Form and Function

We cannot progress far in the study of 20th century architecture without encountering the polemical battles over form and function; Sullivan, Wright, and the Modernists in Europe all carved out their positions on this foundational issue.

The standard line goes back to Louis Sullivan, who coined the phrase “form ever follows function” (usually simplified to form follows function) in an article entitled “The Tall Office Building Artistically Considered”, which appeared in Lippincott’s magazine in April 1896. Sullivan was arguing for a new expression of the tall office building that was derived from the new use of steel, the elevator, and the functional requirements of stacked office floors derived from real estate values in the cities.  Old architectural precedents were not adequate to give proper expression to the new vertical forms.  And while Sullivan’s ubiquitous phrase was a beginning ground for Modernism just after the turn of the century, he himself never felt the need to eliminate ornament on his buildings.  Adolf Loos in 1908 wrote the article, “Ornament and Crime”, which we reviewed in the last article, where the elimination of ornament from useful objects and stripping down form to pure function became the torch that the early Modernists such as Behrens, Corbusier, and Mies took up shortly afterwards. 

Those Modernists had used the dictum form follows function in support of their idea that new forms should follow the functions of their purpose.  As such they claimed that in the same way that the streamlined shapes of ships and airplanes were derived from their functions, architects should derive their forms from the functional requirements that give rise to their buildings, and not to precedent and tradition.  When Corbu said that a house is a “machine for living in,” he was implying that technology and science could provide forms for the functions of a house in the same way we design other machines.  

Wright for his part, reflected in Architectural Record in 1928 that while Sullivan had traced form back to function, he had suggested to Sullivan that it was quite as likely that function might be traced back to form, to which Sullivan responded as if it were heresy.  Later, in his A Testament of 1957, Wright made reference to the majority of architects who were “trying to annul the idea of architecture as noble organic expression of nature; the Form-Follows-Function group seeing it as a physical raw-materialism instead of the spiritual thing it really is: the idea of life itself—bodily and spiritually—intrinsic organism.  Form and Function as one.”  So here we see Wright’s modification of the dictum into form and function are one, again upping the ante in the face of his competition, but is it a meaningful phrase? Does it stop analysis and place it behind a veil of mystery? 

Let’s back up for a moment and ask the question does form really follow function?  Scientifically speaking, there is no function acting independently until there is a form (object) upon which the function acts.  This is actual function.  If it were really true that form follows function then function would have to exist independently of form to give rise to it.  Intended function, or purpose is different.  So should Sullivan’s dictum be changed and better understood as “Form Follows Purpose”?  If so, why didn’t Sullivan state it that way in the beginning?  In fact, Form follows Purpose would be a trivial statement, much like stating that designs derive from the designer’s intentions.  The force of a natural/scientific law bringing about a functional result would evaporate, unless one subscribed purpose or teleology to natural laws. 

Unlike sculpture and most other arts, works of architecture are distinguished in their role as functional objects, and their fitness for purpose one of the criteria by which we judge them.  With Modernism came the doctrine of functionalism (which we may also call austere functionalism),  often rejecting the aesthetic role played by architecture.  In 1928, the CIAM (Congre’s Internationaux d’Architecture Moderne), a group of 28 architects organized by Le Corbusier, declared that building rather than architecture should be emphasized and sought to place architecture in the context of economics, politics and social science rather than with the broader arts.  Aesthetics would no longer be a criterion by which architects practiced.  This antipathy to the aesthetics or beauty of building remains to this day and was something Wright bristled against  his whole career.  

If Sullivan’s dictum was seen to be faulty, then what about the Modernist’s austere functionalism as a driver of design?  Well, the problem goes deeper than merely deciding what comes first, form or function.  In the end, a whole movement which was founded on functionalism had failed to define “function” adequately.  What actually is the function of a building, say a house for instance?   To provide shelter and keep people dry and protected from the exterior elements, provide structural enclosure, provide spaces for the activities of life such as eating, sleeping, gathering, etc.  These materialistic functions are necessary but not sufficient for human life, however.  What about emotional and social needs?  What about the “function” of providing pleasant surroundings?  After all, ugly buildings are often torn down while beautiful buildings are kept and often change uses.  Louis Kahn went counter to the prevailing modernist doctrine of functionalism in his architecture, emphasizing monumental form over function on the grounds that the form of the building will outlast the functional needs of the present users.  

Furthermore, as the British philosopher of aesthetics, Roger Scruton has observed, it is unclear “how any particular ‘function’ is to be translated into architectural ‘form’.   What is the ideal form implied by the functional requirements of creating a roof to resist snow and rain?  Here the traditional, time-honored form of the pitched roof has proved more functional than the flat roofs proposed by the International Style.  And is there a one to one correspondence of form to function?  It is more likely that there are multiple forms that meet given functional requirements. The irony here is that one has to wonder how much of the Modernist movement was driven by pure scientific investigation rather than the promotion of their own aesthetic forms used over and over, and at least it’s instructive to see how much the formal and aesthetic aspects of modernism continue to rise to the surface even when their programs and manifestos state otherwise.

And now we come back to Wright’s ambiguous phrase, form and function are one.  One can only guess at how Wright came to that conclusion, and yet, whether knowingly or not, his expression seems to fall squarely in the middle of the paradox of form and function.  It acknowledges the importance of creating forms that are informed by functional requirements without requiring that they be derived from function alone.  The expression also implies that meeting ground in the infinite, like the sky meeting the ground at the horizon, where neither form nor function precede one another but both are somehow intrinsically intertwined together into an integrated whole.  As such, it is unfruitful trying to pry them apart, but rather as designers we need to maintain the tension between the two, often going back and forth between them to derive solutions both beautiful and functional.  And in practice, this is really how architects do design anyway.