Aesthetics and the Human Habitat

The attitude of contemporary architecture toward other civilizations is a humble one. We do not regard primitive civilizations from the point of view of an advanced technology. We realize that often shantytowns contain within themselves vestiges of the last balanced civilization - the last civilization in which man was in equipoise. We realize they can teach us forms that can be used to express specific social, territorial, and spiritual conditions. From this our social imagination may be able to form an aesthetic unity.

- "Aesthetics and the Human Habitat" (1953), excerpted in Sigfried Giedion, Architecture, You and Me, 1958