Span the whole depth of the building with the structure so that each floor is a single open plate, adaptable to uses that cannot be foreseen.
Pompidou: 48 m clear span between column lines, 13 bays of 12.8 m
Form follows function
The outward form of a building should arise from, and express, what the building does and how it is made, as the form of every living thing expresses its life.
Sullivan’s own words are “form ever follows function”, and he presents the phrase as a law of nature: the eagle, the oak and the running brook all look as they do because of what they are. For him it was a poetic and organic principle (his buildings are richly ornamented), and his pupil Frank Lloyd Wright later said that form and function should be one.
Twentieth-century functionalism took the slogan more literally, as an instruction to derive the plan from the program and the appearance from the structure, and to omit whatever served neither. Its critics, Venturi above all, replied that buildings also have a function of meaning, and that a form cannot simply be deduced from needs.
Related rules
A new material calls for new forms: iron should be used in slender members that show its strength in tension and bending, not cast in imitation of stone columns and vaults.
Treat a tall office building as base, shaft and top: an open, accessible ground storey for shops and entrances; an indefinite stack of identical office floors expressed as one; and a distinct attic that closes the composition.
base (1–2 storeys) + shaft (n identical storeys) + attic
Show each material as what it is (brick as brick, timber as timber) and let the plan, rather than a symmetrical front, decide where the rooms, windows and chimneys go.
Omit applied ornament from buildings and everyday objects: it wastes work, money and material, dates quickly, and adds nothing that fine material and exact workmanship cannot give.
With a concrete frame, a house should stand on pilotis, have a free plan and a free façade, be lit by horizontal ribbon windows, and carry a garden on its flat roof.
pilotis · free plan · free façade · ribbon window · roof garden
Cite this page Chris Paton, “Form follows function”, The Textbook of Architecture, https://textbookofarchitecture.com/rule/form-follows-function. Text, drawings and models licensed under CC BY-NC 4.0.