PSEU 00- FUN
or
ION A LI SM
735
and functional afterward; we must strive from the outset
to satisfy
the psyche of the dweller.
Moreover, the needs of the psyche should
not be repressed and projected in surface decoration. Such aestheti–
cism is a hypocritical mask, which must eventually be cast off.
Whether the mask be of concrete, glass or plastic, made to measure
or prefabricated, it remains a mask and is not inwardly bound up
with creative man.
Man's living needs are simple. They become complicated and
hypocritical only as a result of artificial stimulations- in architecture
as elsewhere. Honest building can be done in wood, mud and stone,
just as dishonest building can be done with alpha glass and beta
aluminum.
The individual as well as the couple and the large family can
adapt himself by
natural will
and instinct to unfavorable
physical
conditions
(cathedrals were built by slum dwellers), but they cannot
submit for long to unfavorable
psychic conditions.
Under certain
circumstances they will ultimately leave the finest windowframe
(admitting no draft), the best-laid (highly polished) floors, and with–
draw to a cave in order to be free and happy. "Technical perfection"
is never achieved. It is at once dream ,and nightmare. Only the free
artist can be "perfect" in his painting or sculpture and produce some–
thing final. The technician is the slave of "progress"; consequently
his perfection is only ostensible and largely a matter of circumstances.
Such perfection is conditional; the work of art alone is unconditional.
Technology (and especially the technology of machines) is entirely
relative, or rather, correlative.
The law of creative transmutation
Functionalism is determinism and therefore stillborn. Function–
alism
is the standardization of routine activity. For example: a foot
that walks (but does not dance); an eye that sees (but does not en–
vision); a hand that grasps (but does not create).
Functionalism relieves the architect of responsibility to his con–
cept. He mechanizes in terms of the current inherited conception of
the practical, and little more; only simplifying and rendering ascetic
what is already traditional. Actually, however, he does violence to
the freedom and self-realization of the basic functions of living man.
