Form Follows Function or Function Follows Form??

Louis Sullivan's
Wain Wright Building

"Form ever Follows Function" was a phrase coined by the architect Louis Sullivan in 1896 and Frank Lloyd Wright, his assistant, adopted and professed this phrase. It became one of the strong principles associated with architecture and industrial design that revolutionized architectural thinking in its modern age. This inspired many renowned architects like Le Corbusier and Mies Van De Rohe. Essentially this principle stated that the shape of a building or object should be primarily based upon its intended function or purpose.

Years after the era of Le Corbusier and Frank Lloyd Wright, the architectural education at many of the schools in India still propagate this school of thought. During my architectural education, the design process I was mentored into started with creating the layout of the room, or 'plan' as it is in technical terms, and then designing the form of the building. As much as it sounds boring, even the products of such design processes were excruciating versions of match-boxes or donuts! Some rational thinkers among my classmates would try the other way around... they would design the form of the building first and then squeeze it with the layout or the plan. Deconstructivists like Frank O Gehry, Rem Koolhaas and Daniel Libeskind have followed this principle, "Function Follows Form" to create their iconic buildings.

Seattle Central Library
by Rem Koolhaas

In real practice, such thinkers often come up with magnificent buildings that stand out in any skyline. But there have been issues concerning their buildings' functional efficiency even in terms of the building's capability to cope with the climate of the area. More often, utility is compromised for aesthetic appeal.

It takes more than just one fundamentalist approach to actually create a successful building that has an interesting and aesthetically pleasing form with an efficient and functional layout. Honestly, there is no one way out!

Unlike architectural design, when it comes to designing efficient cities or urban landscapes, there is only one single rule of magic! "Function follows form". This is where Urban Design differs from Architecture. Urban design deals with a multitude of layers including human and natural systems, economic and political organization, social networking, mobility of humans, goods and services through the ecological and urban web of a city. It deals with the formal and informal, organized and chaotic systems of order which necessitates a design process that allows the product to be receptive of and responsive to changes in time.

An abandoned building in
Youngstown, Ohio

I distinctly remember a lecture by Prof. Ian Bentley, where he said, "the uniqueness of a street is that its constructive elements (the buildings, its functions, roads, pavements, people, etc.) change according to their relative life spans; people in the buildings change quicker than the building's function; the function changes quicker than the building; the building changes form quicker than the pavement or the roads." Hence, if the roads or pavements are rigid, it doesn't allow buildings to change; if the buildings are rigid, it doesn't allow functions to change; so on and so forth. It is imperative for urban design to follow the principle of 'function follows form' because if the form is inefficient, any function will cease to exist over time. This is the natural process.

Now, you know why stores, buildings, apartments, homes and sometimes even entire communities become completely abandoned. It is simply because they were not built to be receptive or responsive to such changes! It is simply the failure of design!

Being a Tulsana: the First Ten Days

We recently moved to Tulsa, Oklahoma. My husband, Sandeep's job brought us here to Tulsa, a region of the Oklahoma state known as 'Green Country'. Tulsa, the 46th largest city of the United States was known as the 'Oil capital of the world' for most of the 20th century and the success of the city at the time reflects in the Art Deco style architecture of the buildings in the downtown area. It is internationally acclaimed for the several permanent dance, theater and concert groups and centers constituting its performance arts milieu.

The downtown area of Tulsa, OK

During the first ten days of our stay here we lived at the Holiday Inn at the city center. For the first time during my stay in the United States I actually lived in the heart of a city and got to actually experience the truth about the decentralized American city. Streets, the backbone of every city, are part of the public realm that allow designated space for cars and people to move through the city without conflict. In Tulsa downtown, however, there were no chances of conflict between vehicles and pedestrians due to the lack of both, vehicles and pedestrians! However, I should say that that was a very convenient situation for me to cross the roads as slowly as I wanted or even dance on them without being noticed or being hit! I enjoyed being in the midst of the downtown architecture and my dog, Roxy, enjoyed her uninterrupted walk.

The point at which I was taken by surprise was when I found out that the restaurants and cafes in the downtown area are open only for lunch hour. These food outlets targeted the only sector of population that would bring them substantial profit: the working population of the downtown. Sandeep and I would have to drive to the nearest suburban food outlets for dinner to take a break from the food served at the Holiday Inn. The same would be the scenario if one had to do any kind of shopping including clothes, grocery, shoes, etc. The proliferation of the suburbs with their shopping mall prototype is a phenomenon that not only renders a city center homogeneous but also makes it close to impossible to accommodate such functions by attempts of revitalization of the city center.

One of the main factors that made our stay pleasurable was Sandeep's job; he could walk to work unlike his previous assignment in Memphis, Tennessee, where he had to drive for an hour to work from home. The close proximity between work and home not only saved travel time and energy but also increased his work efficiency. The conventional planning methodology of placing offices and homes close together was not bullocks after all. This is the element that goes missing in the suburban way of living. In short, even though Tulsa downtown had its disadvantages all three of us, Sandeep, Roxy and I, enjoyed being Tulsanas!!