The skill of perception The newborn baby and the [blind man suddenly gifted with sight] do not have to learn to see. Sight is given to them. But they do have to learn to perceive. Perception is learnt and learnt slowly. Skill is required for perception as for speech. We are largely unaware of the skill we exercise. None of the things we have to learn to perceive are self-evident, or, apparently, instinctively evident. No doubt, however, we have an instinctive aptitude for this learning, and once we have learnt we cannot easily see as though we had not. As Ruskin says, one has to strive, if one is to see with the 'Innocent Eye'. David Pye, The Nature and Aesthetics of Design The innocence of the eyethe innocent i seeingperceptionlearninginstinct
The grid and its difficulties Criticism of the grid and its difficulties was voiced from the start. Olmsted himself noted several problems that arose from the fixed dimensions of the city’s blocks: the impossibility of producing sites for very large buildings and campuses; issues of daylighting; the difficulty of creating systems of formal and symbolic hierarchy within the field of uniformity. Michael Sorkin, 20 Minutes in Manhattan Urban Street Network Orientation gridsbuilding