Experiential Context of the Aesthetic Process

Abstract

My fundamental thesis is that the ultimate task of architecture is to act in favor of humankind: to interpose itself between us and the natural environment in which we find ourselves, in such a way as to remove the gross environmental load from our shoulders. The central function of architecture is thus to lighten the very stress of life. Its purpose is to maximize our capacities by permitting us to focus our limited energies upon those tasks and activities which are the essence of the human experience.This successful interposition between humanity and its natural environment furnishes the material basis of all great architecture. To wrest the objective conditions for optimal development and well-being from a Nature which only seldom provides it, to satisfy our physiological and psychological requirements at optimal levels—this beyond question is the objective basis of any architecture which is both beautiful and good. To design such a building, as Gropius once so movingly put it, is an authentic act of love.