Architecture as Embodiment of Function in Form

The aspects surrounding form and function, especially those Louis Sullivan has touched on and described, have given rise to over a century of controversies. Many have not been settled and demand rethinking again and again in response to newly developed understanding. Even the slight change of function in form follows function to functions raises a host of questions, not to speak of addressing in depth the ambiguity of follows. The book addresses recently evolved understanding and expands upon. A problem here, as in most discussions within complexity, is the meaning of the key terms as typically used. They require clarity to advance successful communication. The definitions in this book on embodiment, function and form are pragmatically derived from broad experiences with the design of architecture: why it is, what it is and what it does. This threefold tenet and justification of architecture is brought in the open by a highly diverse sequence of numerous built examples. Each has embodiment of human needs and desires, or it could rightly not be called architecture. Some of the embodiment is obvious, some is not. Whatever is the case, the connections made between the ideas about need or desire and the physical properties, which constitute buildings, are what we take as functional relations. They are not all what function is, but they are at the center to bring it about. There happens twofold embodiment as process. On one hand it is the transformative action to find properties which fulfill the needs and desires. On the other hand, it is the emergence of feeling from our thinking bodies evoked by these properties during the design or the experience of architecture, calling for judgment. To show this duality abundantly and in detail is what the book is about. Crucially, it also reveals the significance of form as reality and evidence. Finally, the text elaborates on the implications of aesthetics in all of this, with one of the surprises being the fact that the aesthetic may not be only result to acknowledge but also function to start with. Overall, the purpose of the book is to provide a workable understanding of embodiment, function and form through the ways they hang together. Kurt Brandle is professor emeritus of architecture at the University of Michigan. He studied at the Technische Hochschule Stuttgart and the Technische Universität Berlin and graduated from the latter with diploma and doctoral degree. His work in practice, research, teaching and writing concentrated on building systems, environmental controls and energy conservation. Out of this involvement emerged over the past decade his heightened interest to make issues of meaning in architecture as explicit as possible. See more