The habitat debate of the 1950s is steeped in several assumptions from the repertoire of colonial worldview. As the colonial era draws to an end, texts by Siegfried Giedion, such as "Aesthetics and the Human Habitat" (1953) and "The State of Contemporary Architecture I: The New Regional Approach" (1954), rekindle a number of motives from colonial thought. In conjunction with the established need for a new approach to planning and construction that was oriented towards the social group and aimed to create a comfortable living atmosphere that would facilitate active participation in a "vita communis," the architect's eye scanned the planet in search of models that could serve to achieve the aim of the profession: integrating the individual into a community. After the ideal of progress bowed out and modern Western rationalism was put in its place, the emphasis shifted toward the architect's "social imagination," toward empathy for people's needs. This new empathy is directed in particular at non-Western societies, at so-called "remote peoples and cultures."
The contrast between the West and "primitive peoples" is constructed along the lines of a binary opposition. In addition to the tendency to generalize non-Western societies in opposition to the West, which stands in contradiction to the idea of New Regionalism, another issue that arises is the outdated topos that assumes non-European cultures to be ahistorical. Here, the "natural rhythm of life" that these peoples have had "since the dawn of time" stands in contrast to the progressive West.
Giedion acknowledges the global dominance of Western thought and criticizes the wake of destruction left behind by European expansion. Therefore, he deems it important to reestablish connections with these "primitive and Eastern people," in order for "both mentalities to meet [...] to find common ground between the Orient and reinforced concrete" (Giedion on Le Corbusier's Capitol of Chandigarh in the text "Social Imagination")
What Giedion sees in the "remote peoples and cultures" at the height of decolonization is not people who are fighting for independence, but people who are in need of help on their way to modernity. To save them from venturing down the wrong path, another classic topos is brought into play: the accusation of mimicry. This charge can be found in denigrating portrayals of the "dangerous desire to mimic [the West]" (bicycles in West Africa, electronics shops in Baghdad, Coca Cola outside of Babylon). "While we are attuned nowadays to employing all of these things in good measure, in the eyes of 'technically undeveloped countries,' they remain unfulfilled desires."
In order to counter such globalization tendencies, Giedion invokes the aesthetic dignity of the primitive, which (as in the hut in Cameroon), even under the most precarious living conditions, such as those in the bidonvilles, finds expression in the "primitive's innate desire for adornment.” (See Adolf Loos on the ornament; found all across modern architecture theory is the misconception, regardless if it is seen as something positive or negative, that an inherent relation exists between primitiveness and a need for adornment.) It is the architect's duty to preserve this latent "power of the primitive," which corresponds to the links made between modernity and the immediacy of "primitive" forms of expression in 20th century painting. The manner in which modern art is validated through constructing it as having an affinity to the "primitive" is comparable with the way that specific forms, such as the bidonvilles, are featured in the habitat debate as being representative of the "innate empathy" of "remote peoples" for community and living spaces. This means that while (Western) architects ought to take a lesson from the creative power of the "randomly formed native quarters,” Giedion's analysis of these structures also brings to light the unconscious employment of the modulor’s proportions. (CK)

Sources:
Giedion, Siegfried (1958): "Aesthetics and the Human Habitat (first published in 1953)." In: Giedion, Siegfried: Architecture You and Me. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Giedion, Siegfried (1954): "The State of Contemporary Architecture I: The New Regional Approach." In: Architectural Record, Issue January/1954. 132-37.
Giedion, Sigfried (1953): “Habitat” zum 9. CIAM Kongress” GTA Zürich: 43-T-15-1953-9.