ABSTRACT
Metabolic process is clearly the precondition to sensory perception, as sensory perception is the material basis of the aesthetic process. But the aesthetic process only begins to operate maximally, that is as a uniquely human faculty, when the impact upon the body of all environmental forces are held within tolerable limits. The very nature of the intervention prohibits any abstractly "aesthetic" considerations. Architecture, is thus an instrument whose central function is to intervene in mans favor. Architecture, even more than agriculture, is the most environmental of man's activities. Architecture needs a much more systematic and detailed investigation of man's actual psychosomatic relationship with his environment than has yet been attempted, at least in architecture. A fundamental weakness in most discussions of aesthetics is the failure to relate it to experiential reality. Of course, even more important facts prevent any mechanistic equating of physical comfort with aesthetic satisfaction.
