Form follows function

Form follows function is a principle associated with modern architecture and

industrial design in the 20th Century, which states that the shape of a building or
object should be predicated by or based upon its intended function or purpose. In
the context of design professions form follows function seems like good sense but
on closer examination it becomes problematic and open to interpretation. Linking the
relationship between the form of an object and its intended purpose is a good idea
for designers and architects, but it is not always by itself a complete design solution.
Defining the precise meaning(s) of the phrase 'form follows function' opens a
discussion of design integrity that remains an important, lively debate.[1]

Origins of the phrase

The origin of the phrase is traced back to the American sculptor Horatio
Greenough[2], but it was American architectural giant Louis Sullivan who adopted it
and made it famous. Sullivan actually said 'form ever follows function', but the
simpler (and less emphatic) phrase is the one usually remembered. For Sullivan this
was distilled wisdom, an aesthetic credo, the single "rule that shall permit of no
exception". The full quote is thus:

It is the pervading law of all things organic and inorganic,

Of all things physical and metaphysical,
Of all things human and all things super-human,
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.[3]

Sullivan developed the shape of the tall steel skyscraper in late 19th Century Chicago
at the very moment when technology, taste and economic forces converged violently
and made it necessary to drop the established styles of the past. If the shape of the
building wasn't going to be chosen out of the old pattern book something had to
determine form, and according to Sullivan it was going to be the purpose of the
building. It was 'form follows function', as opposed to 'form follows precedent'.
Sullivan's assistant Frank Lloyd Wright adopted and professed the same principle in
slightly different form—perhaps because shaking off the old styles gave them more
freedom and latitude. There is a song for teaching this[4].

Is ornament functional?

In 1908 the Austrian architect Adolf Loos famously proclaimed that architectural
ornament was criminal, and his essay on that topic would become foundational to
Modernism and eventually trigger the careers of Le Corbusier, Walter Gropius, Alvar
Aalto, Mies van der Rohe and Gerrit Rietveld. The Modernists adopted both of these
equations—form follows function, ornament is a crime—as moral principles, and they
celebrated industrial artifacts like steel water towers as brilliant and beautiful
examples of plain, simple design integrity. Between 1945 and 1984 Modernism stood
as the only respected architectural form in the mainstream of the profession.
Everything else was illegitimate.

These two principles—form follows function, ornament is crime—are often invoked on

the same occasions for the same reasons, but they do not mean the same thing. If
ornament on a building may have social usefulness like aiding way finding,
announcing the identity of the building, signaling scale, or attracting new customers
inside, then ornament can be seen as functional, which puts those two articles of
dogma at odds with each other.

Conversely the argument ‘ornament is crime’ doesn’t say anything about function. It
is an aesthetic preference inspired by the Machine Age. While human performance
may be enhanced by a sense of well-being endowed by aesthetic pleasure, machines
have no such need of beauty to perform their work tirelessly. Ornament becomes an
unnecessary relic, or worse, an impediment to optimal engineering design and
equipment maintenance. Other stylistic ‘non-functional’ features may rest untouched
(e.g., the feeling of space, the composition of the volumes) as we can see in the
subsequent abstracted and non-ornamented styles. Much of the confusion between
these two concepts comes from the fact that ornament traditionally derives from a
function becoming a stylistic character (e.g., the gargoyle from Gothic cathedrals).

Modernism in architecture began as a disciplined effort to allow the shape and

organization of a building to be determined only by functional requirements, instead
of by traditional aesthetic concepts. It assumes that the designer will determine
empirically (or decide arbitrarily) what is or is not a functional requirement. The
resulting architecture tended to be shockingly simpler, flatter, and lighter than its
older neighbors, possibly due to the limited number of functional requirements upon
which the designs were based; their functionality and refreshing nakedness looked as
honest and inevitable as an airplane. Modernists believed, perhaps incorrectly, that
airplane design did not involve any aesthetic decisions by the airplane designers. A
recognizable Modern vocabulary began to develop.

Application in different fields

Architecture

Louis Sullivan is credited with coining the phrase "form follows function", which
would become the great battle-cry of modernist architects. This credo, which placed
the demands of practical use above aesthetics, would later be taken by influential
designers to imply that decorative elements, which architects call "ornament," were
superfluous in modern buildings. But Sullivan himself neither thought nor designed
along such dogmatic lines during the peak of his career. Indeed, while his buildings
could be spare and crisp in their principal masses, he often punctuated their plain
surfaces with eruptions of lush Art Nouveau and something like Celtic Revival
decorations, usually cast in iron or terra cotta, and ranging from organic forms like
vines and ivy, to more geometric designs, and interlace, inspired by his Irish design
heritage. Probably the most famous example is the writhing green ironwork that
covers the entrance canopies of the Carson Pirie Scott store on South State Street.
These ornaments, often executed by the talented younger draftsman in Sullivan's
employ, would eventually become Sullivan's trademark; to students of architecture,
they are his instantly-recognizable signature.
Product design

In the late 1910s the two principles of “form follows function” and “ornament is a
crime” were effectively adopted by the designers of the Bauhaus and applied to the
production of everyday objects like chairs, bedframes, toothbrushes, tunics, and
teapots. Some of those forms were refined and purified to such an extreme degree
that they became unusable by humans[citation needed], but generally the Bauhaus still
constructively influences the look, feel and function of consumer goods down to the
present day.

One quiet landmark in the history of the inherent conflict between functional design
and the demands of the marketplace happened in 1935[citation needed], after the
introduction of the streamlined Chrysler Airflow, when the auto industry halted
serious aerodynamic research. As documented in Jeffrey Meikle’s “Twentieth Century
Limited: Industrial Design in America, 1925 – 1939”, carmakers realized that optimal
aerodynamic efficiency would result in a single optimal auto-body shape, a
"teardrop" shape, which would not be good for unit sales.[citation needed] GM thereafter
adopted two different positions on streamlining, one meant for its internal
engineering community, the other meant for its customers. Like the annual model
year change, so-called aerodynamic styling is often meaningless in terms of technical
performance.

The American industrial designers of the 1930s and '40s like Raymond Loewy,
Norman bel Geddes and Henry Dreyfuss grappled with the inherent contradictions of
'form follows function' as they redesigned blenders and locomotives and duplicating
machines for mass-market consumption. Loewy formulated his ‘MAYA’ (Most
Advanced Yet Acceptable) principle to express that product designs are bounded by
functional constraints of math and materials and logic, but their acceptance is
constrained by social expectations.

By honestly applying ‘form follows function’, industrial designers had the potential to
advance their clients right out of business.[citation needed] Some simple single-purpose
objects like screwdrivers and pencils and teapots might be reducible to a single
optimal form, and through the eyes of a teapot maker that’s simply unacceptable.
Some objects made too durable would prevent sales of replacements. From the
standpoint of functionality some products are flatly unnecessary, and through the
eyes of an electric carving knife maker that’s quite unacceptable.

Victor Papanek (died 1999) was an influential recent designer and design philosopher
who taught and wrote as a proponent of "form follows function."

Software engineering

It has been argued that the structure and internal quality attributes of a working,
non-trivial software artifact will represent first and foremost the engineering
requirements of its construction, with the influence of process being marginal, if any.
This does not mean that process is irrelevant, but that processes compatible with an
artifact's requirements lead to roughly similar results.[5]

The principle can also be applied to Enterprise Application Architectures of modern

business where 'function' is the Business processes which should be assisted by the
enterprise architecture, or 'form'. If the architecture dictates how the business
operates then the business is likely to suffer from inflexibility unable to adapt to
change. SOA Service-Oriented Architecture have enabled Enterprise Architect to
rearrange the 'form' of the architecture to meet the functional requirements of a
business by adopting standards based communication protocols which enable
interoperability.

Automobile designing
If design of automobile conforms to its function like aerodynamic shape, wide stance
for better vehicle dynamics then that design said to follow function.

Evolution
According to Darwin's theory of evolution, anatomy will be structured according to
functions associated with use; for instance, giraffes are taller to reach the leaves of
trees[4].

Notes and references

1. ^ Holm, Ivar (2006). Ideas and Beliefs in Architecture and Industrial design:
How attitudes, orientations, and underlying assumptions shape the built
environment. Oslo School of Architecture and Design. ISBN 8254701741.
2. ^ Horatio Greenough, *Form and Function: Remarks on Art*, edited by
Harold A. Small (Berkeley, Univ. of California Press, 1947). Greenough was
influenced in part by the naturalist thinking of Ralph Waldo Emerson.
3. ^ "The Tall Office Building Artistically Considered",” published Lippincott's
Magazine (March 1896).
4. ^ a b Form Follows Function: Song About the Relationship Between Anatomy
and Physiology
5. ^ Spinellis, Diomidis (May 2008). "A Tale of Four Kernels". ICSE '08:
Proceedings of the 30th International Conference on Software Engineering:
381-390, Leipzig, Germany: Association for Computing Machinery.
doi:10.1145/1368088.1368140.

 "Form follows WHAT? The modernist notion of function as a carte blanche" -

An alternative history and interpretation of the form-follows-function doctrine
 http://www.bobolinkbooks.com/Gestalt/HowFormFunctions.html
 Functional formism: The Dictate and Reveal of Primary Function and
Formative Expression. - A definitive architectural and applied design
engineering categoric designation - irrespective of the period and stylate
reference, other than taking subjective account of prevailing material(s)
technology.

Outline Reference: Functional Formism: Gordon W Drew DipArch MArch PhD-

FF/GWD/21-02-04(Rev:26-04-04)

 Architectural Theory/Functional Formism/Applied Design

Engineering:Addendum Reference:

www.gwd-architecture.com