Steidle: "estructuras para vivir"

“The accomodation itself says less about the inhabitants than the intermediate areas: the relation of these areas to one other, the organisation of available floor space, the pattern of grouping or spacing- all of these things carry information about the attitude to the comunal, to “being together”. It is in these communal, general areas that a democratic society in most evident. Thus, for me, the relation between aesthetics and democracy in architectural form is seen most clearly in the level of quality and non.quality of these intermediate areas, in other words, in the zones between the houses.

Traffic has ousted public functions and activities from the sqare. It is now the niches and sidestreets around the square, no longer the sqare itself, which become “usable” built structures permitting the survival of existing life forms and the creation of new ones, both planned and unplanned.”

Otto Steidle, "Building Structures", 1994