Form and Function

The debate about form and function is an ongoing one. Some argue that form follows function, others, like architect Frank Lloyd Wright believed that form and function are one. However, in contemporary society there is ample evidence that function follows form, for without an understanding of form, we cannot derive function. Even so, there are some cases when form and function are one.

In Leach's Rethinking Architecture, Umberto Eco provides an example of form and function via a story about an elevator. While the designer of the elevator completely understood the forms of the elevator, the up and down buttons, the floor numbers, the emergency buttons, etc., Eco maintains that a primitive soul without knowledge of an elevator would be hard pressed to understand its function because of a lack of understanding of its forms. As Eco maintains, "�the primitive, even if he can guess the function, does not know that these forms are the �key' to the function" (Leach, p. 186). In this sense, function must always follow

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