"One day, and probably soon, we need some recognition of what above all is
(Friedrich Nietzsche, The Gay Science, p227, 1882)
Architecture for the search of knowledge
lacking in our big cities: quiet and wide, expansive places for reflection.
Places with long, high-ceilinged cloisters for bad or all too sunny weather
where no shouting or noise of carriages can reach and where good manners
would prohibit even priests from praying aloud -- buildings and sites that
would altogether give expression to the sublimity of thoughtfulness and of
stepping aside. The time is past when the church possessed a monopoly on
reflection, when the vita contemplativa always had to be first of all a
vita religioso; and everything built by the church gives expression to
that idea. I do not see how we could remain content with such buildings even
if they were stripped of their churchly purposes. The language spoken by these
buildings is far too rhetorical and unfree, reminding us that they are houses
of God and ostentatious monuments of some supramundane intercourse; we who are
godless could not think our thoughts in such surroundings. We wish to see
ourselves translated into stone and plants, we want to take walks in
ourselves when we stroll around these buildings and gardens."