When Function Follows Form
Speculative Architectural Image - 003
This Substack is by David Perrine. I write about architecture, aesthetics, design theory, and philosophy. I share new posts bi-weekly for free subscribers and weekly for paying subscribers. If you enjoy my work, please consider supporting :).
Architecture is a strange art form. Among many attributes, it possesses aesthetic qualities akin to art, and functional qualities akin to engineering. Architecture is both functional and artistic.
Before modernity, these two primary attributes were balanced whenever a project was given sufficient time and budget. Buildings were constructed with logical and functional plans but were decorated with ornament and color.
In the late 1920s, a shift occurred. Architects devised an elegant way to marry these attributes. They asked themselves: “What if the enrichment that comes from aesthetics and ornament could be generated from the pure pursuit of function?”
The idea, in theory, has some merit. There is an elegance to objects that function well. The iPhone, for example, is widely known as a beautiful product when it is essentially an austere prism housing an effortlessly simple UI. No one would argue that adding classical ornamentation to an iPhone would make it better. Its aesthetic richness comes from its rigorously functional design approach. Ornament would be discordant.
This was the goal of architecture in the 1920s and onward. Le Corbusier called homes a machine for living. Peter Behrens taught Mies van der Rohe that simplicity and refinement could be preferred to the styles of antiquity.
The first person to crystallize this idea in words was Louis Sullivan when he coined the phrase “Form follows function” in 1896. From then onward, his words have been used to justify an architecture of simplicity and austerity.
What many don’t understand is that this reading of the quote is a misinterpretation. To Sullivan, the idea that ‘form follows function’ is more of a natural law than an axiom by which to follow:
“Whether it be the sweeping eagle in his flight or the open apple-blossom, the toiling workhorse, the blithe swan, the branching oak, the winding stream at its base, the drifting clouds—over all the coursing sun, form ever follows function, and this is the law.”
(From "The Tall Office Building Artistically Considered," 1896)
“All things in nature have a shape, that is to say, a form, an outward semblance, that tells us what they are, that distinguishes them from ourselves and from each other. Unfailingly in nature these shapes express the life within them, the character of the creature. Unfailingly it is the pervading law of all things—organic and inorganic, of all things physical and metaphysical, of all things human and all things superhuman—of all true manifestations of the head, of the heart, of the soul—that the life is recognizable in its expression, that form ever follows function. This is the law.”
(From Autobiography of an Idea, 1924)
This quote has nothing to do with how designers should design, but rather, a condition in nature.
Furthermore, we know that Sullivan loved ornamentation based on his own design work.
So what the hell happened??
I find this discussion of form and function thought provoking. On one hand, people like ornamentation. Form without a function is appealing to many in the field of architecture and the general public. Look through any forum on architecture if you are in need of evidence.
On the other hand, architectural drawings that show spaces organized by aesthetic composition rather than functionality are criticized in public discourse. Whenever a floor plan that prioritizes composition is posted online, it is relentlessly criticized for its cost and lack of functionality.
But when I post images of highly ornamented architectural elements, I see very little criticism when the ornamentation does not get in the way of functionality.
This can be contrasted with a cabinet detail that received a few surprising comments about the difficulty of dusting.
I don’t know about you, but if this was in my space, I would not care AT ALL how hard this is to dust. I could not care less. I can’t express how much I DON’T CARE about the added dusting effort this cabinet would require. I don’t mind if ornamentation gets in the way of function.
Based on these comments, it seems people like ornamentation as long as it doesn’t get in the way of the pragmatism and functionality they have become accustomed to in modernity. People prefer a cheap, beautiful wallpaper over an architectural formal gesture which causes construction or use inconveniences.
I believe this view is fundamentally wrong. If one is open-minded, they can find enjoyment in adapting how they use a space based on its nonfunctional formal gestures. It becomes a way of caring for your space and products. I don’t mind if it is harder to dust. Dusting this cabinet becomes a display of appreciation and love for beauty and craft itself. I reject the Modernist expectation of a convenient lifestyle in which nothing must get in the way of my dusting my cabinets or using my bathroom, and I think you should too.
I was lucky enough to experiment with such ideas while studying at UPenn’s architecture school. Many professors have developed a workflow in line with the ideas I have laid out. Note that many of these workflows seemed incredibly strange when I arrived, but I learned to love them by the time I graduated.
A conventional “Form Follows Function” design workflow might look like this:
Identify who your client is
Understand all the ways they intend to use their space.
Design the space that best allows the client to do such activities in the cheapest and simplest way possible.
This is nice, inexpensive, and supposedly serves the client’s needs the best. However, I bet this client will still gush about classical ornamentation on Reddit as many of us do.
Here is an alternative “Function follows form” workflow.
Develop a beautiful formal, spatial, and aesthetic system that is pleasing regardless of its supposed use value.
Identify your client and understand their potential uses for the proposed space.
Negotiate the relationship between how the geometry wants to be used and how the client needs the space to perform.
A healthy and sane client will be more than willing to adapt their needs if the aesthetic idea is compelling.
This leads me to some of my own design work from my time at UPenn. I will start with a brief blurb about a studio, a project, a design process, and then show some images.
Enjoy:
On The Studio
The studio explores the adaptive reuse of the historic Corbin Building in New York City’s Financial District. The project combines inclusionary housing with adaptive reuse strategies to transform the 1888 Romanesque Revival structure, designed by Francis H. Kimball, into a mixed-use residential building. The studio leverages the building’s historic value to create new residential units while preserving its unique architectural qualities. Students refine strategies for market-rate and social housing and develop public common spaces that promote equity and inclusion. Partnering with Martha Kelley from Goldman Sachs’ Real Estate Principal Investment Area (REPIA), the studio aims to integrate innovative architectural solutions addressing equity and inclusion challenges through adaptive reuse.
On My Project
Advection refers to a specific interaction between a fluid and an aggregation of objects. The action of advection occurs continually around us through the form of vapor molecules and frost. Take a flower for example; as a gust of wind flurries into warmer climates, its vapor molecules deposit and graft onto its petals, forever changing the quality of the air around it, while simultaneously creating deposits of a translucent ice, changing the figural and textual qualities of the flower, until the climate can no longer sustain its careful aggregation.
It is this process which perfectly performs a model for architectural re-use; the atmosphere is changed through a seemingly effortless process leaving behind something new; the character of the frost and of the flower have been altered due to their adjacency, but neither beauty is compromised.
On Process
The studio started with an intense exploration of the diagram. In this case, the diagram does not refer to its typical notion of a simplified representation. Rather, a diagram is an aesthetic machine. It unfolds and generates emergent formal gestures that get appropriated into architectural ideas.
The studio was deeply interested in the concept of “New Elegance”. The adjective “new” is used to distance itself from traditional notions of elegance. According to Hina Jamelle, “New elegance holds that the reconsideration of form and design must be done from a place of philosophical and aesthetic integrity.” Schumacher discusses new elegance as such, “In everyday life, elegance suggests sophistication, taste, and refinement... Elegance in our terms achieves a visual reduction of an underlying complexity that is thereby sublated rather than eliminated... Attributed to a person elegance suggests the effortless display of sophistication.”
We approached elegance using diagrams and systems theory. We started by analyzing part to whole relationships found in nature. In our case, the formal properties of ice crystals on two-dimensional planes governed by physics. We developed studies of individual ice crystals and studied its curvature and other physical properties. These properties were then used as drivers for the formal diagrams and then the building itself.
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"Form follows function" might seem to imply a sort of 1:1 biological determinism. But a close reading of Darwin and later writers recognizes a degree of indeterminancy and randomness in the mechanism of natural selection. Some forms are non-functional, including some of what we call "beautiful". That's a space in which artists and architects may flourish.
I wouldn’t mind dusting that wood either.