Fumihiko Maki

“But when a plethora of stimuli begins to divert us from receptive consciousness, the city renders us insensible. Then, in our inability to order experience, we merely suffer the city and long for some adequate means to comprehend it as a product of human creation--a product of intelligent, ordering forces. Just as the scientist is frustrated when the order or pattern of phenomena is too fleeting to observe or too complex to recognize with existing tools, so is the city-dweller frustrated when human order cannot be found in the environment. At such moments, when one sees only the results of mechanical and economic processes controlling the form and feeling of the place, one feels estranged and excluded.”
― Fumihiko Maki, Nurturing Dreams: Collected Essays on Architecture and the City