The Creator's Words

"But we must also care for function, technology and social service. Architecture is more than scuplture or the means of giving pure expression to abstract human ideals. Our visual world is determined by 'forces' of a practical nature, not only by the unique contribution of true artists. It has been said that the personal, sometimes arrogant acts of form-giving by our elite artist-architects, have damaged rather than helped our environment. It is easier to make a case for the need for wise technicians and honest craftsmen.

"It is part of man's nature for survival to wish to understand his condition, to find the means to adjust to it, to find and believe in some kind of order. It is in this context that we must view the artist-innovator. We need him as a spearhead in the search for formal order, even when his forms are tentative or abstract. He teaches us to see; he seeks new meanings, new songs to fit the words—and if the words are inadequate, he seeks to invent new ones. Through him, we gain that larger understanding needed to match the new dimensions of human knowledge. It can be argued that the form-giver, while sometimes pointing the way toward what we should not do, saving us from bad ideas with which we may have been toying. Forms as well as ideas become crystallized through age or usage, thereby losing their strength and ability to move us. We rely on the artist to make them free and eloquent again. Admittedly, this is a most difficult task, particularly in a materialistic age when values continually shift and become confused. New, ephemeral philosophies arise, soon to become obsolete, and the taste-makers become bored and invent new fashions. I have always felt that in the plethora of choices open to an architect, only self-discipline, the understanding of physical laws and sympathy for people's needs and desires would save him."

— Pietro Belluschi. from Paul Heyer. Architects on Architecture: New Directions in America. p227-228.