The architectural belief system and social behaviour.

This article examines an aspect of the contemporary architects professional belief system and offers suggestions as to how the belief may assist practitioners to define and respond to the working situations in which they find themselves. The subject matter of this examination-flows from specific interpretation and emphasis of the overall contentions of the architectural concept of functionalism. The author attempts to describe an aspect of the architectural belief system, and to delineate some of its possible functions in assisting the profession to define its role in contemporary Western societies. For architects influencing human behavior is doing so for the betterment of the human condition; as Giedion, an historian of the modern movement, has argued, the goal is to reinstate basic human values. In aspiring to social engineering the post World War II architect is attempting to reassure himself and his public that he is concerned with social welfare.