ARTUR GLIKSON 
DESIGN FOR ACTION 
With our technological equipment and surplus economies, 
we are in a better position to tackle large-scale problems of 
amelioration, transportation and construction than any 
previous generation. But our comprehension of the biological 
and cultural meaning of the changes occuring in our immediate 
surroundings has weakened. 
Experience has shown that we cannot trust the deterioration 
of environmental conditions in over-developed metropolitan or 
in poor over-populated regions to lead dialectically to a re- 
orientation of communities. If environmental deficiencies and 
a hunger for a more “‘natural”’ life drive man into revolt, the 
result is more likely to be the total destruction of populations 
and culture than a search from the ground up for renewed 
vital contacts. 
Our best chance, at the moment, seems to lie in the creation 
of “‘seeds”’ of future action. This is the first function of en- 
vironmental planning. Designs for improvement must be ready 
at the moment of crisis, or, preferably, before it is reached. 
Environmental design is not a stop-gap measure, but the 
initial stage of a conscious evolutionary process. The means 
and ends of environmental change must be mentally and 
experimentally prepared by small nuclei of architects, biologists, 
philosophers and sociologists who have become aware of the full 
extent of the crisis. 
Environmental modification must aim at the intensification 
of life, both by the strengthening of its roots through better 
functional arrangements, and by the elevation of the man- 
environment relationship to the level of a psychic experience. 
This integration of functional and spiritual aspects of environ- 
mental structures in a rhythmic order is the subject of art— 
the architectural design of buildings, settlements and regions. 
Architecture, thus conceived, would result from “the passage 
of the world into the soul of man, to suffer there a change and 
reappear a new and higher fact’? (Emerson). Architecture 
creates a new level of psycho-physical relationship of man to 
surrounding life and space. 
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