From The Architecture of the Well-tempered Environment (1969): "In a world more humanely disposed...it would have been apparent long ago that the art and business of creating buildings is not divisible into two intellectually separate parts-- structures, on the one hand, and on the other, mechanical services. Even if industrial habit and contract law appear to impose such a division, it remains false."

Contemporary experiments into HVAC system hybridization, including embedding air, heat, and fluid flow into architectural surfaces, are indebted to Banham's identification of the supression of mechanical system logic in architecture. EMERGENT is exploring how to move beyond Banham's humanist/ rationalist approach, however, toward one which might include ambient spatial effects and morphological possibilities.

Proto structural-mechanical hybrid: Olivetti Factory by Marco Zanuso, 1955