When the environment mastered man and man fought back with plow and axe, the act of struggling against nature with all one’s power was courageous. When man sits coddled in a temperature-controlled office forty stories above a city, the relentless continuation of that ancient struggle seems heartless.

 

Nature conquered nonchalantly at a distance is not like nature conquered face on.

 

The house carved out of the forest contains the narrative of the battle. It teaches its occupants continuously about their position in the universe and surrounds them with a sense of their capabilities. From it they learn the validity of their culture. As artificiality spins to extremes, the walls around people come to contain no reminder of natural origins or human endeavour; they allow no penetration of sunlight or breeze or shifts of heat. […] People lose the capacity to connect themselves to the world they inhabit, (…). They are comfortable, their bodies are well cared for, but there is nothing around them for the mind to work upon in its quest for wisdom. Every change becomes a surprise, a source of disorientation, desperation, petty fears. […] People become unsure of their own abilities and lose the inward capacity to resist that which lies beyond. Protected, they are vulnerable.

 

 

Henry Glassie in

Architects, Vernacular Traditions , and Society

1990