The most important condition for fruitful collaboration on architectural problems is a clear understanding of the new approach to architecture. Architecture during the last few generations has become weakly sentimental, esthetic and decorative. Its chief concern has been with ornamentation, with the formalistic use of motifs, ornaments and mouldings on the exterior of the building — as if upon a dead and superficial mass — not as part of a living organism. In this decadence architecture lost touch with new methods and materials; the architect was engulfed in academic estheticism, a slave to narrow conventions, and the planning of cities was no longer his job. This kind of architecture we disown. We want to create a clear, organic architecture, whose inner logic will be radiant and naked, unencumbered by lying facades and trickeries; we want an architecture adapted to our...