns, and in the last analysis he will always
come to grips with the difficult problem of reconditioning
his consumers. Mass extermination of those who were re
luctant to accept and follow did not really help when it was
tried. Also, with a new crop of mankind, God found it neces
sary again and again to send forth eloquent prophets to
warn, persuade, educate the indifferent and the resistive. His
great patience was often almost exhausted, but being him
self father to all creative genius, he naturally could never
descend to opportunistic concessions. Although the Renais
sance, in some of its protagonists and works, was rather
pagan or agnostic, and sometimes treated the naive medieval
faith with irony, its image of the great designer and pro
ducer is patterned on the God of the Scriptures as Michel
angelo painted him.
Generally, profound faith was invested in great heroic in
dividuals, their insufficiencies were retouched and purged,
and their portraits were glorified after the method of revered
ancient biographers, such as Cornelius Nepos or Plutarch.
The artists and the public of the Renaissance rebelled against
the anonymity that was so characteristic during the Middle
Ages. They felt that great creative achievements are unlikely
to arise from a nameless collectivity. Instead progress seemed
begotten of free, super-normal, godlike individuals.^Descartes
states with emphasis that great and worth-while action always
emanates from one personality.
289
In our own age, which is so much committed to both
industrialism and collectivism, and also is advancing in a
knowledge of physiologically based psychology, we shall have
to rectify this picture of heroic independent creation by
humbly investigating the interlocking chains of group stimu
lation and reaction. It is precisely these sequences of nervous
events, mutually sparked, through which complex design is
originated and executed, and on which especially its reliable
survival value will depend.
We must therefore consider first the productional activity
through which a building is designed and eventually con
structed, assuming that the plans have met the consumer's
requirements, at least for the time of programming. But a
single building never encompasses all our life. From the first
worried telephone call for the obstetrician to the final one
for the funeral director, we have increasingly come to depend
on many communal facilities outside of our own four walls.
When in the end we turn to the human aspects of compre
hensive actual usage we shall consider as a telling illustration
of a finished product the neighborhood and the entire com
munity around our dwelling place. For this is probably the
most significant package of designed environment in which
our life must be livedthrough all its niceties and vicissi
tudes.
290
AN EVER-NEW MAKE-UP IN THE PRODUCER
CHAIN makes 'styles' unstable.
41
On Ceylon, I once had occasion to
observe a native architect at work. He was a yellow-robed
Buddhist monk sitting on a field stool in a clearing of the
tropical forest. His project, a large temple, had been under
construction for thirty years with no schedule or budget in
evidence. Things may be interrupted when funds run low;
or, when collections are taken up successfully, the old man
will go on directing. He holds a stick or baton in his hand
like a conductor, and without being very vocal, manages his
philharmonic crew of working people. Sometimes, for their
lack of co-operation or understanding, I saw him beat helpers
over the head with his bamboo baton, a controversial prac
tice, one that would be unacceptable in the West to con
tractors' associations and labor unions alike. But in fact it
seems a less cruel method than ours of subjecting collabo
rating performers to often hair-splitting specifications. Con
tracts full of legalistic intimidation often drown creative par
ticipation in anxiety or bring out trickery to get even.
Our Buddhist architect sat for thirty years, from sunrise
to sunset, facing his project under the tulip trees, while their
shadows were lengthening and shortening, while the clouds
overhead were following prevailing trade winds. He knew
291
his site, he knew his men and materials, as we are never per
mitted to know ours.
Historically speaking, drawings and blueprints are a rather
recent development. In past periods, the originator of a de
sign usually communicated his idea directly to his working
crew, and clarified it by showing them what to do. His suc
cess in effectuating his design depended also on the impon
derables of personality. Musical productions long followed a
similar pattern of immediate transference. The first full score
of a composition, leaving almost nothing to be filled in and
'ornamented' during the execution, is only, about two cen
turies old.
In building especially, the need for a settled budget and
time schedule evolved the custom of definite contractual
agreement before work was begun, and has imposed ever
stricter preparation and specific fixation of a plan.
Paradoxical as it may seem, alterations came first. They
came long before anything was built from the bottom up.
Existing caves were fixed up for homes and, according to the
French architect and thinker Violet-le-Duc, leaves and vines,
first artificially interwoven to form a catenary foliage fabric
and then stretched over tree branches, became the first roof
construction. Piecemeal patchwork preceded over-all plans.
Comprehensive over-all planning means prebudgeting of
space, energies, and funds. But 'spending along' was also here
first, and the world is studded with monuments to after
thoughtbright and otherwise. Afterthoughts are extremely
natural. In fact, brain physiology would indicate that there
are no thoughts, only afterthoughts in endless sequence.
' Up to the end of the eighteenth century, the architect's
most important client was a prince often accountable to no
one except God and that later, perhaps on the Day of Judg-
ment./The prince procured the funds necessary for building
by taxing his subjects or waging predatory wars. The state
was his collateral and he mortgaged it to the hilt; such were
his methods of financing. Although we have records of pre
cise bookkeeping on construction operations dating as far
back as the fourteenth century, there was not much real cost
292
planning. And if there was such a thing as a budget it was
often blithely oversteppedall too often right onto the toes
of suffering subjects. When taxes and impressment of labor
became too severe, an underground grumbling was heard,
and a catastrophic end came to princely projects when revo
lutionary discontent finally swept the old order away.
As the age of democratic rule made its appearance, parlia
mentary budgeting, corporate financing, and building loans
were based on the exact requirements of the projects. All
these things are interrelated and have affected architecture
fundamentally. Advance cost survey became a special neces
sity, although it runs counter to the natural inclination both
of the artist and of the autocratic owner. In architecture,
absolutism has given way to complex interdependence, and
therefore, by necessity, to an attempt at anticipating what
lies ahead.
But even advance calculation was easier and a little more
feasible when undertaken piecemeal. The need and desira
bility of full integration was often discounted. Thus, instead
of becoming a harmonious whole, the man-made environ
ment has turned largely into a jumble of separate produc
tions, expediently thrown together.
It is rather unnatural to precalculate all effort, every ounce
of material, and every detail over long stretches of work.
Here is a basic difficulty in our make-up which we can only
gradually learn to overcome. Very slowly, we manage to ex
tend the techniques of planning over a wider field, to team
up with an array of assorted collaborators, and to forecast
the interaction of a multitude of prearranged factors^
The absolutism of a leader has a mystical accent and is
somewhat fashioned after the Biblical story of how all things
began and came to pass. Creation is often pictured, at least
officially, as quite unconditioned by any sort of collaboration.
Adolf Hitler was publicly credited with having evolved many
a design single-handedly. And this autistic behavior is gen
erally at the root of the accepted image of the individual
assumed to be creative. But also, according to his own intro
spection, he who creates feels deeply isolated. There are hap-
293
piness and loneliness in this feeling. It seems to flavor the
profound and wistful tales of solitary world-builders which
have come to be told in so many mythologies.
But current processes that mold our environment militate
in many ways against isolation. Constitutionally governed
society has left patrons, artists, and architects increasingly
deprived of omnipotent positions. Above all, a newer custom
of financial accountancy and our present economy have
brought about a highly significant change in the training and
availability of that always-required supporting cast of crafts
men and mechanics.
The absolute potentate, upon the advice of his autocratic
designer and with scant concern for cost, established and
commandeered his own working crews and manufactures.
Stone quarries, brick kilns, woodworking and glassmaking
shops were put in operation solely to supply His Majesty's
projects, which then constituted what there was of tangible
progress in the world. There was little or no general market
for these manufactures/They were at first not organized
with a view to financial gain, since there was no purchasing
power to speak of in the land except that of the prince.
'A Louis XIV chair was so called very properly because only
Louis XIV could aSord to have one, and it had not been
designed and made for distribution to any other consumer.
The rest of France often sat on rock bottom, while the
courtiers did not really sit at all, except on edge. Most of
the time they were standing up in a circle around the throne
or at the grand levee, that is, in attendance on the King's
breakfast, which he took in the baldachined, carved, and
guilded fourposter of his royal bed chamber.
At that time, all the links of the production chain, all the
craftsmen and specialists, all the collaborators of the court
architect belonged, as did the architect himself, to the rigidly
organized retinue of the monarch. They had passed through
apprenticeships that fitted them for the execution of estab
lished designs; they did not have to worry about a multi
plicity of architects' offices, each with different ideas on
specification and practice. Nor was there a many-headed
294
public to please. The royal designer communicated an idea
or a technical requirement to the royal overseers of the
various manufactures and shops; his instructions were some
what like inter-office communications. Every kind of abbre
viation and simplification was permissible and comprehen
sible. Directions had almost the brevity and explicitness of
an officer's command to his men in the royal cavalry or body
guard. Drill and training were sufficiently unified to make
any private understand at once. Only later, when production
had to be geared to manifold markets with ever more varied
demands, and when the training of artisans had gradually
lost its helpful uniformity, did minutely detailed designs
and blueprints become necessary,
By the time the Victorian era dawned, production rested
on a pyramid built up of commercial entrepreneurs, manu
facturers, contractors, and subcontractors, who hired and
fired foremen, and workers, all of them drawn from the newly
created and rather mottled free-labor market. The architect,
often himself a free-lance professional working on percentage
fees for a variety of clients and no longer for one permanent
patron, had to conceive of his work in terms of building
contracts. They were signed only on the basis of accepted
competitive bids of contractors and subcontractors. What
ever the limits of his own knowledge, he had to learn to for
mulate the specifications of twenty-odd trades and to trans
form their vernacular into multigraphed verbalizations and
legal language, black on white. He had to train himself to
visualize technicalities theoretically and on paper, to enjoy
and read the blueprints of his own making, and he often
naively expected the men on the building sites and in the
shops to do the same. His obligation and chance to train
someone for the task had ceased.
Meanwhile the nouveau riche consumers, the captains of
industry in need of a showy emporium or of a rent-producing
tenement block, kept one eye fixed on the grandiose past of
princely architecture and, ignoring the profound change in
the psychology of production, expected a service like that of
bygone days. It was hoped that a maze of blueprints and
295
farmed-out, unrehearsed subcontracts, a hurly-burly of hir-
ings from the street and dismissals, or finally a Philadelphia
lawyer's litigation when men or matters went wrong would
all yield stylistic results equal to those assured by the rigid
organization of training and employment that had governed
things earlier. But somehow Humpty Dumpty could not be
put together and up onto his wall again. All the King's men
were dead. And all the King's columns revived in pressed
sheet metal, all the plaster-cast caryatids, the staff-molded
astragals and pilaster caps failed to do the trick, however
painstakingly they were now preassembled on the new
fangled blueprints.
Not that human design ability had dwindled or that the
individual nineteenth-century brain had deteriorated organi
cally. The truth of the situation was that a fundamental ma
terial and thus a psychological transformation of the whole
process of production had alienated it from old established
goals as well as potentials. Unless consumers can be led to
be cautious in bestowing love on static forms and understand
at least the fundamentals of productive procedure and per
formance, they, above all others, are bound to suffer disap
pointment and frustration.
Person-to-person explanation and demonstration of a crea
tive scheme stimulate the working personnel because these
means of appeal are addressed to many senses and because
they supply both intellectual and emotional impetus. They
help the participants to overcome their inner resistances and
blockages. The typewritten formalistic verbiage of our speci
fications, our carefully dimensioned details may have advan
tages as regards precision and 'scientific' objectivity when
conveyed impersonally to the executing workman. But un
fortunately, it is difficult to adjust them to the varying mental
levels of that chain of performers and artisans. Teamwork is
impeded by the mass of involved terminology packed into
instruction sheets and blueprints, often more suited to the
courtroom than to construction sites.
If all the collaborators, from the original designer to the
296
last helper, were on the same psychological level, there would
perhaps be less difficulty of this sort. It is no accident that
in reality these men are so different from each other. How
else could they supplement each other's work? If they were
all alike, they might only compete with each other and be
quite unable to co-operate.
In the pre-industrial era, successful communication of de
sign ideas depended on leaders able to adjust their under
standing to the various levels of emotional and rational ca
pacity represented by their working crews. They made little
use of abstractions. High-brow or academic expressions did
not enter into their vocabulary. In personal contact, it was
possible for them to explain a given point in various ways,
according to the mentality of the man addressed. The facial
expression and the behavior of the worker were in turn a
valuable and practical guide to the instructing designer. He
could see immediately whether he was making himself un
derstood and whether his words served to induce pleasurable
and purposeful response. He could correct his procedure at
once if he saw his workman becoming confused, frustrated,
or hostile owing to the complexity of his orders. We might
say that neural friction could at once be lubricated by neural
means before a perniciously unco-operative attitude had been
established.
The free-lance designer preparing plans to be submitted to
competitive bidding is in an entirely different position. He
does not know what sort of crew he will have, or how well
it will grasp his ideas, or the psychological factors with which
he may have to cope in obtaining the needed, willing team
work. He is almost deliberately trained to disregard such
subjective contingencies. Stenciled specifications are couched
in a mock-scientific language, stylized to safeguard, after fail
ures in execution, a clinching presentation before judge and
jury, and to be argued in cross-examination. In writing these
contract documents, the architect practically anticipates a
legal aftermath. The best possible craftsman reading it all is
promptly scared off, and only the shrewd businessman, forti-
297
fied by ingenious legal counsel, can tackle a contract of this
kind with the necessary confidence.
Thus it is that 'free contracting/ whatever its advantages,
tends by very natural selection to eliminate certain types of
creative men who were able to function constructively in
former periods, and assures dominance and survival of other
types who perhaps were never before found in the field of
building a human environment.
The results reflect this difference in personnel. It is in
short the difference between column caps individually carved
out of individually selected stone by creatively motivated
workers, stimulated to their tasks by a designer who assumes
personal direction, as against column caps cast businesslike
in stereotyped molds, patterned from intricately detailed
drawings and assembled without benefit of a single spoken
word or encouraging smile.
Quite generally, however, even if no substitution of one
method by another can possibly produce the identical result,
there is still no reason to despair of our situation. We have
merely to understand the limitations of the less personal
method and to content ourselves after evolving the best
values it can produce. We must hope that while certain
values have been irretrievably lost, others may have been
gained.
Progress is always accompanied by an element of regret; it
is known to wise adults that we cannot eat our cake and have
it. Our attitude, however, must be not only resigned but also
constructive. It is desirable that the processes of communi
cating design ideas should not voluntarily be dehumanized
and mechanized any more than is absolutely necessary. Any
de-personalization or freezing of these processes tends to in
hibit the living evolution of design itself.
The monuments of medieval culture may have been
largely anonymous productions because there were no
signed plans, but they were in actuality the handiwork of
individual designers and workmen in organic association,
with intimate nervous contact among all participants. It
298
was a living group accomplishment. The chain of designers-
producers was neurally linked and almost free of mechan
istic impediment. In our present-day of blueprints and
elaborate contract documents, we have built up a veritable
system of such extraorganic interpositions. It matters little
that we try nominally to preserve that Renaissance tradition
of crediting a great architect with the design and with de
sign leadership. In reality, the very conception and mental
projection of our designs are bound to be mechanized by the
methods of collaboration and transmission^/
At present, the canon of transmission of our architectural
ideas is largely planimetric presentation; that is, the drawing
of floor plans, elevations, and sectional layouts of a house or
any spatial concept on a flat piece of paper. This imposes
unavoidable and grave limitations on the concept itself. It
will have to be simple enough to be understood by those
expected to execute the plan. Many spatial concepts cannot
be represented intelligibly by these particular means.
Means tend to influence ends. Mechanically applied, the
metric system will influence us to think in proportions other
than those convenient under the system of inch and foot.
The common fraction one-seventh may often have been fa
vored by ancient designers or builders because it was easily
kept in mind, whereas the equivalent decimal expression,
0.14285714 . . . , would hardly have attracted them.
To the geographer, of course, the world does not really
change whether he uses Mercator's projection or some other
cartographical system, or whether he computes distance in
miles or in kilometers. But we must not forget one thing:
he is merely recording, he does not design under the impact
of these systems.
Designing is a nervous procedure par excellence. It will
always be highly dependent on the mode of formulation and
transmission, the means used to make the idea comprehen
sible. These means are virtually immanent in the idea. The
powerful economics of mind transaction is effective long be
fore such an idea becomes even dimly visible.
299
In the year 1900, Adolf Loos started a revolt against the
practice of indicating dimensions in figures or measured
drawings. He felt, as he often told me, that such a procedure
dehumanizes design. If I want a wood paneling or wainscot
to be of a certain height, I stand there, hold my hand at
that certain height, and the carpenter makes his pencil mark.
Then I step back and look at it from one point and from
another, visualizing the finished result with all my powers.
This is the only human way to decide on the height of a
wainscot, or on the width of a window/ Loos was inclined
to use a minimum of paper plans; he carried in his head all
the details of even his most complex designs, and prided
himself on being an architect without a pencil.
One day one of Loos's clients who was greatly devoted to
him had to abandon a project for unforeseen reasons. He
intended to compensate his architect for the paper work
done to that point with what he thought was an adequate
remuneration. But Loos convinced him that the design work
already done was a hundred times as much as was shown or
possibly could ever be shown on the few sheets of drafting
paper he had presented. And he received his fee in full. It
may be seen, however, that Loos was not a professional de
signer of the particular age in which he lived and did not
act like one. His very human method of bringing design to
realization was an anomaly so was his fee and the fact that
he could collect it.
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INCREASING SHOP FABRICATION MAY REVIVE
THE HUMAN TIE BETWEEN DESIGNER AND
WORKING CREW, a contact that was sorely
lost in the bewildering fog of an age only
partly mechanized, an age of paper specifica
tions and competitive contracting, of foot
loose free-lancing in design, and of plodding
along on construction premises.
42
Any lay person who undertakes to de
sign by himself a little addition to his quarters to contrive
a rumpus room in the basement, for instanceproceeds in
a manner not unlike that of Adolf Loos, the great pioneer.
He acts as he does because, as we have already pointed out,
it is psychologically normal not to fix everything by rigid
plan at once but rather to visualize one step after another
in a sequence of alterations.
The training of the contemporary architect in this aspect
of his work enables him to telescope several steps of trial
and error by means of one visualization. For this he has
learned to use paper and pencil. And these tools may even
become important stimulants to set his mind working. Then,
once he has made his final decision about how to proceed,
he employs a complicated set of symbols to transmit the fin
ished idea to others. His most useful equipment, however,
consists of such gifts as he may possess for envisioning all of
301
the desired relationships, in space, in time, in function, in
form and color.
In making paper presentations, the good architect never
falls victim to his training of draftsmanship. Scale drawings
and sketches of perspectives are to him effective methods of
making himself understood not so much to himself as
to clients, bankers, contractors, foremen, and building in
spectors.
Just as he is helpful to all of these people through his
drawing, they are helpful to him in the realization of the
design; and this they can be only in the same measure as
they are enabled to grasp and visualize his intention and
enter into it with an emotionally favorable attitude.
School training in mere precision and in legalistic verbiage
alone does not do the trick. A man may be able to express
himself concisely, and yet be unable to make friends or en
list co-operation. On the other hand, it is possible, by use of
the proper intonation and phrasing, to establish direct emo
tional contact with one's collaborators, who will recognize
an attitude as friendly and helpful and respond helpfully on
their part.
Working drawings with their instructions can indeed be
agreeably systematic and appealing in form and content, or
they can be as confusing and careless as the sort of speech
that remains ineffectual because it offends or defeats the
attempt of others to grasp it. We must never forget that,
rightly or wrongly, there is a class difference between work
man and designer. The man who works in the field in the
cold wind and the drizzle harbors a basic ill feeling against
the boys who allegedly enjoy the comfort of a downtown
office and either fail to deliver or spew out details and blue
prints without end to harass the worker on the job. The con
tract is similar to that between the front-line soldier who
storms steep hills in face of a shower of hand grenades and
'the bunch of push-button officers back there' who are always
pictured as telephoning their orders between dinner courses
in the luxurious mess hall of headquarters.
This hostile feeling arises easily whenever there is sharp
302
differentiation between field and office work. Shop work is
marked by less psychological division and antagonism. It iso
lates the designer less than field work does and may actually
improve human relations. Its expanding role in modern
building is therefore a wholesome trend. Construction work
done under one roof of a shop may be nervously as whole
some as it was when, once upon a time, work and design
were executed close together in the field. But where shop
work is not integrated with the job done in the field, the
office man or the drafting-room architect builds by corre
spondence. In that case he must at least be an appealing
letter writer and ought to have an almost tender considera
tion for the outside helpers to whom he addresses his blue
print symbols.
During the construction of San Francisco's Golden Gate
Bridge, the chief engineer took me up to the south bridge
tower, then already soaring some six hundred feet above the
waters of the bay. We donned steel helmets, which were
scant enough protection against the red-hot rivets that, occa
sionally missing their destination, came swishing down like
bullets. Two workingmen, blueprints in hand, made the
ascent with us in the dangling, doorless wire-mesh cage of
the construction elevator. At sea level, the weather was
rather calm; but we seemed to be climbing slowly into a
raging storm as our little cage, swinging to and fro, rose ever
higher through the red-painted steelwork of the tower, and
the foam-capped waves below became tiny and insignificant.
At a height of five hundred feet the elevator reached a
heavy diagonal bracing of the gigantic structure and made
an intermediate stop. Here our two companions got off; they
were riveters and had a four-hour job ahead of them at this
hazardous station. There were other men at work on the
slanting brace in front of us. They shoved out a heavy board,
cantilevering it toward the elevator cage, which seemed to
me to sway more violently than ever in the high wind.
I clutched the wire-mesh enclosure with both hands as the
two riveters jumped onto the plank. I saw them, blueprints
always faithfully in hand, crawl up the steel girder to the iso-
303
lated foothold where they would have to work for long hours,
all alone between sky and sea. There would be nobody to
ask questions of; their only link with the world would be
their crumpled rolls of drawings. I saw them looking at these
as the elevator moved upward. I hope that in these docu
ments the designing engineer was speaking to them with a
voice that was comforting and reassuring in the storm and
the danger.
Construction men lie on their backs or bellies, perch on
swinging scaffolds and roof trusses, gasp for air in the ob
noxious fog of the spray gun or in foundation wells deep
underground and always they consult blueprints, drawings,
schedules received from a man whom they have never seen,
and whom they visualize as an office functionary wearing a
white collar and often an artistic necktie.
In the shops of an airplane factory the relation is different.
The intellectuals are more intimately part of the picture
there. Occasionally, they come walking out of the drafting
room in their working smocks to check, confer, and explain.
Designers, like ordinary people, meet directly with produc
tion engineers, who in turn consult with foremen in the
assembly shop. They can perceive each other as human be
ings laboring in companionship. Although these men have
different jobs, each knows the other and appreciates the
other's training. Departments can remain in touch. The in
dividual worker does not necessarily depend on blueprints
alone, however plentiful they may be. And here blueprints
are likely to specify production details even in easily under
stood perspective rendering. There are full-size 'mock-ups 7
and models to help in visualizing the most complicated spa
tial relationships. And above all, there is familiar conversa
tionhuman voices which even under the worst conditions
of noise and haste remain a reassuring influence. Men in a
shop are not scattered as they often are in the field, where
they must puzzle out their problems in isolation.
A basic fallacy of lay literature has been that it depicts pre-
fabrication and shop work as soulless, and the man in the
factory as sour faced compared with the carpenter or mason
304
gaily singing on his job. Workmen enjoying the companion
ship of the shop are probably less grouchy than those con
signed to solitary tasks in detached stations of the field, but
chained by paper directives.
If construction must be planned on a mass scale as it often
must in our timethen field work has little of those merits
of individual initiative or freedom from care. It has become
just a function of carrying out written orders. And mere
written orders, almost necessarily abbreviated and skeleton
ized, impose more nervous strain than does day-to-day con
tact with the designer, at least whenever new problems are
being handled. Roof configurations complicated merely to be
interesting, all kinds of picturesque irregularities in fenestra-
tion, and other special details did not bother the spirited car
penter on the job as long as all these forms sprang from his
own initiative as they did in the olden days. Whistling, he
sawed, fitted, and joined as he thought best. If nowadays he
is required to produce similar effects working from blueprints
and in compliance with trick details, he stops whistling or
singing and, when sufficiently puzzled, begins to curse.
Whenever a large portion of the work is shop-prepared,
those picturesque irregularities formerly often the accidental
result of spontaneous, carefree work in the field become
meaningless, incomprehensible, bothersome anomalies. Pre
fabricated simulation of spontaneity, prefabricated English
cottages and Mexican farmettes negate the very nature of
the current process that brings them forth. From a techno
logical as well as psychological point of view, they are a con
tradiction to the natural laws of survival. New ways of grati
fying demands of form must and will be developed under
the mutually changed conditions of mind and construction
process. The old satisfactions and values degenerate into
cheap and troublesome mimicry, and hence must perish
from the earth.
We have dealt with misuse of forms and processes as a
complicating factor even in primitive civilizations. With cul
tural advance and increasing communication it becomes a
305
serious blight, because it substitutes the crazy quilt pattern
of hybridization for a normal and genuine evolution.
In modem times, printing and printed matter, easy distri
bution of design reproductions merely enlarge the problem.
The illustrations of current magazines of 'decoration' and
'design' are in a way only the contemporary version of the
folios of ornament cuts which, since the late Renaissance,
have been flooding the Western world. It was the Paris pub
lishers of the eighteenth century who first deliberately hired
artists, often famous painters, to devise sheer ornamental
forms for sale. This art exercise, dissociated from any specific
material or tool except the needle of the engraver, was in
tended to fertilize the brain, 'furnish inspiration 7 for cabinet
makers, stucco workers, forgemen, wood carvers, jewelers,
baked-biscuit artists, landscape gardeners, and what-have-you.
All the craftsmen who earlier had maintained their own tra
ditions of workmanship in close relation to specific materials
were now warned that they would fall out of fashion if they
did not take their ideas from the portfolios of a metropolitan
commercial publisher's trade of designs canned for mass con
sumption. It was the advent of the cliche.
The Albertina in Vienna and many other European mu
seums contain vast collections of those delicately engraved
but ominous sheets of ornamental patterns once sold at high
prices to artisans of all kinds designs overloaded with ro-
cailles, fretwork, gingerbread, late eighteenth-century parlor
rusticity, chinoiseries, monkey scenes.
Commercially derailed 'fine artists' undermined the artistic
prestige and initiative of the artisan and the shop. Pattern
sheets wiped out normal tool-bound design concepts safely
founded on shop practice rather than on dexterity with the
pencil.
Lost for a while in the fog and steam rising over new
power production, we are now again sighting the bearings of
indigenous 'trade-and-tool wisdom/ The new shops of fabri
cation may regain a realistic initiative that has too long been
obscured by detached draftsmanship.
306
LIFE'S NEEDS ARE THOROUGHLY INTERLINKED
BUT THIS LINKAGE IS RARELY OBSERVED WITH
CARE. Neither speculative thought nor over
bearing piecemeal technology can make up
for such essential carelessness.
43
Through the ages, man has labored
hard, both physically and speculatively, to devise instruments
for improving his environment. Himself he has largely taken
for granted and known for the most part by accidental intro
spection. The fresh goal of our discussions is to stimulate
interest in objective physiological data as guides in construct
ing and in judging human environment to fit man, properly
appraised. The first task will be at least to hint at programs
of purposeful experimentation. The labors of many a re
searcher will be required to isolate and solve problems,
roughly pointed out by the practitioner.
For many years, I have been concerned with finding a
good start from which to evolve concrete research in this
vast field of design and to learn from attempted investiga
tions what we ought to know of its biological effects. The
experimental design of elementary classrooms in Texas may
serve as an example. It represents an attempt at such inves
tigations that has prompted similar efforts elsewhere.
Dr. D. B. Harmon, who began with a physiological interest
in primarily optical environmental influences on the develop-
307
ment of school children, penetrated whatever the detail
validity of this work may hedeeply into the problems of bio
logical oneness. Into this oneness each and every particle of
sensory behavior or sense-determined action flows and is ab
sorbed. 'We do not see to see/ said Dr. Harmon, 'we see to
act/ Seeing, taken as an example, most generally affects all
our active and passive living. When we are children, more
over, it can make us grow up into healthy normalcy or into
stuntedness and distortion.
An interprofessional commission was formed for the state
of Texas composed of physicians practicing internal medi
cine, dentists, orthopedists, educators, illumination engineers,
color, paint, and optical experts for the purpose of studying
the light and brightness distribution in elementary class
rooms and all factors that thereby influence the growth,
health, behavior, and learning performance of 160,000 Texas
school children. Tentative exemplary measures were then
taken to correct a few sample classrooms in visual matters.
Brightness contrasts were diminished not to exceed one to
five anywhere in the binocular field. The effects of this sim
ple but newly established balance were stunning. Of a huge
number of well-established refractive eye difficulties, sup
posedly correctible by glasses only, 65 per cent had disap
peared after six months in the properly illuminated and
colored classroom, which had been specially treated for
proper brightness distribution.
But what to doubters is even more striking and astound
ing than specific eye welfare is the fact that 47 per cent of
malnutrition symptoms were reported to dwindle out of
existence when energies were preserved by eliminating mus
cular strain caused by malposture and growth difficulties due
to visual trouble. Diet had not been changed at all during
this half year. Forty per cent of chronic infections, nose,
throat, and ear ailments, and deficient functionings, we are
told, were eliminated without any specific treatment of these
deficiencies, but by general improvement of visual hygiene.
Were it not for the official endorsement and scientific
character of this commission, one might easily suspect and
308
mistrust such new findings as illusive. But parallel work has
been undertaken by the Bureau of Child Study of the Chi
cago Board of Education, the Yale Clinic on Child Develop
ment, the University of Toronto, and, apart from all statis
tical detail of the findings, at least the tendency of promising
research was here ineradicably established. This is even more
important for our purpose than immediate results or their
accuracy. It appears to be of overwhelming significance that
methods are being invented and slowly perfected to test
objectively the broad, profoundly influential, and ramified
effects of each type of sensory stimulation.
To emerge from the realm of guesswork may help design
generally to rise above the empire of likes, dislikes, and tastes.
It may, at least in part, give the designer some of the objec
tive status that practical men and politicians have learned to
grant the planners of health measures.
As stated, systematic studies on thousands of school chil
dren were concerned with the effects of traditional class
rooms. Classrooms were visually improved, so that improper
distribution of brightness in relation to various tasks and to
the total classroom life was reduced. Results were carefully
tabulated. The entire reflex chain set into motion by action
under visual stimulus was identified, observed, and illustrated
through the medium of motion pictures. Stills were excerpted
from this flowing record and interpreted. The positioning of
all bodily members was appraised in relation to subtle deter
minants from the field of vision, particularly in relation to
the visual stimulation by brightness differentials existent in
the room. The posture pattern under this influence and dur
ing a special localized visual task was compared with desir
able, normal, undistorted posture. The visual adaptation to
this task and the adaptation to it of the whole body appeared
intimately fused. It was recognized that wholesome normalcy
and free play in the total bodily action followed from visual
ease and relaxation. This would of course best result from
bringing, without impediment, the kinesthetic plane of com
fortable manipulation the object in our hands to coincide
309
with a suitable visual plane of acuity and eye comfort. But
the visually guided action must also happen without undue
lateral optical interferences that originate off center. Offen
sive or distracting brightness and sharp contrasts to it in the
broad binocular field surrounding the focus of active atten
tion must be well controlled.
Where such controls were not exercised, malpostures
promptly occurred. They had to be interpreted not only
'geometrically' but also 'dynamically/ i.e. in muscular ten
sions that were evidently produced by the reflex positions
of head, jaws, neck, spine, arms, and so on. This led to
methodical electric measurement of muscular innervation
with careful comparison upon tabulation, and to anthropo-
metric studies repeated over a long period in order to record
results of specific habitual strain on the muscular and bone
structure of growing children.
While all these studies started specifically with circum
stances of vision and extended over into various consequent
effects connected with it, similar and corresponding research
may get under way on the physiological basis of acoustics or
thermal problems. Yet even when a single sensory realm is
the starting point, findings can finally lead to novel architec
tural design of classrooms, and of school buildings.
Comparing traditional with visually corrected classrooms,
biomicroscopic investigations revealed that the physical archi
tectural shape and character of these rooms corresponded to
equally characteristic eye deformations of the children who
lived and worked in these rooms. Noticeable morphological
and histological changes of the living sense organ itself
proved startling and intimate consequences of the archi
tect's design. This had to him been also very largely 'eye-
determined/ only in a more traditional sense.
The research tended to branch out over a much broader
field, however. Chemical tests were made on the children;
quantitative analyses of blood samples, urine, f eces, the end
products of glandular activity, were statistically compared.
Fatigue studies of many kinds concerned themselves with
310
cardiac conditions, sampling certain modifications in heart
sounds, and with neurological effects of visual activity, by
checking on typical changes in all principal normal reflexes
and in the respirational pattern. The experimenters also be
came attentive to strictly cerebral phenomena. A further step,
therefore, was the recording and measurement of what is
called the disintegration pattern of the basic encephalo-
graphic sinus waves. In simpler words, brain-wave recordings
were made of children while in visually stimulated action,
under both ordinary and corrected classroom circumstances.
Naturally, also psychometrics were applied to gauge com
parative mental achievement in detail and learning perform
ance in general. This in itself is a tremendous field of experi
mental elucidation of classroom design through functional
results, to which, after all, classrooms are dedicated.
Having once recognized that a sensory stimulation such as
the one producing vision does not simply end there, we can
appraise with awe the complex investigations into all parts
and layers of the physiological being and entity that will be
possible and perhaps unavoidable in deciding on the merit or
demerit of a formal and technical design.
Dr. Harmon, originally interested only in the vision of
school children, comes to state in the course of his studies
that 50 per cent of dental trouble due to faulty jaw position
ing (malocclusion) may be attributed to forced general pos
turing caused by a wrong and troublesome distribution of
brightness levels in an elementary classroom.
That vision, posture, and dental decay may have a hitherto
unsuspected relationship can help to exemplify for us the
complex responsibilities of design. When we follow the suc
cessive stages of redesign of classrooms their fenestration,
illumination, color schemes, and general equipment, down to
slant and reflectivity of desk tops we can foresee that what
has long been treated under the rule of innocent inertia or
reckless guesswork may be based to a degree on provable
knowledge and cautious balance of valid considerations.
Even where design failure would not immediately threaten
us with grossly pathological consequences, architecture seems
311
to ascend to a new order of motivation, and design may have
to answer a new and less arbitrary consumer attitude.
If, for example, we introduce such a thing as nationwide
facilities for the daily exercises of public education, it means
in more than one respect potential collision with long-
consistent natural circumstances. It may actually mean a
new pathology, a cluster of new physiological difficulties as
by-products.
We may conclude by demonstrating how one specific
physiological investigation may demolish design patterns of
long standing. It can lead to serviceable differentiation more
fitting for both the individual and the human natural equip
ment in general. There have been in the past too many fal
lacious generalizations on the one hand, and exaggerated
beliefs in super-individualized response to aesthetic stimuli
on the other.
In a traditional grade-school room with several windows
in one of its long walls, the children are regimented. They
are seated parallel to each other at fixed desks placed in
straight rows, all directly facing the blackboard. The light
comes from the left. The studies of Dr. Harmon have proved
the physiological fallacy of this simple geometrical arrange
ment and have shown the urgent need to give individual at
tention to the placement of each single seat. For each seat
and for each row of seats, the left front comer of the room-
that is, the corner where the bright window wall intersects
with the much darker blackboard wall is optically the de
cisive point. And it is differently situated in relation to each
child. The angle between the line of vision directed toward
this corner and the line toward the center of the blackboard
is naturally different for every seat in the room. Assuming
that the difference in brightness between the left and the
frontal portion of the field of vision should be reduced to
a minimum to obviate eye strain, Dr. Harmon arrived at a
most unusual arrangement of the seats in curves, fanning
out and nonconcentric. Here each child is turned differently
in order to have the same visual benefits. The novel and
interesting design and layout is governed by physiological
312
optima. It improves not only conditions of vision, but, as a
consequence, also general performance of body and mind,
and fosters growth without distortion. Children are indeed
observed and aided by the designer to act and to grow under
the directive influence of light, almost as plants do in a
greenhouse in following their basic heliotropism.
As we said, a design innovation of this kind may, on the
one hand, introduce interesting individualization and a dif
ferentiation, too little considered in the past. On the other
hand, it allows again for important physiological constants to
counteract lawless views in favor of a pseudo-individuali-
zation. We have been suffering in our time from a roughshod
and arbitrary individualism that interferes with the kind of
harmonious setting other cultures have enjoyed. But we may
in our designs come closer to a true and new understanding
of the individual and its nature, engaged in a profound inter
play of inner and outer circumstances.
313
DESIGN, never a harmless play with forms and
Colors, CHANGES OUTER LIFE AS WELL AS OUR
INNER BALANCES.
44
Architecture is a social art. It becomes
an instrument of human fate because it not only caters to
requirement but also shapes and conditions our responses.
It can be called reflective because it mirrors a program of
conduct and living. At the same time this art of a planned
environment does more, it also programs our daily conduct
and our entire civilized life. It modifies and often breaks
earlier established habit.
We have keenly felt the need to probe into the general
background of design and to search for the methods that
ought to make its activity safe and sound for its vast con-
sumership.
The primary interest is in what seems to remain 'constant'
in these human consumers; it will be reckoned with as firm
ground. From there our curiosity proceeds to what may be
modifiable in human make-up and to what possibly should
and could be changed in everyday requirements. Their steadi
ness is often only supposed to be legitimate and reliable.
It is strange that human beings have hardly ever been
studied with regard to their vital needs and care, the way
rooted plants are studied in order to aid the agronomist in
314
his work. Little information of this kind has been collected
in practical handbooks printed for the architect and the de
signer. 1 The sort of investigation spoken of here is not at
all revolutionary in itself. Only its application to design has
so far been rather fragmentary. The most specifically human
endowment to be studied is a nervous system fused to an
upper brain of extraordinary volume and complexity.
Officially, 'physiological psychology' dates back to Wundt.
The measuring of nervous responses received great impetus
from Fere and his psycho-galvanic scaling of their intensities
in 1888. Since this work, acoustical intensities and pitch,
tactile impacts and pressure, gravity pull, and so on, have
been investigated in their role as stimuli and measured in
an orderly fashion. There is no reason why all influences of
our surroundings be they accidental or of our own design-
should not become gaugeable similarly, as, for instance, the
effects of the thermal and other physical or chemical prop
erties of the air that surrounds us are measurable in physio-
1 Professor Lee R. Dice of the University of Michigan has called
attention forcefully to the "importance of co-operative studies of the
biology of man," and indicates that "no investigation or group of in
vestigations now in progress is in my opinion sufficiently comprehensive
to secure anything like a complete picture of man the animal, as he
exists in this constantly changing world."
'Professors Brozek and Keys of the University of Minnesota have
called attention to the Laboratory of Physiological Hygiene which exists
at their institution and the importance of "interdisciplinary research in
experimental human biology."
'No proposal to study human beings scientifically and comprehen
sively has as yet received any substantial public support. In spite of all
the moves that have been made and all the ideas and proposals that
may have been entertained or set forth, we can say that to date there
has never been developed a study of human beings which even remotely
approximates comprehensiveness.
*. . . we may assert without fear of argument that human beings are
incomparably more complex than wood. Yet success in the field of wood
technology has required the work of large laboratories with well-trained
staffs for many years. If we are to understand human beings a problem
incomparably more important we must be prepared to put the requi
site amount of money and effort into the task. Fortunately we can reap
benefits as we progress/ The Human Frontier by Roger J. Williams,
Harcourt, Brace & Co., New York, 1946, pp. 171-174-
315
logical terms. We have to breathe air continuously and we
have to suffer the harms that come from its pollution. But
air is only the prototype for that over-all agent, the much
more complex, ubiquitous, and perpetually effective agent
that we call our physical environment. This environment of
ours is largely an artefact. In our technologically advanced
state of affairs, it is a pile of often incoherent fabrications
and constructions interfering with life processes and adulter
ating them.
Systematic observation and legislation tend to govern the
traffic in foods and drugs. But the effectiveness of design in
all kinds of small and large single commodities and in con
structed environment as a whole is powerfully at work on
senses and nerves. It often reaches down as close to the core
of our life as the diet, the stimulants, and patent medicines
that we swallow under the pressure of clever advertisement.
The far-reaching influence that a new biological knowledge
must have on design is quite obvious. While such research
would perhaps have seemed fantastic a few decades ago, it is
now common enough to be put into the service of the con
sumer. It will enable us to receive a fairly clear picture of
the pathology of design, of the ill effects caused by design
miscarriage, even if they are not conspicuous or easily de
tected. Through the sensory functions or irritations that de
sign elicits, it often disturbs many inner balances and thus
manifestly affects our individual well-being. It has its mean
ing for the development of a generation of growing, still
pliable children, and particularly through this circumstance,
for the survival of the race. The investigation may, as said,
lead to an appraisal of injuries due to design that are as yet
unknown to the designer himself. The potential conse
quences of such a state of ignorance may well make us feel
uneasy.
A great many general disturbances due to sense impacts
are measurable and have actually been measured. They range
from metabolic troubles and irregularities in the distribution
316
of oxygen to deficiencies in the production of endocrine
substances and enzymes. 2
A vast array of normally balanced inner phenomena seems
to be potentially and mediately affected by sensory im
pulses conducted toward the brain. These do not simply
terminate in our perception but they become trans-brain in
fluences with greatly ramified flow lines and effectiveness.
A striking example of this has been given in D. B. Har
mon's research, which takes its start well confined to the visual
conditions in the classrooms of school children, and from
here diverges broadly to many phases of life, growth, and
handicaps. Unfortunately, a study like this is still a rare
event in architecture, and human beings are usually not
granted this much attention by those who undertake to
construct their surroundings.
A high organism such as ours stands in a subtle relation
ship of sensory response to what happens outside. It has
always been known that our Vegetative functions' are not
truly and fully removed or isolated from those of the senses.
They are not really autonomically governed by a special
nervous system. Their connections to the spinal equipment
and the brain are so manifold that a mutual influencing is
perpetual. 3 For instance, since Cannon's work of 1915, the
2 Types of general disturbances derived from sensory sources concern
such widely diversified or intimately connected phenomena as oxygen
deficiency or diminished supply affecting brain-cell chemistry and degen
eration of brain tissue; the incomplete combustion and the lactic-acid
content of the blood; the creatinine-phosphate-sugar and urea equilib
rium between plasma and lymph; the glandular production of mutually
activating endocrine substances; enzymes; various catalyzing processes of
inner chemistry in both directions, or toward the attainment of equi
librium and a median level; hormones; the modifications in urine for
mation and chemistry; the speed rates or velocity constants of various
secretions and absorptions; the curdling or coagulation of blood.
s According to Langley, the nerve fibers efferent or leading out from
the seemingly segregated string of sympathetic ganglia have their special
job They supply the plain, involuntary muscle tissue of heart, viscera,
and glands, and are engaged in those processes that formerly were called
vegetative and later automatic. But a great deal of preganglionic fibers,
rami communicantes, and other conductive bridges intimately connect
the central spinal system and this autonomic system to make it really
one interdependent unit.
317
effectiveness of emotional states on all vegetative functions
has been scientifically confirmed. 4 The gall bladder, liver,
and intestines have long been known to be affected by what
is seen and heard and our feelings about it. Everyone is
aware that shocks, such as a frightening sight, may upset
intestinal functions.
Cannon's studies, which show the sympathetic system as
an instrument of automatic adaptation to routine change of
the environment, are highly interesting to the designer be
cause he is perpetually concerned with what adaptation to
his design an individual or the public as a whole can accom
plish. Such an adaptive process will rarely be conscious and
voluntary.
We must not forget that 'aware and willful' activities are
relatively few and are directed from the motor areas of the
frontal lobe. Through design, however, man can, mediately
or by a planned roundabout way, extend willful events to his
innermost realms where responses were formerly almost un
controlled.
We must get over the notion that design deals only with
external objects. Once we recognize that a product of upper
brain power called design affects ever-greater portions of the
innermost human being, related responsibilities begin to
loom before us.
First with curiosity and later with more profitable absorp
tion, the designer will follow information about how the
inner equilibria, such as distribution of venous and arterial
blood, the pressure in and the dilation of our vessels, and so
4 These influences have been found to be mediated through centers
in the spinal cord and the diencephalic region, called hypothalamus.
Stimulation of it evokes adrenalin secretion, a consequent rise in blood
pressure, cardiac and vascular effects; in short, meddles into everything
that traditionally ought to be 'autonomous/ For example, detailed ob
servations leave little doubt that emotional disturbances caused, say, by
sensory stimuli will actually hasten bowel movement or again dull and
retard the rhythmic contractions regularly six per minute or so of
the little muscular projections called villi, which line the lumen, the
hollow of the intestines, and, according to Brucke, act as minute pumps
to suck in and absorb nutritive juices.
318
on, are measurably affected by outside stimuli that man him
self can devise. While at this point the topic may be high
lighted only briefly by mentioning a few general physio
logical test objects, it will become clear again and again that
sensory stimulation is no innocuous play with forms and
colors, but that it has a great many important extra-sensory
consequences. 5 Since the inner physiological equilibria are so
significant for these life processes and for survival in general,
they must be patiently observed. They must be checked
under all possible impacts of experimentally imposed sensory
stimuli. Under such exposure, deviations from the normal
must be quantitatively noted in proportion to the measured
magnitude, frequency, or duration of these stimuli.
Certain businesses have become interested in this field of
benefit or harm to well-being. For example, producers and
sellers of heating and ventilating equipment found it profit
able to invest in careful studies and experiments on subjec
tive comfort, physiologically analyzed. A ventilating engineer
now knows that a two-year-old child, in proportion to its
body weight, uses up three times the quantity of oxygen an
adult would need. Computed on the basis of skin surface,
the rate per unit is one and a half of what the grown-up con
sumes. The anesthetic effects of various air pollutions, the
humidity of air, its relationship to temperature, its passage
over our perspiring skin surface covered with minute mois
ture particles secreted by each innervated sweat gland, and
5 There are such equilibria worth watching when sensor}' stimulation
is added. They are of many and various kinds. Frequently they are func
tionally and specifically linked, such as that of venous arterial blood dis
tribution and pressures in connection with items of, say, the general
cardiographic investigation already mentioned. Further items may be
observable as vascular effects, perhaps dilations of capillary diameters;
changes in permeability of tissue in cellular partitions, in unbroken
maintenance of colloid osmotic pressure; of plasmatic viscosity; of con
centration in hemoglobin perfusates, inactivation and oxidation of in
ternal adrenalin by a number of significantly elicited and developed
enzymic systems, and so on. The good work already done in general
physiology and in specific fields of it is immense and grows daily. The
forecast is safe that coming decades will still greatly multiply and re
fine its methods and objectives.
319
so on the sensory concomitants of all this have been care
fully examined and interpreted for practical application. Yet,
where subsidized research is involved, as in this case, it may
always be necessary to keep a close watch for the border
line beyond which intentions of more lucrative trade may
begin to color the results.
For 'natural' ventilation that happens not to require the
purchase of a mechanical contraption, desirable data, circum
stantial interpretation, and guidance will come to the de
signer much less easily. There he will find himself promptly
foiled by the commercial sources of instruction. Often
enough he is left with his own subjective sensory experience,
with such of his feelings and such scraps of inner evidence
as he can muster by himself. Much less data seems readily
available here and, of course, there is no manufacturer to
mail us a free handbook when we send in a request stub in
response to his national advertisement. Natural ventilation
is no subject for such an ad.
There may be nothing to sell, nothing to advertise, and
still there may be a maze of significant facts to know and to
investigate. Let us take an example that is somewhat re
moved from our own scene, so complicated and biased by
expensive gadgets. But even in the face of comparative sim
plicity, strange quandaries will be caused by the intimate
interlocking of varied and devious design arguments that no
specialized salesman or manufacturer would worry about.
This complexity is nevertheless the order of the day in con
ceiving a serviceable building anywhere and so may be de
scribed as generally characteristic for the process.
I was called in to devise the layout and structure for
simple, rural classrooms on a tropical island. Obsolete ordi
nances, borrowed from the Continent many years ago, re
quired a legal 'minimum' of static air storage per child in
the room. Most of this stored air consisted in a volume stag
nant under the ceiling, while the windows were ordinarily
placed much lower down, all on one side of the room, with
disregard for cross-ventilation. Warm, moist air, practically
320
stationary, saturated with airborne bacteria, and recirculated
through many lungs, had made tuberculosis endemic, spread
ing from one child to another in the locality.
On the one hand, rigid economy was exercised by keeping
the floor area small and crowded. On the other hand, atten
tion and money were expended on making the school build
ing high and on providing a vertically extended store of air.
But tall classrooms with a small floor area create special prob
lems of construction, especially when the forces of high
winds, hurricanes, and earthquakes have to be taken into ac
count. Walls and footings must be reinforced more heavily,
and in order to lend added strength to the walls, the most
useful and refreshing openings, windows and doors, must be
reduced in width so that the amount of dead masonry can
be increased for a greater lateral resistance. The result of all
this is that costs go up far in excess of being merely pro
portional to the height and bulk of the building.
Cost, structural safety, and pathology, the manifest spread
ing of disease, are, however, not the only things we cope
with through design. We are also concerned with sensory
comfort and with general well-beingconcepts badly in need
of physiological understanding. West Indian sultriness, an
object of complaint, can be mitigated by opening up the
buildings and orienting them into the very steady trade
winds, which are equally West Indian and a glorious asset
to the climate. We must give the air a chance to pass over
our skin, where it dries the millions of precious tiny sweat
droplets and causes a delightfully cooling sensation. It can
be shown that this is really more important here than reduc
ing the chemical pollution of the air.
Severe economic limitations may not permit us to increase
the cubature or the structural bulk of a building. This does
not defeat us. We can save money by making the edifice less
tall if only at the same time we think of turning it into the
breeze and opening it to the great outdoors to all the
natural blessings free of charge.
And so we did proceed. The structural concern about ele
vating the building high, up into the dangers of occasional
321
heavy wind attack, was reduced. Yet ventilation by salu
brious breezes was increased through orientation and open
ing. Wisely taking stock of natural circumstances, instead of
working against their grain, turns them into helpful agents.
My design solution assumed a normal loo-feet-per-minute
velocity of air currents in the direction of stable trade winds.
Such a velocity is very small and proved available during
practically all school hours. It produces an impact on the
forehead and face which is hardly more noticeable than if
one were to pace slowly up and down in a fully protected
room. While on a really hot day we might yearn for speedier
passage of air, even this velocity, almost below the threshold
of awareness, nevertheless gives us about four changes of the
entire air volume per minute for a 25-foot-deep classroom,
whose ceiling may be no higher than the window height. It
is an effect of amazing magnitude if one remembers that
costly artificial ventilation may furnish no more than ten air-
changes per hour, or one twenty-fourth of what we accom
plished naturally. The air moves in freely from one broad
open front and makes its exit through the other. Airborne
bacteria no longer hover in the classroom but steadily move
sideways and are spilled out into the sun. Expectoration dries
promptly, quickly diminishing in contagiousness, and all the
while evaporation cools the skin.
The most difficult part of the assignment was to overcome
the ordinance in force and to deal with habituation and the
established bureaucratic forces backing it. But after all, class
rooms are for children and for education; with this concern
in mind our new layout offered a great many advantages.
It must not be called a mere accident if in the process of
our design the relation of child to classroom, the child's
Reeling' in the allotted space, improved steadily. While
working on all those other problems, I remained aware of
the fact that a lower room under the tall tropical trees may
be, as a shelter, in much better scale with the child's stature
and in more suitable proportion to it. Projecting roofs and
broad fold-up doors now helped to extend the room outward
through a wide opening onto a classroom patio and aug-
322
mented the floor area for the horizontal expansion and ac
tivity that is so welcome to normal children as well as to
modern teaching processes. And all this was possible when
air storage was replaced by air passage.
A very involved combination of motives and considera
tions, from cost to earthquake loads, and a way of learning
by doing, went to produce our decisions. Healthfulness, prac
tical size, and outward expansion of schoolrooms were accom
plished without a corresponding increase in price, so as to fit
an over-all capital improvement program of an entire system
of Public Education.
The design problem of a schoolroom has been used as an
example earlier, but there purely from the point of view of
vision. Here it serves equally well to demonstrate how vari
ous problems may be unrolled, starting with ventilation.
These two approaches are of course not mutually exclusive
but rather in need of correlation. They have to be brought
into harmony with a great number of other considerations.
Not least, they have to be reconciled with social complica
tionstradition, habits of the community, prejudice. Formal
elementary education, where a novelty, is not immediately
convincing. Even if it were successfully accomplished, it is
first doubted by poor share-cropper parents in rural back
woodsand not just in tropical ones. It needs gentle in
troduction without social irritation and complaint. Disease
spreading through the school may lead to just that and in
fact may prove in any circumstance too high a price to pay
for education.
We have dwelt here on an exemplification of how com
plex design motivation tends to become as our technical and
social purposes increase, and how little orderly and con
venient literature exists to guide us on the primary physio
logical level.
One fact already stands out in the total scene of mixed
design considerations: a 'timeless/ static sort of design con
cerned with space alone will be an error. In the instance of
a classroom it became clear what air flow reckoned in time
323
must do for living beings who themselves are physiological
clocks also operating in time. Our kind of ticking is the puls
ing of our blood, our breathing or inhalation-exhalation
cycle, and all the many rhythmical processes that go on
simultaneously within our bodies. It is through these proc
essesmuch in need of accommodation in suitable space-
time that we live and survive.
OUTLINE OF A MANIFOLD EXPERIMENTATION
that may point to greater wholesomeness in
the design of our general setting for life.
45
In the light of our discussion so far,
we may attempt now to formulate the designer's professional
task in terms of valid requirements of the human organism.
He must attempt to strike a happy medium between those
physiological imperatives that are the constants of life, on the
one hand, and on the other, the acquired responses, which
by his professional judgment he finds possible to include in
a wholesome scheme. He should pledge himself to serve
wholesomeness honestly. If physicians take such a humane
oath, the designer must too.
But apart from his concern with every one of his products,
he has a long-range objective. He works from design to de
sign on a progression of stimulative constellations,, carefully
fitted to our capacities. The human organism must be ena
bled to perform a successful habituation while the designer
and architect must aim at nothing less than the steady im
provement of man-made environment in the direction of an
enhancement of all, even the finest biological values.
Adjustment to planned change is essential for our sur
vival as a billion-dollar technology advances headlong, often
threatening to overwhelm life itself.
In The Conditioned Reflex, Neuropsyche and Cortex
325
written from the point of view of a neurologist N. E. Isch-
londsky gives a comprehensive picture of living, of acquired
responses functioning in rich variations over the base of pri
mary reflex patterns. The variations arise first from the count
less accidental conditioning experiences of man's life in the
natural scene. At the top of evolutionary growth, however,
civilizations flourish under the conditioning effect of human
plan and design. Deliberate plan and design thus take on
the character of potent and final physiological instrumentali
ties. The conditioned responses that a designer must take
into account or work for are often very complex; neverthe
less, it seems feasible to devise simple laboratory experiments
that will gradually throw light on many of the problems
involved without distorting them into 'oversimplified carica
tures in the name of empirical science/ x
As we have said, conditioned responses are always super
imposed on primaries, and our illustrations of what this may
mean to the designer can be attached in every case to one
of these primary or arch responses.
Let us consider, for example, the orientational response. It
is in its effect almost similar to a tropism and consists of
an involuntary turning for reception. The individual lets his
current preoccupation, whatever it may be, lapse and auto
matically turns his body and sensing areas toward the source
of a suddenly or newly offered stimulation. The stimulus
may be simple or complex.
It may hold interest for our discussion by consisting, for
instance, of a pattern statically organized about a center, a
pattern commonly called symmetrical. Or, it may be an ar
rangement that embodies dynamic direction, which, how
ever, does not necessarily coincide with the direction in
which we orient our senses. For example, the object of out
attention may be a train in motion or one merely standing
ready to move, in which case the observer faces something
that in itself is not centered and on the contrary has a dy-
1 Douglas N. Morgan, 'Psychology and Art Today: A Summary and
Critique/ The Journal of Esthetics and Art Criticism, December 1950
326
namic 'sideways directedness' of its own. Such an object is
called asymmetrical.
In the case of symmetrical objects, exemplified by innu
merable famous and also infamously shallow designs, the
eye focuses easily on the axis, already automatically estab
lished as part of the orientational response; there is restful
coincidence. But the situation here becomes also more com
plicated when, for example, colors are added in one or the
other way. They will incite changes of focus as the eye turns
to them, owing to the physiological impossibility of respond
ing with an equal lens accommodation to a variety of color
stimuli. The ocular muscles are in such a case repeatedly
innervated for successive focusings, as if the eye were follow
ing a moving object. And so a motor phenomenon is pro
duced in the eye itself, although the outer objects are really
fixed. In such a case internal stimuli bring forth a cortical
response, as if external motion had been evidenced. Outer
and inner worlds are confused, flow into each other; they are
really one an ancient truth.
Let us now analyze our effort of orientation if an object
is asymmetrical and actually in motion. A train, close to us
while moving through our field of vision from one side to
the other, stimulates our outer eye muscles to action. 2 The
eyes follow and jump, follow and jump, for an ever-new
binocular focusing on the center portion of the field and
again on parts of the object that are forever gliding outward
from this field. We face a situation that is clearly not with
out conflict for the orientation reflex. This conflict acquires
2 The unequal and progressive distribution of receptors in our retina
strangely governs our turning of the organ when stimulated. It will be
noted that while in the fovea there is almost a one-one correspondence
between the rods and cones and the fibres of the optic nerve, the cor
respondence on the periphery is such that one optic nerve fibre corre
sponds to ten or more end organs. This is quite understandable in view
of the fact that the chief function of the peripheral fibres is not so
much vision itself as a pick-up for the centering and focussing-directing
mechanism of the eye' (emphasis added). Wiener, Norbert, Cybernetics,
Technology Press, John Wiley & Sons, New York, 1949, p. 158.
327
at once an emotional accent of its own so that our total atti
tude differs noticeably from one that accompanies a more
simple and static orientational satisfaction.
A conflict not dissimilar to this, and perhaps reminiscent
of it, occurs even when a resting, not a moving, ribbon or
series of forms and colors is before us. The orientational re
sponse here is somewhat handicapped and more complicated
than when we view a serenely centered symmetrical object.
The row or ribbon calls for our sustained motor exertion
and a greater expenditure of nervous energy. In other words,
if supposedly sheer visual impressions occur in sequence, they
are actually accompanied by inner muscular sensings that are
concerned with repeatedly orienting and directing the visual
receptor organ. This combination of original visual experi
ence and experience rooted in the motility of the organ is
beyond doubt cortically fused and emotionally evaluated as
a whole. Thus what has been called simply perception of
a formal arrangement or design takes on a highly complex
character. It needs to be at least somewhat appreciated in its
complexity, both by those who wield it and by those who
may be victimized by it.
A man-designed world has come to surround us on all
sides. Patient experimentation with both simplified and ever
more involved cases will instruct us about our natural reac
tions. To sketch a merely tentative method of progressive
investigation, let us continue with the orientational response.
It is basic and primary and comes into play, we know, each
time a single stimulus or a group of stimuli is presented
accidentally or by design in a location toward which the
eye can turn. To arrive at a more precise understanding and
comparison of effects, the next step will be to make the re
sponse measurable. This has been done for human subjects
by numerically checking for instance, the galvanic skin re
action which accompanies an act of attention and percep
tion. It is always concomitant and in proportion to the ac
tive response in question. By tests these minute changes in
328
the electric conductivity of the skin can be followed and
tabulated.
More striking results are perhaps obtained by linking the
orientational response with the food reflex. Since Pavlov,
this is a more generally known technique. A dog is chosen
as a subject and his salivation is exactly measured in the test
tube. Caution must certainly be exercised in interpretation
and in concluding from animal experiments on more com
plex human conditions.
The object with which the dog is confronted initially may
be a dish of food and later any other object strongly asso
ciated with it. To investigate the significance of relative loca
tion, the object is placed at various heights, requiring a tilt
ing up or down of the subject's sense organs in various de
grees. The maximum and reduced amounts of salivation for
certain angles can thus be established. There may appear bor
derline cases in which salivation ceases altogether with in
creased difficulty of orientation. Repeated quantitative meas
urements of the responses are tabulated for all observed cases
and subjects. Orientations upward and downward are, for
most natural reasons, characterized by different effort and
are of different valence, emotionally as well as physically.
The experiment is then modified: it is required that the
sense organ turn sideways in order to face the stimulating
object, and the magnitudes of these lateral angles and of the
responses are again carefully recorded and compared. Results
may differ interestingly from the up-and-down tests, and
right turns may be well distinguished in emotional signifi
cance from left turns.
In further investigation, the original object is accompanied
by others of the same size in symmetrical arrangement and
in varying distances from the center objectone, two, three
feet, and so on. Naturally, these positions correspond to cer
tain angles under which the accompanying objects appear in
relation to the main line of vision. As always, the measure
ment of varying responses is tabulated for each condition.
The sizes and brightnesses of the accompanying objects
329
are then varied to a specific degree so that they are smaller
or greater than those of the center object. Again, responses
are measured and tabulated to clarify how, apart from sheer
distance, the proportionate prominence of lateral elements
affects the impact of a symmetrical composition. Finally,
colors axe changed symmetrically on both sides, in different
selections, combinations, and so on. A symmetrical arrange
ment with asymmetrical colors may give most informative
test results.
But for all these cases of symmetry and its modification,
experiments can increasingly illuminate peculiarities of the
studied response. Subjects, human or animal, will generally
show a primary, and perhaps further a secondary, receptivity
to certain 'organized entities.' Such receptivity may, by suffi
cient repetitions, be produced as a result of training, and
show the manifestations of a conditioned reflex that proves
durable. For each case the number of repetitions required to
form such a lasting combination will be very characteristic
and, through comparison, most instructive.
This entire series of experiments on the effects of the
stimulation induced by a symmetrical arrangement may be
followed by others, devised to investigate the responses to
asymmetrical arrangements, and further by stimulus situa
tions in which objects move or seem to move (a) sideways,
and (b) toward or away from the subject. In each test series,
the effects of introducing the above-mentioned variations in
proportion and color should be observed.
Finally, there will in this context be experiments that
would make it possible to evaluate the effects of competitive
stimulation, i.e. of placing two distinct arrangements in the
field of vision say, something comparable to a row of win
dows in a building front, behind a row of differently spaced
telephone poles, a situation common enough, but often ig
nored by the designer. The experimenter might also study
the responses to two or more different symmetrical arrange
ments viewed simultaneously. Thus we should learn what
really happens to the beholder when a designer unwittingly
sets up a composition with two conflicting rhythms or axes.
330
It is disconcerting, for example, to contemplate the wall of
a room that presents not only a centered mantelpiece as a
focus of orientation, but also independently at its side a
window with symmetrical drapes offering a stimulus that
tends to a rather equal dominance. When faced with two
majesties, one enthroned here, one there, it is hard to make
one satisfactory bow to both.
The mechanisms of nervous induction and irradiation seem
to play such a vital role in the cortical innervation elicited
by competitive stimuli that practical examples turn up in
great numbers every day. 3 In the foregoing discussion we
have merely suggested ways of investigating the orientational
responses by means of experiments that can be progressively
refined. The intention was to indicate generally the need and
method of replacing guesswork and subjective inferences
with a more concrete objective research into the subtleties
that arch responses in action may show.
We have become aware of the significance these responses
hold for design, and have listed some of them earlier. Per
haps their formidable definition, the elusive conception of
them as basic drives, can be made more understandable when
we state as clearly as feasible what it is we are 'driven to/ In
this attempt, of course, nothing more can be accomplished
than to describe the scope of such arch responses by char
acterizing the particular type of gratification toward which
they seem to tend. If the examples of popular paraphrasing
should sound a little too 'purposive/ it may be remembered
that we try only for a dramatic illustration. The words used
here are meant to yield a conscious record of what is, of
course, mostly subconscious, but very effective when we ar
range our surroundings for actual life, design a room, or fur
nish it.
The following responses may thus be expressed by simple
sentences rendered in the first person to give a vivid picture
3 N. E. Ischlondsky, Brain and Behaviour. Induction as a Funda
mental Mechanism of Neuro-psychic Activity, C. V. Mosby Co., St.
Louis, Mo., 1949.
331
of their often intertwined tendencies. Manifest motor action
may follow these tendencies, or appear in rudiment, just
slightly 'egged-on/
Orientation Response: I am ready to act or am already
acting to gain a position so that I can be fully aware of
a particular event which I must face. I raise or turn
my head or my whole body. I dislike anything that is
interposed between me and the source of stimulation.
Defense Response: (a) Escape: I am alerted to flight,
should it become necessary. I have quickly checked by
general perception that I am not surrounded by an ob
structing enclosure or any other obstacles impeding
escape.
(b) Protection: I like to be fully protected, should
any circumstance require it. I have checked by per
ception that I am well surrounded by an enclosure to
shelter me safely.
Control Response: I desire to be at liberty, free of
shackles and impediments, in order to have full con
trol of my limbs and of all objects or tools that may
be required for the gratification of my intentions, what
ever they may be. I have checked by perception that
everything I might want to make use of is handy. None
of it seems to be out of reach, nothing and no one is
positioned to interfere or stop me.
Precision Response: I am acting to get everything in
which I am interested clear, sharp, and distinct to my
senses. My perceptual check-up shows me that I have
succeeded in eliminating all vagueness, all blurred un
certainty from my sensuously accessible surroundings
or from their impressions on me. I want to be satisfied
that everything I intend to pay attention to is well in
focus and defined.
Whenever any one of such gratifications seems not fully
attained, purposeful action may be promptly innervated to
332
attain it. Or, in frustration, a negative emotional tonus is
produced. Such an adverse emotional tonus is in turn linked
with various measurable effects in the vegetative system,
which on their part are felt, either plainly and pointedly or
just vaguely, as unfavorable to well-being and survival. We
are irritated, disappointed, depressed. No basic response pat
tern can be subjected to prolonged frustration, none of the
basic cravings can be starved, without such punishment or
a marked feeling of discomfort.
^An essential task confronting the designer is that he fa
miliarize himself with regularly recurrent responses, which
can be considered basic or universally dependable. The next
problem is that of furthering or eliminating, as the case may
be, conditioned reflexes that have become associated with
basic responses through habit or tradition. The designer will
need to gather objective information about which responses
are wholesome in a given situation, and he will also have to
be ready to account for his own goals in the same spirit. In
order to understand the motivations he wishes to manipu
late, he must be patient to compare their functioning in
carefully arranged situations of gratification as well as of frus
tration. He must call to his aid the experimental psycholo
gist and permit him where possible to introduce safe quan
titative methods of verification, where formerly connoisseurs
referred to intangible qualities and imponderables. It will
not bespeak true interest in the 'organic approach' if its im
portant findings of today are ignored by the artist of design
and swept aside by the many technicians who quite inno
cently doctor up our ubiquitous fabricated and constructed
surroundings.
If the reliable findings of which we speak at first come
trickling in slowly and in small numbers compared with the
formidable flood of full-page advertisements often so irre
sponsible as far as true life needs are concernedthey will
nevertheless become in time a much more trustworthy guide
in helping us toward sounder decisions of design and ac
ceptance. ^
333
Broadened, the objective research suggested will serve a
number of ends:
1. To ascertain the force of influences of environment
affecting the organism generally, not through the
senses. Special consideration will be given to stimu
lations that are man-made or modifiable and there
fore within the province of thp art of design.
2. To clarify data on specific sensory responses, to show
how the many senses work, singly and in 'stereog-
nostic' combination.
3. To study the relation of such sensory stimulation to
an inner somatic equilibrium, which is fundamental
to our immediate well-being and our ultimate sur
vival,
4. To study with care conditioned and associated re
sponses elicited in our brain by simple design ele
ments.
5. To investigate with ever-greater refinement and de
pendability the interrelations of all responses, their
superpositions, their colligations, configurations, and
mutual interferences.
The subjects on which experimentation is undertaken may
be both animal and human. Psychologists observe how mice
react to mazes, which after all are a complicated sort of archi
tectural interior, a puzzle made up of partitions enclosing a
space that is to be evaluated. More simple design features
combining, for instance, elementary light, color, sound, and
form stimuli can be tried on animals before we proceed to
men, women, and children of various ages. An involved
stimulation is more appropriate to human subjects, and these
should include some of average endowment as well as excep
tional and even pathological cases. Aberrations sometimes
illuminate, by contrast, what we appreciate as normalcy. 4 A
4 A most interesting category of research is foreshadowed by Paul
Shilder in The Image and Appearance of the Human Body, Kegan T
Paul, Trubner and Co., London, 1935. The book deals with abnormal
self-images which patients produce under normal stimulation of their
334
check on idiosyncrasies caused within the 'normal range' by
'physiological individualism' will be of great benefit to the
designer when it can be objectively verified.
The test objects used in such experimentation may be
classified in three groups:
1. Specific properties of sensory significance. Shapes,
colors, textures, consistencies, and the like, consid
ered in their function as singled-out stimuli.
2. Materials. Substances with which our combined
senses habitually deal as complex stimuli such as
occur in our constructed environment.
3. Arrangements and compositions. Over-all stimulus
combinations, such as a room designed for a specific
use, thus involving optical, acoustical, chemical, me
chanical, thermal, and other factors. The play on
our sensory and central nervous equipment, as well
as on our general physiology, occurs for the most
part in enlarged and fixed combinations of many
ingredients.
It is clear that experiments stressing objects of the third
group will often draw heavily on the findings derived from
work with the first and second groups, which contribute ele
ments for composition. But in some instances, the experi
ments turning on the third group may yield independent re
sults that could not have been obtained by any other means
or on an elementary level. After all, the human organism
reacts as a whole and responds to the environment as a
fused totality, in which any one stimulus is hardly separable
from the rest. Design is perceived and specifically planned
not as a sum of design elements or of separate stimuli but
as an integration of such stimuli. At the same time, recogni
tion of this fact and of the great need for skilled integration
should not deter us from analytical exploration as far as the
current state of information permits.
affected or surgically changed bodies. Experimental brain specialists can
generally throw fundamental illumination on responses to form and
design.
335
Using all available means, we may hope to design and
build more soundly for the multitudes of human beings
who cannot extricate themselves from the confines and the
vastnesses of contemporary industrialized environment. Step
by step, we may thus erect a safe stairway leading to more
wholesome and more spacious levels of man-conditioned
existence even if the topmost landing and a panoramic
view to reward the long ascent may never come into our
sight during our own brief span of life.
336
COMMUNITY PLANNING is an art, but one in
need of a large scientific advisory board,
CHAIRED BY AN EXPERT IN BIOLOGY.
46
The epitome of today's industrialized
environment, as well as the grand problem in practical hu
man biology, is our present city.
To look upon any form of urban existence as unnatural
has become an almost common attitude. It is an attitude
similar and probably related to that which condemns the
machine. It will be difficult, however, to determine exactly
at what point an aggregation of human beings, or of the
tools they use, may be deemed unnatural or antinatural.
We might safely surmise that the food-gatherers and
hunters of the early Neolithic Age were appalled when some
innovators probably considered crackpots at first began to
till the soil. We can imagine how the conservatives of that
time talked about the pernicious novelties of agriculture
the burning down and clearing of God's good forest, which
had nourished their forefathers so well, the frightening away
of game, the unnatural scratching of mother earth's skin
with cruel implements and the forcing of her to yield crops.
Above all, the reactionaries must have been more than skep
tical of a mode of living that crowded people together in
areas much smaller than could ever have sustained a clan of
hunters. It was all running painfully counter to most in-
337
grained custom. The food-gathering Shoshone Indians, for
instance, had to roam and commute ten or twelve hours a
day over the hot chaparral-covered hillsides of Southern Cali
fornia just to find their routine livelihood of nuts, berries,
and roots. They could not exist except as a sparse population.
In the light of more ancient ways of living, the idyllic
existence that romantic poets have ascribed to the tiller of
the soil and to the tender of cattle is highly unnatural. The
inventors of agriculture and its new economy may well have
seemed to be crafty and dangerous exploiters; and, of course,
with their spotty, piecemeal planning, they were. Raw sur
gery was ruthlessly imposed by them upon the natural envi
ronment that earlier generations had known and revered.
The hunting nomads must have seen with annoyance how
herds of cattle were driven in and corralled on what had
been pasture for nothing heavier than slender deer. The
hoofs of heavy cows trampled the meadow at the stream
until a ravine first narrow, but ever deepening was eroded,
into which the entire bottom of the lovely green valley crum
pled, gradually to be washed down and out of sight forever.
The old-timers of the primeval open spaces may have been
appalled by the crowd and the morals of the first agricultural
villages, very much as country people now are by the deni
zens of Manhattan, their jammed buses, subways, metallic
herds of taxicabs, and by their way of life in general.
Cities, as far back as we can trace their patterns, fall into
two categories: those that appear to have been 'planned/
and those that seem to have arisen without a conscious effort.
As an example of the first, we may use the star-shaped city
of Washington, D. C.; of the second, any number of medieval
towns in Europe that 'just grew' about a pre-existing center
of gravity, such as a Romanesque monastery or a good church
site on the hill.
Some observers have been inclined to designate these
towns of more or less irregular appearance as natural, and to
contrast them with towns created by rational initiative, which
came into being, for instance, when a prince ordered his
architect-henchmen to lay out a city and glorify his might.
338
Now such a differentiation will become less telling if we
realize that conscious 'planning' of cities has often been and
certainly can be something very different from a planimetric
Euclidean manipulation of the very simplest kind. This is an
unfortunate identification. The soldierly geometrical order
and planning ideas to be executed with the snappiness of the
drillground were possibly borrowed from martial layouts,
such as the temporary -castra, the Roman fortified camp, and
other subsequent army engineering. The checkerboard for
Philadelphia laid out by William Penn's surveyors about
1680 was contemporaneous, almost to a year, with the last
Turkish invasion of central Europe, and with the Sultan's
war tents standing in famous military discipline, row upon
row, before Vienna. But similar schemes of easily meas
ured and staked-out rectangularity date much farther back.
Twenty-two hundred years before Penn, the palm of success
and the title of city planner went to Hippodamos, a surveyor,
who laid out an Ionic city along gridiron lines. He did so on
an irregular peninsular site, and in spite of it. This same un
inspired sort of planning has been applied, we know, from
Miletus to metropolitan Manhattan, and to a thousand
Gopher Prairies. It has probably most benefited the surveyor
himself by simplifying his paper work and speeding up the
job of his field party, who staked out the urban fate of
coming generations.
But people sometimes got very bored with it all, and pro
posals to lay out a city in the form of a star, or of a wheel
with spokes, or to plan a house in hexagons instead of
squares, seemed refreshing. One could furnish a neurological
interpretation for this phenomenon of refreshment by break
ing routine, and for its bearing on cultural evolution. Such
rebellions often revert to purely abstract ideas and forms,
which have their appeal to the human brain.
Whether more novel or conventional, it is Euclidean ab
straction, and especially the two-dimensional one, that may
block design for living. Obviously even a city built on a
level plain has a decisive skyline for eyes to behold, and at
least a conspicuous dimension in height. But most impor-
339
tant, a city is physically and physiologically a phenome
non within a four-dimensional continuum. Its life processes
develop in time and continually erode a cherished plani-
metric scheme, until, sometimes, the early hard formal logic
is soundly contradicted or can no longer be even traced. The
basic difference between strongly pulsating life and a life
thinned out into an arbitrary game of abstractions has been
repeatedly emphasized in these essays. The useful designer
of our day will know better where to direct his curiosity and
how to apply constructive attention to the delicate needs of
survival.
Every city is a complex of solid and liquid bodies and
gaseous exhalations, teeming with several populations. The
two most prominent are the human and perhaps the bac
terial populations. There are, however, several others: ento
mological (bugs and termites), lower mammalian (rats, cats,
dogs), vegetative (from lichens in basements to boulevard
greens and a few trees in lucky backyards). In order to achieve
a successful symbiosis an ecological balance, a productive
living together of 'desirable' elements, always with marked
preference for humans large-scale planning must be applied.
But the stage needs always to be set for a physiological and
four-dimensional spectacle. The Euclidean contestant enter
ing the arena with his static paraphernalia of T-square, tri
angle, and compass will look from the start a bit hopeless
and forlorn. Biological balance is not easily housed in our
gridiron towns even when they are garnished with a few spe
cial geometrical gems; a lack of human dimension in daily
behavior has been forced upon us.
Thirty years ago, when I tried to give a name to my at-
temps at regaining the vanished biological balance, I called
the entire series 'Rush City Reformed/ At the outset, I
thought of avoiding geometric and mechanistic terms in the
words I chose, describing to myself and to others the or
ganism of a livable city.
St. John's In the beginning was the Word' profoundly an
ticipated semantics. Our very vocabulary and the metaphors
within which our minds happen to operate predetermine a
340
good many of our practical methods and conclusions. 'Mere'
words effectively slant and deflect our views. An idea for a
new design almost has to be of a certain kind if the terms
of thinking are mechanistic, and design initiative was quite
different when, for example, concepts were animistic. If we
call a city a complex machine in perpetual production of
various other mechanistically conceived items, such a city will
clearly come to conflict with the serene geometrical idealism
and dignity of Capitol Hill, from which radiate classical ave
nues, flanked by ministries and secretariats in colonnaded
rows. Both of these planning phraseologies, however, the
geometrical and the mechanistic, will by necessity be foreign
to still another, where we start to speak of organic growth,
articulation, exfoliation, degeneration, blight, and fatigue.
We may continue on our way into a new and perhaps better
sort of urban world as our metaphors and comparisons will
be drawn instructively from the organic sciences of living,
biology and physiology. Neighborhood boundaries will then
be likened appropriately to synapses between nerve cells,
which are boundaries only in a sense but at the same time
planes of contact, electro-chemical transmission, and subtle
but vital energy exchange. We may observe in our cities
something like the osmotic pressure of organic fluids against,
not really separating, membranes, or open diffusion from
sector to sector, and we may find situations which remind
us of 'arborisation/ branchings, or of 'anastomosis 7 and 'syn-
citia/ the characteristic growing into each other of living
parts in short, phenomena that have been minutely ob
served elsewhere in nature and named by patient scientists
of a nonmechanistic breed. All these fertile concepts of or
ganic realism can become valuable loans granted by his
tology, morphology, or operative physiology.
'Observational methods alone, without a bit of experi
mental interference with the observed processes, are bound
to remain more or less static/ said Samuel R. Detwiler, pro
fessor of anatomy at Columbia University, in his outstand
ing work on neuroembryology. He maintained that this
realization 'has gradually transported the embryo into the
341
hands of those who are subjecting living embryos to such
alterations ... in environments as are pertinent to an ana
lytical study of the dynamics of the developing organism/ 1
Would it not, then, be interesting to alter also that 'post
natal' environment, i.e. the neighborhood, the community
in which dwell the infant, the adolescent, and the never
quite finished adult?
This physical environment, the neighborhood, the town
itself, can be observed as an organism. According to Det-
wiler there are 'many lines of experimental study dealing
with the nature of forces underlying the development of
normal architecture in both central and peripheral systems/
Such study will be concerned with the much-needed 'knowl
edge of the interacting morphogenetic agencies/
All this may seem rather doctrinaire to the practical
planner who is forced to be a politician when he finds him
self up to his ears in opportunistic 'spot-zoning' to please
business interests here and there or when he has to struggle
against the superficial aestheticism of an amateurish lady or
gentleman on the planning board. What can the statements
quoted above mean to him?
If properly grasped, they can be eye openers. It is indeed
possible and fruitful to speak of 'morphogenetic agencies' in
relation to the physical growth of a human community. We
have here a splendidly pointed expression for form-creating
forces. Science has, in many cases by means of objective ob
servation, established influences that determine the emer
gence of forms, and thus a recognized scientific term signi
fies a known and fascinating phenomenon. In architecture,
the idea is still rather muddled that is to say, in the archi
tecture of architects, not the 'architecture' of embryos and
organisms in general of which anatomist Detwiler speaks,
and which has been so meticulously investigated by men
like him.
'Through studies upon regeneration and, in recent years,
by the methods of surgery on the embryo and penetrating
1 Neuroembiyology, Experimental Biology Monograph, Macmillan,
New York, 1936.
342
explanation, many interesting and highly significant facts
have been discovered. From these assembled data have
emerged various hypotheses regarding the role of ... agen
cies underlying normal architecture in the nervous system/ 2
If the physiologist does so readily and repeatedly resort to
architectural allusions, perhaps the planner may in turn cast
his glance on natural prototypes and be well advised to
profit from physiological terms. After all, physiology has
precedence in studying the interrelations of forms and func
tions. But on another level, this is also the job of the archi
tect. And so a physiologically minded planner may discover
useful hints in terms as well as in certain practical methods
of research developed by physiologists. Analogous ideas will
indeed suggest themselves to him, while the possibilities in
herent in such methods are not likely to come to the mind
of one who speaks and thinks of a city in static geometrical
terms.
For example, an anatomic-histological-physiological proce
dure has been developed to study and control flow patterns
and the dependencies of a conductive system such as a
system of nutritive distribution. This procedure consists of
cutting that system once at this, once at that point. The ob
server then tabulates what happens. This is done while the
system is actually functioning, in order to study its degen
eration, its devious, interrupted, and abnormal operation
under specifically selected conditions.
The traffic system of a city might be similarly cut or
blocked here and there for repeated short test durations as
part of a well-planned act of research. This should give the
planner a chance to observe the resulting difficulties (degen
eration) as well as any undirected, spontaneous tendencies
toward rerouting (regeneration).
Or, to give another illustration: the method of 'staining'
is quite commonly used for purposes of physiological obser
vation, especially the staining of a flowing medium when the
study concerns the pattern and speed of a living circulation.
2 Ibid.
343
This method might be borrowed for telling experiments in
the field of city planning. For instance, on a certain test day
all trucking traffic entering a specified section of a city might
be required to display flags of certain prearranged colors,
which would designate points of departure or of destination.
The measure would make possible a quantitative and quali
tative source analysis of particular categories of heavy traffic
and their characteristics in mingling with the rest, crowding
it, or avoiding it.
Organisms tend to progressive differentiation. They may
start with a mere 'metabolic gradient' within the plasma
body a simple gradation of the capacity to exchange sub
stance and energy. Later, as evolution progresses, organisms
go on with further articulation. The physical accommoda
tions of man's life are or ought to be an organic extension
of this life and should pass equally through a process of in
creasingly refined differentiation.
Similar to the original all-purpose cave of the Paleolithic
Age is the multi-purpose communal area, such as the open
ritual, civic, and sports ground in neolithic Machu Picchu of
the Peruvian mountains. The first Forum Romanum with
its over-all use grew into a more articulated cluster of fora,
piazzas, and piazettas, endowed with buildings appropriate
for various purposes. Differentiated organs and special facili
ties are evolved and acquired step by step, but sometimes
growth can undo its own benefits.
A relatively evolved organism may also revert to a pitiful
state of amorphousness. By this we mean a state without an
organic logic of form, with undifferentiated texture and
monotonous over-all characteristics unfit to serve specific
functions. Our own cities have, during recent generations,
often shown this tendency toward indifferent shapelessness.
In the hands of surveyors and other sometimes simple-
minded but powerful practitioners they have reverted to, or
been arrested in, a hopeless amorphous state. The civilized
part of the world is unfortunately now dotted with such
crippled cities. They are not at all stunted as regards brutal
growth, which is sometimes dinosauric, but they are lacking
344
in more intelligent articulation and sensitive differentiation,
on which their continued life will depend. And an overdose
of rigid, elementary geometricity is no substitute for func
tional orientation, on the contrary.
Geometrical grids have been mentioned as blanketing
many a city and in fact obstructing development. Yet, a
city such as Penn's Philadelphia, among others, may also
serve as a hopeful example of how no checkerboard can hold
out against the upsurge of life processes. Ultimately it is
dynamic life, not the initial T-squaring, that determines
growth and shape. Around 1800, the visceral traffic, as we
might call it, of underground utilities serving vital needs, the
newly piped water supply, radiating from pump stations and
reservoirs, reconcentrated Philadelphia's already fast-spread
ing body of dwellings into rows, assembled them first around
public fountains, then along water mains with privately con
nected taps and tubs. A few years later, gas intensified the
communal clustering around the supply of this new utility
and the process of functional adaptation continued and
pressed against the limitations of the first merely geometrical
conception of a rigid checkerboard. 'Epidermic circulation*
and surface traffic also exerted a similar influence. The mas
sive motor age grew to maturity. Velocity, volume of flow,
and pressure increased and eventually broke up the senseless
rectangularity. Fairmount Parkway, the impressive 'arterial
vessel/ now runs at a sharp slant recklessly through the grid,
just as the Diagonal Norte, similarly an afterthought, does
in Buenos Aires. Of course, these late-introduced diagonal
avenues, again rather geometrically conceived, must intersect
with the over-all checkerboard at impractical acute angles,
difficult for traffic and monotonously repetitive to the eye.
Today's freeway plans follow much more liberated flow-lines
on their own separate level.
It is not quite correct to say that the city founders could
not possibly have foreseen the subsequent development of
traffic requirements, and that this alone accounts for the
later failure of their plan. In a way the failure occurred some
time before the blueprint was dry. Old age is used too often
345
for explaining and excusing, on grounds of senility, a consti
tutional incompetence that age has only served to camou
flage.
Inadequacy or maladjustment attributable to aging may of
course be a normal organic phenomenon. But Penn's plan
for Philadelphia happened to be only a little older than
Admiral Oglethorpe's layout for Savannah, Georgia. Ogle-
thorpe, no more than Penn, could anticipate the Fords and
Chevrolets of two hundred years later. Yet, the Savannah
pattern of many refreshing green squares, entirely segregated
from rolling traffic lanes instead of being painfully permeated
by them, is good to this day. It was, to start with, more than
a geometrical idea. It dealt and deals humanly with life,
operating in space and time.
Monotonous stacks of rectangular city blocks have been
made to climb up hillsides or run blindly into river bends
and across irregular peninsulas. Geometrical regularity gloried
in the utter oblivion of natural terrain. In Baltimore, Brook
lyn, or Manhattan, rows of dwellings were at first built of
frankly repetitive brownstone or brick. Later, artificial relief
was sought. It was looked for in the diversity of the elements
rather than in the comprehensive framework, and so each
and every house in new suburbs got its particular skin-deep
style treatment.
In nature, on the other hand, the process is an entirely
different one; one might say, in a sense, it is the reverse. An
irregularly spreading oak tree, with all its branchings, grows
according to a pattern little expressive of formal geometry;
rather one can easily see how sap flow and circulation have
shaped the frame, basically and in every diversified detail.
Yet the entire tree has very uniform oak leaves, nothing but
oak leaves of characteristic sameness connected with branches
and twigs by identical stems to serve almost uniform venous
layouts. On some plants the leaves are left elastically free to
turn and orient all their frontal surfaces in the one direc
tion most favorable to their function of photosynthesis, the
assimilation and nurturing process of green growth.
While nobody ever seems to have lamented the monotony
346
or uniformity of a tree, our rigid residential neighborhood is
found in need of being enlivened, 'relieved of monotony/
What must correspond to the interesting organic form of a
tree trunk is here, in the majority of cases, a bare rectangular
Euclidean framework, indifferent to vital orientation. On
this primitive support we hang our often forced variety of
building forms. It is like assembling palm leaves, oak leaves,
and maple leaves on the same branch, which itself is just a
straight stick. These building forms are borrowed from dis
parate sources and soils and made to grow monstrously to
gether into one street organism. The strange, synthetic chi
meras of the surgical biologist look like child's play in com
parison. He produces horrible 'Xeno-plastics' through experi
mental grafting tricks only in order to learn something about
nature from unnaturalness. We have cut from their organic
base and fused together Swiss-chalet, Moorish, and Norman
'styles' and tried to live happily ever after with the combi
nation.
By contrast, a sound uniformity of orientation and of little
dwellings hanging on a residential street like the repetitive
leaves on a twig simply annoys people whose minds have
been conditioned by Hollywood variety. It is even considered
'unnatural' that two-bedroom houses harboring families of
similar size, composition, and nationality, all within the same
climate, should themselves be similar. If they nevertheless
turn out essentially similar, the fact must be hectically con
cealed. The truth is, however, that such small homes in one
setting, if they are to serve their purpose, cannot differ much
more in design and construction than the leaves of a tree.
For a sound fulfillment of life's purposes, elements such as
these, I have found, may often be healthily and pleasingly
sub-grouped, but they cannot be turned at will in all direc
tions, regardless of the sun or prevalent wind, nor can they
be given arbitrary shapes that ignore natural determinants.
As a matter of fact, trees are commonly called beautiful
not in spite of this basic uniformity of their leaves but be
cause of it. And real-estate subdivisions are usually beautiful
to the degree to which they contain trees. Trees cover up
347
the dreary geometry of sidewalks and telephone poles and
cast their lovely swaying shadows as well over the frozen,
lawless variety that, with all stylistic wrinkles, has unsuccess
fully tried to 'relieve' all these houses of their essential
monotony.
The tight medieval city could seldom afford trees. Streets
then had no space for planting. Man's early mastery over
nature consisted largely of excluding her from the human
stage of living and acting. The city of the Middle Ages had
a circurnvallation and occasionally molted it, like the grow
ing grasshopper its chitinous casing and our growing little
boy his pants. Growth in such cases calls for intermittent
reaccommodation. But normally the old city would develop
inward, into ever-greater density until the suffocation point
seemed reached.
In many parts of the world, the pattern of ownership of
agricultural land has, because of division through inheritance,
tended to become atomized and extremely, even ridiculously,
complicated. Analogously, city lots have been subdivided
again and again and households nested one within the
other, until places like Spalato, Dalmatia, or San Juan,
Puerto Rico, turned into teeming ant hills or inhuman box-
within-a-box establishments. Most natural survival aids and
health factors, available perhaps in the initial layout, were
lost by the sheer clogging density of accumulated population.
On the other hand, a new, thinly spread, traffic-crazy town
such as Los Angeles is threatened with a different kind of
disaster something like elephantiasis endless outward ex
pansion and dragging bulk of little vital advantage. For pur
poses of simplifying commercial transactions, silver has been
minted into dollars, all of equal weight and dimension. For
similar reasons, the landscape has been parceled, and city
lots have often been made uniform, say, fifty feet wide in
Los Angeles, ten yards in Buenos Aires. They are rectangular
wherever possible, and they are strung out in endless rows,
easy to look over, like stock for sale. Such lots can then be
readily exchanged for dollars, but organic values anchorage
348
in landscape and community are much less easily nego
tiated.
The medieval piling up of humanity was a phenomenon
of aging through hundreds of years. It entailed increasing
atomization, chopping up of physical footholds, shrinkage of
physiological standing space for each individual or family,
but at least no loss in sharing communal benefits. There was
a focus to the old town and a social area serving the entire
citizenry, workdays and holidays. A cathedral contained as
sembly room of liberal dimensions, providing for the increase
of population in centuries ahead. Drawing for auxiliary space
on the graveyard around the church which was itself eco
nomically operated in rotation and every so often emptied
of the bones and skulls of bygone citizens into special silos
the grand Cathedral could, for the quick and living, accom
modate medieval mass attractions such as the field day of
famous mission preachers. When Juan Capistrano or Ber
nard de Clairvaux came to town promoting a crusade, the
overflow of audience found their grandstand on adjacent
rooftops if nowhere else. Civic gravitation has hardly such
an actual centerpoint in our current cities.
And our post- Victorian parceling and subdivision of the
landscape deserves even more to be called atomization than
the in-finite medieval holdings, though perhaps in a curiously
qualified sense. Unlike real atoms, which are each well dif
ferentiated to form in interesting configuration shapely mole
cules and thus are strongly tied into a total communal struc
ture, our atoms of architecturalized real estate seem, in the
same vicinity, almost all of equal weight and valance in spite
of their bit of sham variety. They have no effective 'affinity/
no specific formative attraction or relationship. No higher
molecular structure ever comes to pass in these tiresome sub
divisions beyond subdivisions. Human society, the commu
nity, is not benefited by a clear center of gravity and seems
broken down into an indifferent multitude of elementary
particles without cohesion, without that dynamic give and
take which alone yields something like 'postured grouping/
We mean the grouping of a team in co-operative action,
349
where each individual posture complements the others, and
no soulless, mere side-by-side prevails.
In our humdrum cities there is lack or poverty of gravita
tional centers and they often seem of doubtful character,
location, and permanence. They are occasional jumbles of
mercenary places of recreation, night clubs, dine and dance
spots, and the retail markets with haphazardly assorted com
mercial service facilities around them. Even the motion-
picture houses, once rallying places of the chewing-gum and
popcorn age, have fallen into atrophy. On mild evenings,
skipping a TV program perhaps, the adolescent boy meets
girl in front of the drug store's magazine rack or soda foun
tain, or at the good-will bench on the sidewalk which Wood-
head's Lumber Yard has put up for advertising purposes and,
incidentally, to mark the bus stop. The common use space
or the communal gathering area of our towns has shrunk dis
astrously, although pavement may amount to as much as a
deplorable 35 per cent of the total urban ground. Traffic
area shows a fantastic increase over the Middle Ages when
people had a different notion of apportioning land to its
various uses. Crowded as these places were, they had both
a cultural focus as well as a 'nature reserve' just beyond the
city gate a few hundred steps off. Attic windows of their
housesand minds as well could look over the city walls
into a landscape of natural functioning.
An hour's rowing distance off the east coast of Puerto Rico,
there lies in the Caribbean sea a small crescent-shaped lonely
island with coconut palms leaning over its beaches. On the
map it is officially named Cayo Santiago. Popularly it is
called 'island of the monkeys/ and it swarms with several
hundred specimens of macaco rhesus that serve as laboratory
animals for the Institute of Tropical Medicine in San Juan.
Perhaps nowhere have animals, rather close relatives of hu
mans, been so well observed under almost natural conditions.
There is found on this monkey island little of social promis
cuity or of accidental, indifferent side-by-side.
The caretaker of the picturesque realm once related some
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interesting observations on the animal community to me
when I was commissioned to plan certain laboratory facilities
on this secluded tropical spot. The large population is racially
homegeneous, but it habitually splits into a number of more
comprehensive 'tribes/ with neighborhood areas claimed by
each one, and in each there arises a sort of civic organization
headed by a 'president/ 'first vice president/ and other leader-
substitutes, all honored in a strict hierarchy. Male monkeys,
after spending two years or so in their mothers' care and
within a group of mixed age and sex, withdraw then into a
bachelors' club. From this pool of eligible young males, they
advance to one of the tribes, the one with which they choose
to establish themselves in mated life (mates do change, but
only within the same tribe). Convention requires that bache
lors first cautiously approach the group that they have chosen
to join. Paralleling it for a while, distantly on its single-file
walks through the bush, the patient applicant for member
ship reduces the distance between it and himself a little each
day, and finally he is 'accepted/
Primitive human society is even less a promiscuous crowd.
Leadership by consent engages in suitable administration.
There is subtle articulation according to age, skill, contribu
tion to communal life, and sharing of it. The physical setting
used to express all this. Amorphousness and indifference
about size, scale, and distinct character have only lately over
taken man's cities, and in our days we have come to call a
town what is really a shapeless agglomeration of subdivisions,
in monotonous blocks, streets, and lots.
It is clear enough that different categories within a popu
lation should be accommodated differently: there should be
provision for single persons of both sexes, for young couples,
and for old people who are no longer raising children. It is
also clear that a family is a growing, aging organism and has
in each, the first and the second decade of its life, a different
make-up, a different set of living needs, different 'symbiotic'
requirements.
In those early studies of 'Rush City Reformed/ already
mentioned, such a biological age-grouping of families around
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corresponding nurseries, kindergartens, elementary schools,
adolescents' recreational facilities, was (then perhaps without
much precedent in systematic planning) kept a guiding prin
ciple. Apart from convenience, I expected a more harmo
nious and neighborly relationship to spring from this impor
tant and sympathetically valued consideration of 'family age/
Apartment buildings with club-like facilities were projected
for single persons, no longer or not yet attached to a family.
Other multi-dwelling structures were dedicated to beginners
in matrimony, serving them perhaps up to the time when
their first child would be walking and would begin to crave
the self-expression that seems to derive naturally from this
new skill. Specific accommodations like the ones described
were assumed to play their role in the neighborhood plan.
What can be called a neighborhood has an optimal size
that will not change greatly so long as phases of infantile
development, human stature and gait do not change. Man is
still the measure of things, as was proclaimed thousands of
years ago. Modern means of traffic may extend settlements
and shrink the planet; but we repeat that within a neighbor
hood, humanly conceived, they should not be allowed to
cause significant dimensional changes. And there are also
reasons for this other than pedestrian musculature. There are
significant limitations to human brains and nervous systems.
The social psychologist Cooley experimented with what he
calls the face-to-face group. He demonstrated that members
of such a group, sensorially linked, can achieve a wholesome
mutual adjustment of behavior, identification with each other
and the group, and social integration much more readily than
members of mere ideological groupings spread over wide geo
graphical areas such as the nation, the state, or the mammoth
city. The neighborhood, therefore, with its human contacts
unimpeded by metropolitan mechanics has a true physio
logical significance. The desirable social development that
will aid in the survival of the community and the race under
ever-changing circumstances depends to a considerable de
gree upon the neighborhood.
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For decades I have concerned myself with neighborhoods
of this type, for which I wanted to muster all natural health
factors as aids to survival. Layouts of this character have now,
at least theoretically if not in fact, found widespread accept
ance. A central face-to-face area for recreation, green, clear of
disconcerting and dangerous commotion, with elementary
school, neighborhood assembly and play space, a public
health service unit, a branch library, and a few scattered day
nurseries for toddlers and children of kindergarten age, are
all to be accessible over pleasant promenade walks that do
not cross lanes of rolling traffic at any point. A small arbo
retum and a bird sanctuary, for a little daily show of native
flora and fauna, and perhaps even a small model farmyard
to demonstrate and teach a bit of animal husbandry and gar
dening, may be helpful to a town child's experiences. All
this might far surpass what we can dream up to enjoy in the
neighborhoods in which most urban dwellers must live today.
Yet interest in such organic and recreational influences close
to our children may bear future fruit in balanced minds.
Low-rental and low-cost housing for the many, designed
with clear premeditation and in a grouping that truly suits
human traits, does not have much of a history from which
solutions could be reliably deduced, nor are there many sys
tematic precedents for the increasing number of communal
provisions that go with housing, well done in grand scale. In
fact, carefully located and distributed public parks, public
schools, and health centers are comparatively recent innova
tions. Their harmonious and subtle integration into the city
body and into the menu of daily civic fare is still rather
novel. The pre-Christian civilizations and model democracies
of antiquity hardly conceived anything like the regular social
service of a public hospital to care for the sick, and the first
structures for preventive medicine and public health service
in New York, Chicago, and Los Angeles were built only a
few years before the Second World War. Their design and
especially their location were very much open to question.
To this day health facilities are by many city ordinances rele
gated and cramped into commercial zones. Such institutions
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gradually emerged as mere afterthoughts and as such they
were often haphazardly grafted into the plan of the obsoles
cent 'paleotechnic' city. Now these facilities, although de
pendencies of an expert central administration, are slowly
moving into the focus of an articulate and intimate neigh
borhood grouping. This is happening against considerable
resistance. After a period of technological concentration on
showy, bigger-and-better institutional buildings, these com
paratively new communal facilities conceived on a more
human scalethe small park or green area, the small neigh
borhood school are still considered administrative head
aches. They have often been discouraged by 'practical' budget
politicians and prevented from appearing even on the tracing
linen of a master plan. 3
The huge institution, the mammoth consolidated school,
the gigantic hospital, the colossal park were for a while de
clared to be the 'economical solution' because of lower initial
cost per unit, easier maintenance, control, and management.
Monuments to this faith can be found looming from Mon
tevideo to Marseilles, and, when done with great gifts, have
an impressive power of their own. They may indeed embel
lish the megalopolitan skyline and the grand civic panorama.
The biological cell, the face-to-face group, is, however, too
easily disowned in such a tendency toward gigantism. Espe
cially institutions not fully identified with neighborhood
populations as their communal property never really fuse
with human needs. Vast school buildings or their chain-link-
fenced play fields, for instance, have been opened to the
populace at given off-hours; at most other times they are kept
locked up again to simplify maintenance and administra
tion. The manager's, the principal's, the superintendent's
jobs of supervision and direction, and the ease with which
these jobs can be done, are sometimes more carefully con
sidered than the general human advantages of having these
3 The economics of a separate 'school town/ an area of grouped-
together schools, supplied by bus traffic to cheap virginal land, as now
discussed in New Orleans, were explored and a design of this nature
discarded by the author a quarter of a century ago.
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facilities function liberally right in the midst of the people
and emotionally close to their hearts. Frequent and sponta
neous use of communal areas, a daily rhythm in this use,
serves the subtle cohesion of what we have called a neigh
borhood, and thus vitalizes the community as a whole. Huge
remote 'institutions 7 are deprived of this deeper biological
usefulness and the function of eliciting day after day socially
wholesome neuromental responses.
In an age of predilection for traffic, Mohammed can be
readily prevailed upon to go to the mountain that has failed
to come to him. The population, the patients, the school
children are being transported long distances to reach these
super-institutions.
Concentrated human accumulations, earlier unheard of,
are by-products of industrialized technology and inconceivable
without it. But this same technology can now be utilized
also to recapture more natural conditions. Control from a
distance is in the ascendant. Aside from bodily traffic, it is
the other great invention to shape our destiny. An old dream,
distant control, is now being realized. Napoleon could stay
farther away from the battle than Hector of Troy. Even in
a battery of artillery pieces a generation ago, the command
ing officer no longer walked about the emplacements to aim
over every gun barrel, and with the aid of modern devices
a school principal may be able to see each one of his class
rooms and speak to children and teachers and janitors with
out having them all concentrated about him in an oversized
building. A well-organized system may be composed of de
tached units, each of reasonable scope and easily accessible
to those it serves.
The good old walk to school may be resurrected and em
bellished as a promenade path through a park. I have long
liked to promote this walk to establish by its physiological
span neighborhood sizes and related dwelling densities of
reasonable scale and all this in a setting lovely to behold
and safe to pass for even a little toddler. Communal-service
facilities such as are suitable for neighborhood units will
best help to articulate and dimension organically these living
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cells of a city, in Bangkok a neighborhood clustered around
a temple ground at the canal, in Venice around a 'campo'
with church and convent of the local patron saint.
But there is the great problem of total city size. How many
boroughs can make up an urban entity or a regional whole
conscious of its communal unity? This is a complex socio-
psychological issue. Of course it has many technical and eco
nomic implications, but what interests us here especially is
the degree of a city dweller's cultural gratification and emo
tional satisfaction or frustration that seems so markedly re
lated to the size of the community in which he lives.
Young people growing up in a small town, alert people
who have to spend their lives there, frequently show signs of
disappointment and restlessness. They seem to feel that they
are missing something of the potentialities that the metrop
olis has to offer. Just what constitutes a metropolis as a
source of such potential gratification, however, varies from
one period to the next. There is in this sense not an absolute
but only a historically relative optimum size for a city. As
the specific weight of atoms is at the bottom of chemical
compositions and their properties, so one could somehow
refer to the specific size of communities that will have weight
in a culture and lend characteristics to its substance. It is
thought-provoking that the specific size of cities that can
offer corresponding and comparable cultural rewards to their
inhabitants should itself be so different through the ages.
The Nuremberg of 1550 may have had a population that
today would constitute only a moderate-sized town. But
every cultivated individual who lived there at that time
could share a cosmopolitan outlook, available within its walls
and hard to find anywhere outside. The Paris of 1850 could
justly feel itself to be a center of the world, with a popula
tion that perhaps did not greatly exceed that of Buffalo, New
York, and its motorized county lands a hundred years later.
The proud spirit expressed in subway adsIt is great to be
a New Yorker 7 seems to have existed in various ages, for
communities of varying but characteristic magnitudes. The
specific metropolitan magnitude for each historical moment
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would be an instructive subject for detailed study. Present
trends seem to indicate that in the future cultural grati
fication will depend less on dense 'conurbations 7 of the tra
ditional type and may well be found in surroundings that
are biologically more bearable. Cities will not have to be
gigantic or at least it will be possible and desirable to ar
ticulate them into humanly scaled neighborhoods, which,
however, will retain all possible mutual cohesion.
There is something like a magnetic field of influence
about a communal entity. Such a field is perhaps theoreti
cally boundless, but with increasing distance from the core,
effectiveness dwindles in geometric progression. That field,
it has seemed, may have to be voluntarily limited, together
with the size of the community itself, to maintain a fit phys
ical operation and psychological identity. Yet this limitation
should not be an obnoxious barrier, that is, one that im
prisons.
No doubt, the imagination of the nineteenth century and
its biggest child, the United States, was fired by 'unlimited
possibilities' and unrestricted accumulations. While sheer
deadweight diminishes practical returns, we must not over
look that it has through the ages had its grand monumental
connotation and undeniable appeal to human minds. And
so, the bigger the better has also characterized the core of
Rome, which expanded from that one original Forum of
human size, where you could be sure to find your friends,
finally to a vast system of extensive monument-studded
forums, where you could not find a soul in the loitering
crowd or milling mob.
The great American city has no public squares in which to
loiter and be impressed by a magnificently planned setting.
The really monumental thing about this city is its traffic and
traffic jams, which are not only a nuisance but, perversely,
also its pride, and for long used to pass as its cherished ex
pression of vigor. Our metropolitan turmoil is the monu
mental example of the amazing and pernicious length to
which the power of habituation and of daily conditioning
can go. Only our self-annihilation stops them and threatens
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or, should we say, promises to put an end to city life of this
kind.
But mechanized traffic cannot be called off, even though
it is an organically troublesome imposition, especially on the
more peaceful life processes that were once expected to suc
ceed in the traditional core of a community. However we
may admire the serene plaza of Latin cities, we unfortunately
find ourselves rather confronted with a primary need for
traffic loops and fluid passage, enormously dimensioned to
take care of rush hours. In our case, huge sums must be
budgeted to facilitate traffic flow, and vast paved spaces
must accommodate those armies of parked automobiles
from which human beings emerge only to return after the
shortest possible pedestrian itinerary. Also, when people
swarm out from old-fashioned subway or new-fangled mono
rail stations, they will head straight for other mechanical
traffic devices of escalators and elevators, because any at
tempt to centralize in the core of our city offices, court
houses, hotels, department stores, or what have you, makes
verticalism and multi-level arrangement the usual way out of
the dilemma of mass access. This dilemma has as its other
horn, horizontalism. But a horizontal spread of the core
spells more nerve-wrecking concentration of street vehicles
in sluggish motion, ever looking for temporary storage, so
hard to provide. Only slowly the idea dawns that square feet
of shopping floors exploitatively piled up are lesser determi
nants of value than the number of shoppers per day to whom
these floors are accessible the consumership delivered per
square foot and hour.
All of our choices are far removed from that old, peaceful,
dignified plaza, piazza, forum, agora, where minds met in
easily audible conversation, and the eye was pleased by a
stable, long-cultured setting. But verticalism, the soaring up
past many floors, the towering over fumes and crowds, seems
to capture the imagination better than the protracted parcel-
carrying and dreary walk back and forth along fronts or flanks
of cars, once one has been lucky enough to find and capture
a parking space. The luxury of a monumentally embellished
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pedestrian core, to serve a metropolitan region in a traditional
sense as its centerpiece, now seems almost beyond all means,
owing primarily to the need for its vast accessory, the sheer
utilitarian traffic space to be cleared and dedicated around it.
But even with this price paid, the scale would be inhuman;
approach and departure would turn into an ordeal, like that
experienced on leaving the vastness of the Hollywood Bowl
and its carparks after listening with twenty-five thousand
others to a Brandenburg Concerto, which we could better
have heard and enjoyed in a hall of human size.
If there is a choice between endless colonnades and dizzy
towers, probably the towers will win out. Conditioned as
man is to mechanical traffic, he finds the towers now less
fatiguing, with purchase collection service in their basement
garages, but they still have their striking eye appeal and, as
of old, are likely to touch off inspiring associations.
Perhaps the true alternative is to emancipate the satisfac
tion of a communal core from metropolitan overcomplica-
tion and keep it liberated from gigantism. It may well be
that we can seek and find the best of that satisfaction closer
to home and to human scale and grasp. A focus of com
munal living existed and functioned in moderately extended
Siena, Luebeck, or Athens. It may have to be modified
today and be not one but a whole array of splendid cores,
each elevated over its level of rolling traffic beneath, that can
adorn a galaxy of boroughs and neighborhoods with indi
vidual life and interest. The comprehensive civic idea of a
metropolis will glory in the mutuality of parts and retain
its best expression of magnitude and linkage in a network
of wonderful parkways sweeping through the scene. By co
herent and diversified vistas, they may invite frequent visit
ing between these affiliated part-communities, each with its
own refreshing face, pattern, and appeal. A picture of the
new great city as a whole can at any rate no longer be en
joyed by a visitor or by a citizen standing still at any one
spot, but mostly in far-spanning unimpeded motion, by fly
ing over these township-articulations in a garden landscape.
We enjoy its perspectives while swinging over the wide, ris-
359
ing curves of modern road interchanges that command a
sweeping view, and are themselves the grandest, most flam
boyant plastic forms of our new urban scene. The plan for
a metropolitan region will place great emphasis on these
connections, which are much more than utilitarian, on the
continuous communal contact they facilitate, and on the
frequent and speedy social refreshment they yield.
Animals differ from plants primarily in their much more
pronounced capacity for movement. The brain equipment of
man has placed many specific rational and emotional accents
on motion. Undoubtedly there is such a thing as an essential
urge for locomotor self-expression that is intimately related
to our biology. Over this organically legitimate base, how
ever, cancerous hypertrophies have developed in our day of
grand technology. An obliging accommodation of this wild
growth may not be justified and may itself grow out of all
sensible proportion. In fact supertraffic threatens the sur
vival of the community and is to the individual the most
common hazard of the land.
A measure to be recommended on the basis of physio
logical considerations is undoubtedly far-reaching separation
of traffic rolling on wheels from the pedestrian who slowly
shuffles along. It should be an acoustical separation as well
as an optical one. Apart from the pedestrian's obvious and
general sensory annoyance near an automobile road, there
are generated thought-associations that lead to a secondary
but general displeasure with good, healthy walking. When
the walker sees himself overtaken every few seconds by a
speedy vehicle, he cannot help pondering that it reaches its
destination or a distantly visible landmark in a few minutes,
while he himself will still be crawling toward it half an hour
hence. His emotional perspective on the use of legs becomes
biased just as the language he is inclined to adopt. A bitter
word always reinforces a bitter attitude; a man who 'crawls'
feels humiliated. To make walking a pleasure again, the man
who walks must not be forced to compete visibly with
speeding automobiles. If there is a valid sensorial and brain-
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physiological basis for segregating categories of traffic, their
pernicious cross-influence is actually open to concrete tests.
We ought to favor the rehabilitation of the human walk
wherever possible. It is the original medium of that loco-
motor self-expression for which biological significance has
rightly been claimed. It will never, without harm, yield this
priority. Besides having neural benefits, walk also happens to
be one of the healthiest forms of general muscular exercise,
stimulating to many visceral and glandular processes. The
segregated pedestrian routes in the neighborhood must be
well landscaped and made most attractive for day and eve
ning strolls, instead of investing funds all-out on road width
and easy grades to favor blindly and promote profusely roll
ing traffic everywhere.
Originally settlements were limited in extent by walking
distances; walking distance remains the standard of human
scale for a neighborhood. We have held this to be true, no
matter how much the over-all municipal region may be ex
tended by speedier private vehicles or common carriers. And
we should never forget that also with Americans, half the
population are non-motorized children, and all the customers
of our school administration walk if schools are properly
spotted. However foolproof future vehicular traffic may be
made, it is evident that man must attain a certain degree of
competence before he can control, direct, or even board such
high-velocity vehicles and ride them safely. A fairly steady
walk and a degree of motor co-ordination are attained by most
children after the second year of life. At that age, if their
path is made reasonably safe, they are soon able to walk a
certain distance to a day-care center, just as they used to
swarm freely through an old-time Ashanti kraal in Africa or
through a Slovakian village, before the advent of the auto
mobile.
The nervous implications of rearing children appear to
have changed considerably since automobiles, buses, and
other machines began to rush through the human ant hill.
Parental irritation, exhaustion, and anxiety that comes from
having to overprotect the young were at a minimum in the
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old community. They must again be reduced to a minimum
in the modern neighborhood; this would be a revival not so
much of the old-time village as of the serene quality that vil
lages once possessed, and the outcome of a psychiatric re
spect for it. Freedom from fear and a certain security of life
and limb, at least intramural security, must be planned for
and restored. We must get back to that feeling of ease that
once distinguished the neighborhood where people used to
grow up and raise their children without apprehension about
being overtaken by whirlwind death right in front of their
huts.
Speed may be considered necessary, or even idolized.
Physiologically it is of little benefit or harm to us. If we
wish to redesign traffic so as to eliminate irritations and
thus aid survival on a neural level, we must never forget
that through our senses we actually experience only the ac
celerations, retardations, and stoppages; it is primarily these
interferences with fluidity and rhythm that count in neural
economics. An over-all harmonization, an elimination of stop
pages and bottlenecks, is, from a neuro-physiological point
of view, much more urgently needed than mere increase or
facilitation of speed. It becomes absurd to think only in
terms of unco-ordinated speed. Shooting along in rocket
ships should not be combined in one pattern with standing
in a tiresome line at ticket windows and customs counters.
A billion-dollar program of speedways on the work reserve
shelf of an American metropolis is nothing unusual these
days and will calmly proceed to condemn private property
for many miles of public rights-of-way. Yet blighted areas
through which we rush for many worthless miles have rarely
on any comparable grand scale been rebought by a commu
nity for the obvious and sensible purpose of clearance and
healthy redevelopment. Oddly, there seem to be far fewer
political and budgetary blockages when it comes to acquisi
tion of impressive ribbons and vast patches of land for the
needs or vagaries of traffic. Large-radius and flat-curvature
speedway interchanges might soon replace the 'clover leaves/
already old-fashioned because they consume twenty seconds
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more for a left-hand turn. Such super-technical progress
from the new to the very newest is flagrantly out of balance
with gross backwardness and neglect of truer life necessities.
In opposition to an overevaluation of mere traffic velocity,
we may also point out that in a well-planned speedway
system it should never be necessary to make more than one
or two turns to the left or right while traveling through an
entire metropolitan region. Furthermore, the route inter
changes that occasionally occur between the straight top-
speed runs could serve as natural nerve-soothing slow-downs.
Generous landscaping will give commuters' travel recrea
tional accents at these points.
The interchanges might be combined with branch-offs that
permit smooth and safe inflow of local traffic, which, after
all, is perhaps the most subtle kind of traffic for urban hu
manity.
For reform as I dreamed of it in the 'Rush City' studies of
long ago the area of rolling traffic within the neighborhood
proper was to be reduced in the proportion to which self-
contained livability would increase there. Traffic, apart from
its local branchings- those fine capillary ramifications was
planned as steady speed traffic, passing between these neigh
borhoods, not through them. Slightly sunken roadways, judi
ciously screened by naturally grouped trees and shrubs,
would form the well-segregated, insulated, 'sheathed/ and
concealed vascular system connecting individual boroughs or
sectors of the greater community. In this connecting system
mere distance was to mean little. It was always to be reck
oned in terms of a time equivalent for actual access to the
goal. The aggregation of the boroughs formed a loosely knit,
well-articulated urban region, with much cultivated nature
to be enjoyed in passing and, as stated, commutation itself
might thus claim relaxation value. All this now sounds much
less revolutionary than when it was first drawn up and
written down, and when 'parkway' was not even yet a
popular word. But one's courage flags if one contemplates
the number of places where developments have materialized
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very thickly since then without the least heed to such ideas.
How much has been spoiled meanwhile beyond recovery.
Services requiring a considerable amount of daily traffic
and trucking, retail stores, markets, restaurants, theaters,
dance halls, as well as repair and maintenance establishments
from overhaul garages to branch lumber yards, were to be
situated so as not to encumber the quiet, restful core of the
neighborhood. I thought they should be placed strategically,
again between residential neighborhood cells, straddling and
bridging the here deeper depressed speedways, and the upper
level of local lanes that branch off along ample customer
parking facilities. The motorized commuter may as well be
given the chance to pass and review on his way home an
array of clustered commercial units which compete for trade
or offer metropolitan diversity and distraction against small
town boredom.
A bridge thrown from neighborhood cell to neighborhood
cell constitutes indeed something like a synapse, to use this
physiological simile to designate a dynamically significant
contact feature. Articulations as well as linkages, absorptive
and discharging surfaces, not boundaries or enclosures, are
the most significant phenomena in all physiology and or
ganic assemblies.
Three-way links are established at those points where a
borough's artery passes between the entries of two neighbor
hoods. All such links help to make of the larger community
an associative organism, not a mere aggregation of parts,
each remaining in isolation. Coghill, studying the embryonic
development of nervous systems, warns against the expecta
tion that a mere aggregation of locally evolved parts could
ever result in a true individual. There is no reason for sheer
bigness if there is no cohesion or co-ordinated function ac
complished. A similar view may well apply to city growth.
At those crucial points in question, our elementary city cells
will share in a rhythmical circulation, in the beneficial effects
of a systole and diastole of the regional heart, however
remote.
A shopping center in the described position serves a tnuch
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more far-reaching purpose than do the many confusedly dis
persed local stores of yesterday and today. The local trad
ing establishment will tap a sufficient purchasing area so that
competing stores, or, better, stores of a similar kind but
qualitatively differentiated and grouped together as best serv
iceable, find their place within the short radius of a serene
and rationally routed shopping walk. There is also business
to be picked up from cars after they have easily filtered into
local traffic lanes, and from passengers who for an intermis
sion may get on their legs while changing from express buses
to locals. Night trucking for stock deliveries to this trading
center can make use of the costly speedway during off-hours
without disturbing residential night rest and that periodical
recovery which is biologically so much required for all flesh
and nerves. Landing space for air traffic, especially the
kind that can hover before descent, and parking areas near
the shopping center are made readily accessible to all long
distance, local, and neighborhood travel, to avoid disfiguring
the core of a residential area with a panorama of endless for
mations of vehicles. The space parked cars take up is not
allowed to swell unduly the walking distances within the cell
of residential character. Where accumulated parking areas
become unavoidable, the green foliage of tall border plants
and interspersed shade trees counterbalance and conceal the
loud colors and blinding specular reflections of duco finish
and shiny metal, massed in this age of chromium. Perhaps
one day cars will be designed to be less gloriously con
spicuous in the landscape.
For many years I have attempted to analyze the meaning
and the distribution of the hectic activity and traffic that
flood the newer urban scene and cover such a large part of
it. I have tried to show the fallacy of expecting an abate
ment of traffic jams from a sheer thinning out of the metro
politan spread of cities, which remained essentially centered.
On the contrary, this diluted, uniform expansion, especially
when based on private means of transportation, overtaxes the
inner vascular system by bulky centripetal and centrifugal
traffic peaks when all suburbia moves downtown in the
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morning and returns home at night. In fact, the greater the
spread of such an urban area, the wider and more numerous
must be the streets in the inner portion to take care of the
accumulating traffic, be it fluid or in suspense when cars
are parked. The aggregate cross-section of inner road-vessels
ought to increase with the square of the city's radius. But to
speak in more organic terms, every major current of traffic
created downtown, and its outlet avenue, may be likened to
a tree-trunk that is rooted in the central area nourishing this
traffic. It has its ever-finer ramifications outward and finally
its capillary branchings of ultimate distribution. The sheer
mechanics of sap circulation will make the trunk's diameter
grow with the crowning spread of the tree.
But we must remember that in a city every employment
market, every shopping center, every spot for mass recrea
tion naturally gives rise to a secondary traffic growth and by
the very nature of things it is impossible that the root areas
of various traffic should coincide with each other. Our 'trees'
multiply and, in fact, take on shapes like those of the bewil
dering tropical species in the botanical gardens of Trinidad
or Colombo, where we see branches droop and again sink
roots of their own in many new spots. The orientation of
this kind of intertwined growth can become veiy complex
in an urban region. As a matter of fact, the traffic rooted in
after-work or week-end playgrounds most often tends to
move in a direction opposite to that of the traffic that has
its roots in daily employment.
When several such traffic organisms get into each other's
hair, then startling, complicated time-space situations de
velop which are indeed very hard to predict, and experi
mental observation, such as biological research favors, will be
much superior to speculative prophecy. All true fluidity may
easily be lost, and turn into heavy viscosity. The final result
is the crystallization of a perpetual traffic jam and every so
often the painful catastrophe of a thrombosis.
Added, of course, to the troubles in moving along must
be the almost immeasurable parking problem, right there
where space is made most precious by too much convergence
366
of life, foolishly conducted to its own frustration. There are
also here instructive physiological parallels in vascular lay
outs, in pathology of circulation, in organic systems in which -
a flow not only circles but reaches finely detailed areas to
sediment its cargo of needed substances or to serve vital
energy exchange.
Certain categories of traffic undoubtedly constitute a most
necessary life function. They are essential and logical, while
others can no doubt be attributed to an extraneous influence
and the temporary post-Victorian traffic craze that has over
taken our generation because it happened to witness the
stupendous development of private automotive vehicles and
was lured into installment buying by high-powered advertis
ing. We may have lost sight of other sounder common car
rier solutions. The private motor car has greatly accelerated
the decay of communal cohesion, although on the other hand
it has increased to an unprecedented degree the common
interest in a mighty mere-traffic-area, well paved, signaled
and policed.
We have alluded to night trucking on speedways or park
ways. During daylight hours, these same roads may be re
served for a continuous flow of passenger cars on two or
three center lanes while an intermittent movement of ex
press buses takes place on the outer lane, with stops acces
sible to the pedestrian. In such a dual or mixed dedication,
we have, then, an example of design both in time and in
space. It is necessary and has all natural precedent.
The successful use of multishift systems in a factory is not
only a matter of managerial skill. Full usage of an expensive
device, whether it is a tire factory, a speedway, or a com
mercial block under joint management, calls for precisely
conceived design, thoughtfully applied from the very start to
multiple operation that must be foreseen in every phase.
It is not /ust managerial skill that permits a green plant to
change its metabolism from day to night; it is rather the
plant's basic design that enables it to do so. Design and man
agement must be recognized as a twin problem: in nature
the two are simply one, and so they must be approached
367
also in human planning. Not even a preliminary sketch,
whether for a private kitchen or for an international airport,
has any promise unless modes of handling, administration,
and maintenance are thoroughly anticipated and agreed upon
beforehand. Design is good, bad, or indifferent not in itself
but always relative to management.
In nature's economy, multiple use and multiple purpose
in a single organ are quite common. Often organs are en
riched by a few subtle touches of differentiation to enable
them to meet specific requirements as they arise periodically
or occasionally. In planning for communities and their im
provements, this particular merit of dual-purpose proposals
often is a means to silence the clamor against wasteful ex
penditure.
Waste is what is not used up in the allotted time. And
the dynamics of time considerations have, ever since we
spoke of traffic, rightly been introduced into the subject of
city planning, which has too long been merely a matter of
geometry.
Yet dire biological wastefulness and organic economics
that should be primary in communal planning are often dis
regarded in favor of monetary ideology. Habitually, the pre
dominating thought is just to get investments amortized.
We worry a good deal that remnant credits be liquidated to
a happy end. Equities in old sewers and disposal plants, in
obsolete and offensive street lighting, which blinds eyes and
puts street signs into eternal night, overhead power service,
or what-have-you, all must be used up to the bitter end. We
dread tax increases and new bond issues more than daily
stabs into the sensitive tissue of our healthy living. If those
old 'improvements' are rotten, they may have to go, and
indeed ought to in any event, whether they are paid off com
pletely or not. The true biological requirement is to wipe
out those outmoded installations, and not to let slowly
dwindling interest and amortization payments dominate ad
ministrative minds, which should be responsible for much
more than finance. The most multiplied penny wisdom can
368
hardly outweigh an improved knowledge of the factors that
aid or harm survival. It is against the spirit and proper pace
of this advance in scientific knowledge to let changes wait
until senile ideas have duly reached their budgetary retire
ment age.
The Second World War, like all wars but more so than
any of its predecessors, has speeded up obsolescence. It has
become increasingly plain that plans are made and needed
more to guarantee future investments and returns than to
assure the continuation of the status quo. A leaf can here be
taken from living nature and its wastefulness, which is as
proverbial as its economy and perhaps profoundly identical
with it. Even a slight sign of obsolescence or unsuitability is
here often and quickly followed by abolition and a natural
'plowing under/
An accelerated superannuation and speedy retirement due
to scientific revaluation may raise anxiety in those who wish
to carry on business as usual even in the face of catastrophes
such as war destruction and revolutions. But business has
hardly ever been 'as usual' for a sufficient length of time to
merit that expression. Monetary scales deserve no preference
over biological scales, because they rarely hold true over the
protracted periods of slow communal development and its
need of long-term appraisal.
All systems of economic indexing and comparing become
controversial when applied over extended intervals of time
and space. For example, we look at a tabulation showing,
from decade to decade, how food prices rose in England,
taking the level in the year 1500 as 100 and continuing to
the end of the seventeenth century, when they had reached
the numerical value of 682. We may be more used now to
such changes of the economic scenery, yet the effect was
then nevertheless bewildering, and an all-round interpreta
tion of what happened between those figures is far from
easy. Still one thing is clear: those two hundred years were
but a comparatively brief phase in the life and organic evo
lution of a long-lived town such as London.
The particular tabulation mentioned is taken from a study
369
on the medieval building trades. 4 It appears that communi
ties were perpetuallyeven though with a varying density of
employment engaged in improvement projects that some
times took centuries to finish. Meanwhile, if there were
budgets they toppled over and over again together with the
stout and proud time schedules and evaluations of business
as 'usual/
The truth is that, whether or not we can, in a dim his
torical perspective, distinguish such investments as 'good' or
'bad/ large-scale building itself has in many periods been an
approach to economic welfare and thus, in a measure, to bio
logical welfare. These matters remain tightly interrelated,
and public-development projects have remarkably fed back
into the system and kept amazing percentages of the popu
lation busy, earning, eating, and nursing healthy offspring.
To quote Knoop and Jones, in those long, bygone, 'pre-
industriaF days, 'the public building industry, in fact, stands
out from the contemporary activities of more or less inde
pendent master craftsmen in their little workrooms, as the
towers of a cathedral or the battlements of a castle stand out
above the houses huddled about their base.
'Beaumaris castle at one period, admittedly a time of ex
ceptional activity, found employment for 400 masons, 30
smiths and carpenters, 100 unskilled workers, and 200 carters
(medieval truck drivers)! The meaning of these figures will
be understood if it be remembered that the population of
London, in 1377, was probably no more than 35,000, of
whom, when deductions have been made for women and
children, perhaps 10,000 or 12,000 were adult workmen/ 5
For periods that through long stretches of time have turned
disparate, it is indeed equally difficult to compare the indi
vidual economic gratification of workers, the civic gratifica
tion or the merits of public works programs, and the amounts
invested in them. The common denominator, the proper
gauge of value, lies ultimately in biological returns, i.e. the
4 Douglas Knoop and G. P. Jones, The Medieval Mason, Manchester
University Press, 1933.
5 Ibid. p. 4.
370
aids and harms to the survival of a given community and
its organic membership. Such aids and detriments are much
more relevant for a possible appraisal of specific and vital
stability. The expression 'standard of living/ when soundly
understood, has all these connotations.
Yet so far it is harder to analyze ecological implications of
this kind and to weigh biological benefits and blunders than
it is simply to make the taxpayer feel bad in terms of dollars
and cents by telling him that a costly thing like an 'improve
ment' which has not yet been paid off must already be
scrapped.
Quite another eternal trouble with economics, clogging
civic brain action, is that things continue to pay their way
into a gloomy future long after they have been amortized
and almost everybody except the few lucky payees has no
ticed their threat to health, happiness, and survival. Diver
sified slums that prove veritable gold mines for their absentee
owners are a bad drain on the community's well-being and
an awful biological liability to their occupants. The original
investment has long ago been paid back in full, in some cases
three and four times over, and all income derived now is net
profit. No healthy regeneration takes place. Maintenance
expenses and the bother of repairs are kept almost to zero;
why worry? nothing is expected but ever-continuing dete
rioration, which we could call asymptotic. It never reaches
the happy point of annihilation. This sort of investment is
the ultimate example of a budgetary boon; a realtor of the
older school might call it a 'peach/ At the same time it is
not at all digestible, but a foul fruit. It is degeneration,
pampered by economics. Biologically it may be a cancer on
the surface and in the depth of the community with a threat
ening possibility of metastasis. It is eating and swelling its
way into the heart and inner tissues of society, which also
must be understood as an organic growth. Yet financially the
costly new cannot easily compete with the dead and cadav
erous which keeps on paying handsomely. And so to make
a change has sounded crazy to many a 'practical' man.
371
Where for a thousand years pigs and dogs had done scav
enger service, plans for public garbage collection, incinera
tion, and elaborate sewage disposal first appeared as doctri-
nary, idealistic dreams conceived in a vacuum of any possible
'financial facts/ and altogether devoid of practical sense. As
long as only aesthetic frowns of distaste were directed against
malodorous open sewer trenches and the refuse heaps behind
the back door, nothing was ever remedied. Science had to
step into the void with physiological facts, which spread the
fear of God in a materialistic age. The discovery of bacterial
threat did it, and then the huge expenditure to effect the
necessary salubrious changes slowly gained the support of
public opinion. Once such a stage had been reached, an im
mediate, immense destruction of age-old deadweight began to
take place. The unprecedented and Incredibly costly' instal
lations became a matter of course within a very short period
of time. The entire metropolitan underground was perfo
rated with fantastic systems of pipes and canals, all minutely
calculated to drain toward distant disposal areas. The most
ordinary sewer systems of today would have seemed like
black, fantastic nightmares to the taxpayers of only one
hundred years ago. And all this may again be readily oblit
erated by further developments based on newly emerging
informations and convictions.
Considering traditional methods of geographically relating
human dwelling and production, we notice that in old estab
lished rural regions, the cultivated land and area of produc
tion activity is often uniformly spread and permeates the
dwelling area up to a degree where the two become practi
cally one. Each farmer is surrounded by the soil he tills. His
home is part of his landscape of activity and his life-setting.
The psychological impact of this state of affairs is obvious.
But communal expression is not easily superimposed over
this kind of living, working, and getting together. Church,
parish house, and inn must hold a more or less arbitrary
position in such a scheme of things.
372
In other regions of Europe, or of China, we encounter,
however, a type of village in which the extensive agricultural
production area is detached from the individual dwellings
and surrounds the community as a whole. The worker of the
field with his implements, the herdsman with his flock
commute. This type is in a way the forerunner of urban ag
glomeration. The thought of increased common defensibility
and fortification has contributed in large measure to this
arrangement. Even in small Chinese villages we find a well-
built wall as protection against marauders.
Within this old type of walled city or village, however,
commuting distance is minimized for most people; in fact
any journey to the working place is done away with. The
baker sleeps near his oven, the smith at night closes the
forge to join his family in the back room, and all owner-
tradesmen dwell right within or adjacent to their own pro
duction plants, somewhat like the early pioneer farmer who
kept goat and cow under the roof of his home. And hired
helpers live with their employer. Undoubtedly it is a scheme
that has a psychological bearing on the behavior pattern
throughout the day and throughout a lifetime.
Later, by a series of advances, the culture based on indi
vidual production and craftsmanship and on a corresponding
mentality begins to deteriorate. With it degenerates also the
city of the craftsmen. The advent of mass manufacture, by
hand or with simple tools tended at home, is first accom
panied by a farming-out scheme, After a while this is super
seded by the big workhouse, on which the laborers converge
and to which they again have to commute, but in a new way
and in ever-larger numbers. The centralized workhouse offers
certain economic advantages. Here hand and machine tools
can be placed in easily supervised rows; thus the workers' be
havior may be closely watched, and the period of skill acqui
sition can be considerably reduced.
The workhouse would logically seem to belong in the
middle of the city, surrounded by the dwellings of the
workers and supervisors. But as this workhouse is a late ad
dition to the old city, central sites have long been taken
373
and are solidly occupied at the time the concentrated
method of production is introduced. It may be for this
physical reason that the workhouse is merely grafted onto
the fringe of the urban area. But perhaps there are still
other reasons and motivations of a social psychological
nature.
In olden times, the rows of workshops operated by artisan-
guild members chandlers, joiners, bakers, potters, or violin
makers were the pride of a city. These lively shops were its
psychological and material anchors, whether in Cremona,
Italy, or in Canton, China. Consequently, they were best
located right in the heart of the town and under the eyes
of everybody. Together with their products, these shops and
their busy, brainy, skillful craftsmen were pointed out with
pleasure to stranger and visitor. The workhouse, on the other
hand, was ugly and lacked respectability. Even its laborers
were emotionally conditioned against it because the work
there was not spontaneous but more or less commandeered,
and it was calumnied by the organized guildsmen. These
men of a threatened craft lobbied in a long and losing battle
for all possible legislation against it. When a workhouse
could no longer be kept out of a burgher's town, it was rele
gated to the peripheral area near the city wall, together with
houses of prostitution. The operators of workhouses first
found their labor supply not from within the city, but among
runaway serfs and country yokels, who were ridiculous to the
city dwellers because of their speech, behavior, dress, and
poverty. These people often had to live outside the walls and
commute daily through the city gate. The guards were in
structed to lock the door behind them at night.
It is perhaps because of these socio-historical beginnings,
and the train of associations they have evokednot because
of any intrinsic 'physio-logic'that later industrial plants
were from the outset often also relegated to neglected pe
ripheral locations. They are still striving for a rational place
in the body of the urbanized region.
Natural logic calls for a more median site on which work
ers can converge with ease for their hours of productivity
374
and from where they return to their various residential neigh-
hoods for recovery from fatigue. This would also eliminate
the peripheral obstructions by which industrial development
often threatens to cut off the natural outward expansion of
dwelling areas.
The city dweller should be pleasantly conscious that con
tacts with an expanse of natural surroundings are unbroken
and easy for weekly, if not daily, recreation. This great benefit
should be impeded and infringed upon as little as possible,
and exfoliation of residential zones into the open landscape
should not be curbed.
This growth obviously cannot be inward or centripetal in
character. Ever-increasing masses of foliage must develop out
ward and in a direction opposite to that of a growing root-
system. Similarly the growth of a residential section, we have
noted, is centrifugal, away from the productional and indus
trial area from which the population draws its sustenance.
A large encircling industrial belt which blocks the way
into the country so that outbound traffic may perhaps only
filter through between tiresome grimy factories and ware
houses can be judged a Victorian heritage of divorce from
nature. It is not in itself convincing but minds have been
conditioned by habit to a pattern of prejudice, called eco
nomics, that makes them see fatalistically if not with ap
proval conspicuous exploitation and pyramiding of urban
land values within the interior, and look for cheap industrial
land out where wooded grounds can be denuded, streams
polluted, and generally the community's dirty wash handled
out of sight.
A series of parkways constructed to pierce the stifling ring
around a city and to permit occasional sorties of the be
leaguered dwellers seems only a palliative, and an expensive
one.
Moreover industrial-employment geography imposes cur
rent requirements, and expresses the possibilities and aspira
tions of today. Manufacturing management has perfected
techniques of quickly training new workers to certain skills,
but fluctuation and drifting-off are also common phenomena.
375
Employees are no longer predominantly or invariably special
ized craftsmen. They want to range freely over the entire em
ployment market of a region. They would feel economically
and psychologically cramped if they were holed up in special
ized neighborhoods, adjoining specific plants or trades, say,
sheet aluminum workers here and synthetic rubber workers
at the diametrically opposite side of town. It should prove
hard for a worker's family to follow round a 'ring' of diver
sified industrial employment so as to match every occasional
change that might occur at will or under economic pressure.
A steadiness of lodging, the anchorage of home ownership,
would then certainly be neither plausible nor practical.
Assuming that the future city and its production facilities
will not expand beyond control and may be pre-limitecl to
a wholesome size, the way the size of higher and the highest
organisms is limited by nature, we could well conceive the
principal production equipment assembled along something
like median lines of the urbanized region, forming its sup
porting spine, as it were. Under certain conditions of topog
raphy it may of course be advantageous to have such produc
tion areas rather develop into several limbs that branch in
various directions. In a neo-technic age, these industrial
strips or ribbon zones will be carefully managed and regu
lated to make sure that all biologically obnoxious conditions
are eliminated from noise to pollution of water or air. A
manufacturing plant will be kept from encroaching on other
plants near by, and the whole productive establishment may
again become the visible pride of a town and region, as it
has been so often in the past. According to the conviction
for which we plead, the dualism between a drab and dirty
practical 7 ninety per cent hidden away on the outer fringe
and the idealistic, lovely, 'aesthetical' ten per cent played up
on the limelighted civic stage has no precedent whatever in
nature, which is a wholeundivided into such defeating con
trasts.
Our discussion of urbanism has recalled designs for the re
form of 'Rush City/ which reach far back into the author's
early career. Today more than ever, urban reforms cannot be
376
missed by citizen or taxpayer. Over-all principles and detailed
schemes will have to be subtly suited to the needs of human
nature, and design proposals assimilated to a knowledge of
these needs. New knowledge is required and can be bought
only at the price of patient and systematic investigation. 6
To seek such knowledge is undoubtedly to face a panorama
of difficulties. Yet it is hard to see how a mere retouching of
precepts, vague and vaguely motivated, will bring us the city
that will not be a threat to the race; the city that does not
simply chew up what vital force the non-urban areas produce;
the city that is not an enormous amorphous and anorganic
agglomeration but has its proper magnitude and is articulated
on a human scale.
Scientific statements are neither authoritarian nor, like ta
boos, pronounced for eternity. As new knowledge evolves,
they may well undergo changes in time, but for each his
torical moment their objectivity offers the best available base
to build on, with all the intuition and moral stamina a human
community can muster and employ to be loyal to its poten
tials and its period. In the realm of recent urban develop
ment, bank appraisers and realty investors of long standing
but sometimes of short and shallow insight have been more
honored than physiologists or well-trained planners who
would heed their findings. A new vital conception of cities
and homes may liken them to healthy greenhouses and
flower pots, designed and mass-fabricated with the best tech
nical ingenuity of today to serve and support the eternal
organic life, which must go on sprouting, branching, and
blooming.
Banks are usually interested merely in what sort of homes,
subdivisions, improvements have sold and paid off in years
e Lewis Mumford has long ago used the interesting expression *bio-
technic age' for this new era on which he sets his well-reasoned hope,
as 'Life which always paid the fiddler now begins to call the tune/
The sort of thinking [referring to the Rush City Reformed studies
of a quarter century ago] should now be resumed, and perhaps public
competitions should be held to enlist the imagination of the younger
generation of architects and planners. . .' Lewis Mumford, The New
Yorker, 8 Jan. 1949, P- 6o -
377
past, and it is this type that they favor with a loan and
sponsor for production. But up-to-date industries act differ
ently, whether they produce washing machines, ladies' hats,
or lawn mowers. An approach into a successful future by a
detour into dusty statistics of the day before yesterday is also
controversial for housing or for planning residential neigh
borhoods, schools, street intersections, or suitable facilities of
any kind. In the past frequency of occurrence was often cou
pled with frustration and suffering. It is in itself no criterion
for a decision to model the future.
Living human cohesion, healthily and well maintained,
shall be the principle of coagulation to a community, not the
flimsy fiats of wholesale commercial promotion and pay-off.
Nor can it be abstract, timeless geometry.
The architects of medieval England were simple masons
but they harbored erudite aspiration and called their rule
'Constitutiones Artis Geometriae Secundum Euclidem*
(Regulations of Geometrical Art according to Euclid). Nev
ertheless, being practical people, these planners quite often
deviated bluntly and very humanly from the precepts of
their patron saint. The new planner who took over from
them, when the Great Fire turned to ashes the London of
the Middle Ages, was Christopher Wren, a well-gowned pro
fessor of mathematics and astronomy at Gresham College,
Oxford. 'Indeed he was not only untrained as a craftsman;
he was untrained as an architect; and if there is any link be
tween him and the medieval mason architects, it must be
his profound capacity in the art which they, little as they
knew of it, took to be the foundation of their craft/ i.e.
geometry. It developed from a utilitarian practice to a most
meritorious inquiry and then almost into a rite. Finally it
turned into a very superficial satisfaction. Douglas Knoop
and G. P. Jones, in speaking of the end of medieval masonry
and what superseded it, define town planning as the 'purpo
sive grouping of structures to produce a satisfying impression
of a harmonious whole. . . It is indeed true that Wren and
others who possessed such a capacity were not given oppor-
378
tunities to use it fully; the practice of such an art requires
more public control of land and regulation of building than
was possible in Wren's day, or in the period of industrial
change and individualist enterprise which followed/
It seems, then, that also in the seventeenth century the
period of absolutist grandeur that was simultaneously a great
triumph of mathematics, when princely geometry projected
gardens, formally cut, far into the country, and arbitrarily
patterned new cities planners suffered, as they do today,
from incomplete control of land and private building.
Even in their heyday those grand geometrical schemes
often remained largely on paper. Nevertheless, the question
able influence of that ancien regime of thought, taste, and
detrimental distance from natural, wholesome life lingered
on beyond all political revolutions.
And the distance from life was not all of an 'aesthetic 7
mathematical kind; some of it presaged, early and ominously,
latter-day shoddiness and commercialization of land. Ex
ploitative scheming began to succeed right under the eyes of
the monarch and his carte-blanche planner. Roger North, a
contemporary witness, speaks of one Nicholas Barbon, whose
father (evidently a political contact' and go-between, very
useful to him) was a prominent member of the Parliament
of 1653. Barbon abandoned his first trade, the venerable
medicine racket, so flourishing in Moliere's time. He found
in the rebuilding of London after the Great Fire another field
through which to attack health and survival, and a better
market for his abilities. He had no technical training or vision
whatever, and all the vaults collapsed in one of his earlier ven
tures, 'Mincing Lane'; houses he had built came down 'most
scandalously.' 'But,' says North, 'he was the inventor of this
new method of building by casting of ground into streets and
small houses, and to augment their number with as little
front as possible/ Although he managed his creditors and the
opponents of his schemes magnificently, lack of cash and
his many irons in the fire finally defeated him. This prac
tical man and builder had many imitators, however, who
379
continued to further 'the superfetation of houses about
London.' T
The influential but chilly arts and practices of geometrical
formalism and commercial exploitation have competitively or
co-operatively dominated the city ever since. For the plan
ning of the future other arts and sciences, and more than
one or two, will be needed. Among them again this is our
hope a basic understanding of human life, its implications
of mutuality, its social conditions and dependencies, will have
preference.
To achieve all this and arrive at practical applications, it
may be necessary to make available a more liberal supply of
land for re-use from scratch, as some of the war-devastated
countries have been attempting, and as our own recent legis
lation does for an urban redevelopment on a grand scale. At
any rate in this age we must guard against giving once more
a free hand to plan-makers like the Geometer Royal, or to
abstract formalists and grand symmetrists (heirs to Andr6 le
Notre, garden architect to the King and a splendid talent
of his day), or to builders, very busy for a time and bankrupt
in the end, like Barbon, who remains a classic example of the
kind of rushing exploiters who should not have a hand in
city building. The public, the electorate, the people must
learn of it: the historical moment has dawned when a host
of physiologically and sociologically informed and inspired
professions, planners, architects, social workers, all trained in
team effort, shall be encouraged to advise sound developers
and development, and reconstruct an environment that will
be an aid instead of a handicap to the survival of the race.
T Related by Knoop and Jones, op. cit.
380
THE ART OF DESIGN can associate itself with
scientific skill, and do so WITHOUT AN IN
FERIORITY COMPLEX.
47
Throughout this book, which seeks to
point into a future of happier living with and through design,
I have stressed my conviction that the task of constructing
the many things that make up a human environment and
should assure the survival of the race cannot be accomplished
well without the use of current and available scientific knowl
edge. Before concluding, however, I should like to do away
with the implication that the designer in his functioning
can be wholly governed by scientific attitude or methods, or
should aspire to be a scientist himself. He sometimes accom
plishes his most important work in fractions of a second, as
fast as a human brain can live time. He must continue to
rely on intuitive insight often telescoped almost into an in
stantjust as the physician who practices the art of medicine
must often act for the greater good of his patient, on the spur
of the moment, in order to answer the emergencies of life.
Neither can have the laborious slowness on which the scien
tist prides himself. Obviously, art, the art of design, which is
a part of the art of living, cannot be replaced by science or
technology. While science is proud of its infinite methodo
logical deliberateness, of its indifference to momentary and
personal exigencies, and even to moral issues, the art of de-
381
sign, whether we are concerned with goals or with practical
procedure, has none of these far-reaching freedoms.
We are touching here perhaps on a crucial issue of our
time. The belief that science is above all issues humanisti
cally and religiously tinged, or that eventually it might even
do away with 'idealistic' ethical norms, with any moral or
intuitive 'bias/ and with all the arts, was a half-conscious
expectation that characterized the mechanistically inclined
'scientism' of the nineteenth century. It commands less credit
today. At any rate the reasonable promise of the sciences
shall not be further abused through misclaim or exaggeration.
There were times when scientific detachment had to be espe
cially extolled and firmly established, as authoritarian govern
ments and churches persecuted and suppressed the advocates
of freedom of inquiry. But such detachment is justifiable
only as a means, not as an end in itself. When this truth is
forgotten, when scientific attitude absorbs all else, cool
jndifference together with prolific inventiveness may breed
disaster.
Not long ago, totalitarian governments set up their con
centration camps for calculated extermination of human be
ings, and scientists were engaged to practice with detach
ment human vivisection. After the Second World War they
were tried and executedobviously not on purely scientific
grounds. Atonement is, for example, no scientific concept or
procedure, but together with other moral necessities it has
not yet been abolished.
Especially since the advent of the atom bomb, our top-
ranking scientists Einstein, Millikan, and many others-
have found it necessary to awaken the world to the fact that
something quite different from scientific aloofness is needed
to prevent the destruction of humanity. They have begun
to speak in the name of universal human brotherhood which
according to diversified anthropological data may not be a
scientific concept either. But it is precisely such an insight
into the oneness of the human species, its characteristic prop
erties, and its world-wide problems that must guide the work
of the designer of our time into a feasible future. Conscious
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of his instrumental position, he must aim to contribute to
the growth of the smaller organic community within arm's
reach, as well as to suit the now evolving planetary society of
man under the conditions of this last half of the twentieth
century. The current technological accomplishments, after
they have been carefully sifted, must be shared universally
for the true benefit of the human race, and for peace on a
shrunken globe.
While the individual incident of art performance, owing
to its million subtle variables, may long remain 'beyond
science/ for the broad practical purposes of prudently pro
ducing and judiciously consuming a culture-constructed en
vironment in this industrial age, physiology, the science of
life, can well be tapped and gives great promise.
That new and growing knowledge will above all be in
valuable as an aid in programming. It will support us in
arriving at a truly contemporary set of objectively valid cri
teria for determining the requirements of the consumer, the
users of appliances, vehicles, equipment, buildings, and cities.
Whether the project in question is the construction of a
small home or a large hospital, an extensive housing develop
ment or the campus of a college, those who will occupy the
facilities and pay the cost must insure themselves against
being victimized by designers pledged to obsolescent conven
tion, or to mere novelty. Ultimately, the consumer himself
must insist on security rendered by men of the right train
ing and information, so that an environment conducive to
wholesome living and survival is achieved.
Such security is never absolute, and we may expect that
new data and changing interpretation will continue to mark
the advances in biological research. References to current
scientific findings in the course of my discussion, here and
there, have relevance to the problematics of design. They
were included only to exemplify my belief that systematic
biological investigation, when carefully correlated with or
ganized policies of design, will redound to the benefit of a
broader human consumership. It will be of equal benefit to
the designer himself as he tries to deal selectively with ma-
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terials, surface textures, forms, space itself, and combines all
in arrangements of purpose, useful to humans. Everything
here, whatever specific usefulness it may otherwise be inter
preted to have, operates and activates, first of all, our neuro-
mental being. Up to now, the designer has too often mo
tivated his selections vaguely, by taste alone, or his basis was
a checkered mixture, but hardly a fusion of 'aesthetics' and
'practical considerations/ He must learn to respect science
as a base and corrective, but as an artist he will not use it
in cold blood. He must allow its ever-advancing inspiration
to permeate his mind and must sleep over such information
with profit. Upon dormant periods of slow ripening may one
day suddenly follow the fertile chain outbursts of genius,
with all its reverberating consequences to yield a new and
wondrous scene.
Through a day-to-day experience of creating plans for con
struction and fabrication, and through an ever more urgent
need of interpreting them convincingly to the users, I have
been led gradually to adopt a friendly, observant, physio
logical attitude of design and to forget more speculative
terms. Thus these collected essays trace some of the peregri
nations of a designer's mind and point up dependable ap
proaches and conclusions to which they have brought him.
In building-work, as well as in putting these thoughts to
paper at odd moments, it has been in all humility my en
deavor to render a small contribution to human welfare. An
architect, like any other artist, can never prove things-
strictly speaking. They must slowly prove themselves to
others. He must be content if in his brief and crowded life
time, fate accords him the privilege of stimulating younger
men to carry on in turn, for the sake of life itself.
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