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MAIN CURRENTS OF MID-CENTURY ARCHITECTURE

Let us here attempt to define architecture: Consider how we relate to it today and speculate on what directions we are taking. The definition we make should not be valid for our day alone: We should attempt to find a comprehensive definition that holds for all time. 

First, we might say it is an art. The art of building. It is an art of which, unlike most other arts, must fulfill a practical physical and worldly purpose. It must create efficient, well-organized shelter for the various activities and needs of man. Man may wish to work or play or live in towns or in huts. It is the architect's job to create out of these desires and necessities as ordered, efficient environment, taking advantage of all the technological and economic advances that society offers.

But architecture has more than a physical role to play. Loke all major arts, it must have a spiritual purpose. Man has hopes and aspirations, dreams and prayers. He has fears he wants to conquer through achievement; he is aware of the transitoriness of life, against which he wants to leave an expression of permanency. Architecture must in its form reflect a clarified image of all this. The most efficient shelter is not the answer to this goal. The pyramids of Egypt and the cathedrals of France were such answers in the most affirmative terms, but these aspirations of man should be seen in every building down to the humblest cottage. Architecture then is the art of building and as such must satisfy the physical and spiritual needs of man. The degree and emphasis may be different but these two ingredients must both be there - in the factory as well as the cathedral. 

With this definition as a stable reassuring rod we are able to look at ourselves and find that the great bulk of building today has solved in aquedate fashion the complex functional and structural problems of our time, and a future for further technological integration is bright - on the physical side we have done well.