Older still than the Romantic-era longing for untouched nature is the human need to transform the environment according to our desires. The physical structures that have been left behind as clues in the landscape reflect the values and principles of the societies from which they came. In the process of design, the designer intervenes in the natural environment and grapples with it intensively.
In the opinion of the anthropologist Arnold Gehlen, humans would be unable to survive in an entirely undesigned environment because the role that the environment plays in the world of animals is played in the human world by culture. Culture is the part of nature that has been overcome by humans (Franzen 2000).