FORM x FUNCTION
1. What is the relationship between form and function in architecture today?
2. How are new uses, technologies, and materials changing the relationship between them?
3. Use contemporary case studies, use quotes from 3 articles to support your point of view,
When you think of a building you love, what do you think of? In this topic, we were asked to write about the relationship between form and function and how the new uses, technologies, and material changing the relationship between them.
The importance of form is perhaps one of the most controversy debated subjects in contemporary architectural discourse. However, the conceptual divide between those who question the validity of “formalist” architecture, and those who embrace form as a fundamental aspect of architectural production, need not represent the equivalent of an ideological impasse. For both, form matters; what is in question is how and why it matters.
Form exists hand and hand with function. It follows function implies a delicate balance and a need for both to be emphasized. Function often accommodates form. Today, this theory of event and form is more emphasized and underlined. Architecture and form was more about the combination and fluidity of spaces, events and movements.
Wright’s Guggenheim Museum in New York City is one of the example. The walls and the floor are one, and the floor rises as a continuous, gently sloping ramp, there is essentially one floor, one exterior wall, and one interior wall. The ramp is the substance that creates the enclosed space.
It is also the exterior form, the circulation, the building envelope, and the exhibition space itself (the artworks are displayed in alcoves spaced at regular intervals along the ramp). It is continuity in structure, space, and form.
‘Any building should be complete, including all within itself’ - Frank Lloyd Wright
TECHNOLOGIES AND MATERIALS
However, new uses, technologies and materials do change the relationship between them, either make this relationship reverse, or make these two terms isolated with each other. For example, staircase is a walkway or access for human, nowadays people wisely using staircase as a step or a seat in architecture. Stairs somehow is not looks alike as what staircase is, the design is not following the typical staircases anymore, it can be high riser, big landing …
Because now its functioned as more than what staircase provided.
Modern Building technologies also influence in this issue too.
For an example the blur building, its form is nothing without the presence of the fog, in this case, functions do follow the form which form by the fog. Fog creates the form which indicates the functions space.This can be said so as the new materials, invention of steel and glass, changes the old, original form of a building.
Nothing form is impossible nowadays since the new uses, technologies and materials are invented. Thus, Functions are now following forms, or form doesn’t have to be considered upon the functions. form can create the functions at any time.
Another good example on this quote is Muller Villa by Adolf Loos. It is located in the leafy area of Stresovice known as Beverly Hills of Prague. The Muller Villa is the materialization of the ideas of economy and utility as seen by the architect.
The capacious design, known as Raumplan, is manifested in the multilevel sections of individual rooms, evidence of their function and symbolism. The Raumplan design continues in the exterior as well, apparent in the white, cubic facade. The building and the interior keep the authenticity of the architectural art.
“Form ever follows function” allows us to start with our emotions, gesture or happenstance and create designs where we can conceive of something that is completely impossible and somehow figure out how to make it function.