11 Remember that each building exists mainly to activate the land

The most crucial thing to understand throughout the volume-creating processes, is the it is the land which matters. The purpose of the buildings is to bring life to the land. The building volumes are the tools with which we undertake this task.
This is a radical point of view. It puts the building in a humble position making it a tool, the clay from which we mold the space. But it is the land and its space, as they become activated by this clay, which really matter.

The total building mass — at that stage still amorphous, not yet formed — is like a long sausage of baker’s dough, an undifferentiated volume of material for our use. We use it, distribute it, place it, entirely, and only, to bring life to the land, to revere the land.

It is remarkable to realize that it is this uncompromising attitude of attention to the land which also makes the building volumes subtle and beautiful. That is truly surprising. The land itself, and our love for it, is enough to give the actual building volumes their shape. If they genuinely help the land, building volumes become more graceful as shapes, more serious, more differentiated.
Like a person who, in being helpful, becomes more graceful, more beautiful as a person, the building volumes become beautiful as they help the land.

#book/The Nature of Order/3 A Vision of a Living World/5 The positive pattern of space and volume in three dimensions on the land#