ality of the Portland Building: the city hall of Portland (figure 26). As a result of overemphasising visual appearance, the emphasis is only on how it appears on the outside. Windows bring almost no natural lighting. In the interior, there are offices on the middle that have almost no access to circular ventilation. Which was not supporting and discarding of human activities. As a conclusion, although the postmodernists’ attempt to provide connection of people with a building was evident, the preoccupation and focus was mostly from the exterior. This may not be nearly enough. Buildings and/or urban fabrics need to be more holistically communicative and meaningful to humans. By attempting to provide a wholistic value to buildings, we should not forget or discard primal values such as functional, thermal, ergonomic, and economic characteristics. Such buildings become detrimental to life and lose their value once they fail to provide us with basic needs and requirements. They must be meaningful in more valid and integral ways not just by the over emphasising of visual aspects but a host of other aspects.
ACHIEVING AN AWARENESS
The powerfulness of historical continuity It is worth noting that humans, overtime have shown a necessity of historical continuity in perceiving a building. There is a mental need for people to always connect with the history and archaeology of the past. This does not necessarily comply with the abrupt disruption that modernist or even postmodernist architects promoted in their works. We need to extend our understanding on a further scope of time, to comprehend that humans are biological beings, with senses and neural systems that have developed over the years (Harari). Humans are a product of thousands if not millions of years of evolution, when we look at our bodies, our minds, our organs and thought patterns, we should be able to resonate with our ancestors. Some even argue that pain and trauma are carried through DNA (Davis). That is why humans have the need of a historical understanding. Therefore, we should be able to find that through architecture. Architecture should be able to reflect and seamlessly deliver and provide us with clues to who we are and who we were in the past as humans. This expanded understanding can help architects design buildings that support both mind and body. Exploring how the built environment affects our behaviour, thoughts, emotions, and well-being. It is evident that our deepest experiences of settings and architecture reflect the course of human biocultural develop-
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