{"id":34803,"date":"2015-01-08T17:16:26","date_gmt":"2015-01-08T22:16:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.uncommongoods.pro\/?p=34803"},"modified":"2018-01-03T11:42:43","modified_gmt":"2018-01-03T16:42:43","slug":"uncommon-design-school-form-follows-function","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.uncommongoods.pro\/blog\/2015\/uncommon-design-school-form-follows-function\/","title":{"rendered":"Uncommon Design School: Form Follows Function"},"content":{"rendered":"

From musical wine glasses<\/a> to self-filtering popcorn bowls<\/a>, the distinctive variety of our collection relies on interactions of form and function. Sometimes these interactions are straight out of the design handbook; sometimes, they\u2019re more playful and ironic. Whatever the case, a familiar phrase comes to mind: form follows function. You\u2019ve probably heard it batted around\u2014at a cocktail party or in your undergrad art history course\u2014but you may not know where this quotable bit of design history originates.<\/p>\n

\"Popcorn<\/a>The Popcorn Bowl with Kernel Sifter<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

Chicago, 1896: a maverick American architect<\/a> sets out to define an emerging building type that will transform American skylines from coast to coast in the next century\u2014the tall office building, or \u201cskyscraper.\u201d Through a progression of projects, from the Wainwright building in St. Louis <\/a>to the Guaranty building in Buffalo<\/a>, Louis Sullivan showed an increasingly clear vision of how the tall office building\u2014a form driven by commercial imperatives\u2014could be designed to reflect its essential nature as a \u201ctall and soaring thing.\u201d At the same time, he put down his pencil long enough to write a sort of manifesto for his skyscraper vision: \u201cThe Tall Office Building Artistically Considered.\u201d In this essay <\/a>was an innocent turn of phrase destined for design school glory: \u201c\u2026form ever follows function.\u201d Like in the old game of \u201ctelephone,\u201d this phrase was slightly paraphrased in the retelling, becoming \u201cform follows function,\u201d and a design nerd\u2019s bumper sticker was born.<\/p>\n

\"Prudential<\/a><\/p>\n

Prudential (Guaranty) Building, Wikipedia\u00a0<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

Not to be outdone, Sullivan\u2019s famous prot\u00e9g\u00e9 and master appropriator, Frank Lloyd Wright<\/a>, adopted the aphorism but put his own transcendental spin in it, saying that \u201c[form follows function] has been misunderstood\u2014form and function should be one, joined in a spiritual union.\u201d It\u2019s a prime example of Wright extending his mentor\u2019s principles into his own organic definition of design. But when Sullivan coined the phrase\u2014and when Wright re-branded it\u2014they intended it as an assertion of an aspiration, rather than the revelation of any Platonic design truth.<\/p>\n

\"Frank<\/a><\/p>\n

\u00a0Frank Lloyd Wright, Wikipedia<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

In retrospect, Wright\u2019s insistence that form and function are inextricable stifles his progressive potential. Postmodern design offers examples of form forcing function\u2014one of the main critiques of branded, \u201cstarchitect<\/a>\u201d design of the last few decades. In 2009, Alice Rawsthorn<\/a> declared the demise of \u201cform follows function,\u201d citing its fading relevance in the age of digital design.* Counter to this obituary, some recent products demonstrate an ironic inversion of the form \/ function relationship: Lee Goodwin\u2019s Driftwood<\/a> and Birch iPhone Docks<\/a> bring unabashedly organic flair to design-for-digital applications, while Jeff Davis\u2019 Record Amplifier <\/a>draws sound from old records in an unexpected way.<\/p>\n

\"Birch<\/a><\/p>\n

Birch iPhone Charging Dock<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

So it seems that Louis Sullivan\u2019s most quotable concept is still on designers\u2019 pin boards today, if only as a platform for playful inversions of his intent.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

*NY Times, \u201cThe Demise of \u2018Form Follows Function\u2019\u201d<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

You\u2019ve probably heard the phrase “form follows function” batted around at a cocktail party or in your undergrad art history course, but you may not know where this quotable bit of design history originates. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":144,"featured_media":34869,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[742],"tags":[1482,37,1500,1483,1435],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.uncommongoods.pro\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34803"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.uncommongoods.pro\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.uncommongoods.pro\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uncommongoods.pro\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/144"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uncommongoods.pro\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=34803"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.uncommongoods.pro\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34803\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":64557,"href":"https:\/\/www.uncommongoods.pro\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34803\/revisions\/64557"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uncommongoods.pro\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/34869"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.uncommongoods.pro\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=34803"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uncommongoods.pro\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=34803"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uncommongoods.pro\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=34803"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}