One must not treat buildings as pure shapes, without regard to their practical and social functions. All human needs are matters of the mind. It makes little sense to distinguish between body and mind. Hunger and Fear are on equal footing with the need for peace, privacy, harmony, order or color. Since they are requirements of the mind, they are satisfied not only by ventilation and heating but equally by light, colors, and by visual harmony and proportioned spaces. What counts is the interrelation between functions and the visual expressions derived from them.
Psychologists may point out that the difference between physical and mental needs is less self-evident than it might appear. All physical requirements of man express themselves as mental needs. These needs served by the architects are exclusively mental. The occupants of a building would be hard put to make a reasonable distinction between protection from the element environment, enough light to read, enough verticals and horizontals to satisfy the sense of balance, and walls and floors covered with the colors and shapes necessary to convey, through the eyes, the pleasure of a full life. |
