Man’s Relationship to His Environment 
adopted in principle by several international organizations. 
As a recent experimental step towards environmental 
improvement, I would like to cite a single building, an 
orphanage, built two years ago in Amsterdam by Aldo van 
Eyck. The design of this house is a result of the intellectual, 
ethical and artistic comprehension of the quality of movement 
and rest of specific people in a specific environment. The con- 
ceptual basis of the layout is, in the words of the architect, 
‘*... the reconciliation of opposites’’, such as the life of the 
individual and the collective, the experience of interior and 
exterior space, of lanes of movement and interaction, diversity 
and unity, light and shadow. These opposites are transformed 
into ‘‘dual-phenomena”’ which cannot “...be split into 
incompatible polarities without the halves forfeiting whatever 
they stand for’. In the building the transitions from one 
particular space to another are articulated by means of 
“*... in-between places ... providing the common ground 
where conflicting polarities can again become _ dual- 
phenomena’’. Achievements of modern building technology 
are applied in this house to serve its function and the develop- 
ment of its human qualities rather than to exhibit technology. 
In fact, this building, housing 125 orphans, represents a little 
city within a city (Amsterdam), and it is both a realization of 
a unique composite architectural idea and—surprisingly— 
of a contemporary conception of a city in a nutshell. 
HUMAN IMPORTANCE OF ENVIRONMENTAL RENEWAL 
Environmental renewal has a central function in the 
improvement of the material and spiritual condition of man. 
In a world of expanding physical communications, orientation 
on environment would present a way to a new integration, as 
summarized in the following points: 
The environmental problem embraces the basic level of 
human amenity and the highest level of human evolution, its 
biological and cultural aspects, the individual and the collective. 
The human relationship to environment is a way of establish- 
ing interaction between human and extra-human life. This 
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