The thesis is that the contradiction between form and function should be seen as an important element in architecture. The contradiction between form and function in architecture is proposed as a historical architectural construction that has not been theorized, a historical philosophy underlying theories of architectural practice that has not been articulated. By “form” is meant the visual appearance of a building (line, outline, shape, composition); by “function” the structural and functional requirements of a building (construction, shelter, program, organization, use, occupancy, materials, social purpose). Form of course can be said to have a metaphysical “function” to represent or express an idea, but that sense of the word is not used here. Both terms have modern connotations, related to the dictum “form follows function,” but both have also played a role in architecture throughout history. In the twentieth century, form is the visual shape or appearance of a building. This is made clear in books ranging from Paul Frankl’s Principles of Architectural History, to Rudolf Arnheim’s The Dynamics of Architectural Form, to Peter Eisenman’s The Formal Basis of Modern Architecture. Form as appearance goes back to the Classical distinction between eidos and hyle, form and matter. Plato defined eidos or idea as an archetype, separate from matter. Aristotle maintained the distinction, but said that eidos participates in hyle, and is in fact the ousia or being of the natural world. The Latin forma was used by the Romans as a synonym for both eidos (conceptual form) and morphe (sensual or sensible form). Vitruvius, in De architectura in the first century bc, used the words imago, idea, species, and eurhythmia, all referring to form or visual appearance (either conceptual or sensible). He distinguished between ratiocinatio, the intellectual apprehension of architecture, and fabrica, the craft of architecture. In dispositio (arrangement), orthographia is the image (imago) of a building, and the result of cogitatio is the visual effect. The elements of dispositio-ichnographia (plan), orthographia (elevation), and scenographia (perspective)—are described as ideae (eidos or forma). Eurhythmia is venusta species (beautiful form); eurhythmia is derived from rhythmos, or form. The Aristotelian commentators and scholastics distinguished between sensible form (morphe, species sensibilis) and intelligible form (eidos, species apprehensibilis), form as property of the object and form as a product of the mind, as an incorporeal likeness of matter. Kant defined form as an a priori intuition, a transcendental idea, of phenomena. The distinction between sensible and intelligible is related to the distinction between signifier and signified in language or rhetoric, which also has a modern connotation, in twentieth-century structural

linguistics, but has played a role in visual theory since Vitruvius. According to Vitruvius, architecture consists of “that which signifies and that which is signified” (quod significatur et quod significat, in De architectura I.I.3) (Vitruvius 1931 [27 bc]). That which signifies is the verba or words in rhetoric (the material vocabulary of architecture), and that which is signified is the res (proposed thing, relation). As Leandro Madrazo Agudin says in The Concept of Type in Architecture: An Inquiry into the Nature of Architectural Form, “the concept of Form in architecture will reveal itself as permanent and ubiquitous” (Agudin 1995: 51), and the three kinds of form defined by Vitruvius-structural, sculptural, and geometric-“exist in architectural works of all times” (p. 81). The modern connotation of the function of a building is related to its use or utility (as defined, for example, by Hitchcock and Johnson in The International Style, 1932). This concept also goes back to Vitruvius, in that a building must have utilitas (usefulness), firmitas (firmness), and venustas (beauty), and these have also played a role throughout the history of architecture, with different cultural and historical nuances. According to Edward Robert de Zurko in Origins of Functionalist Theory, “Functionalism is generally associated with … the practical, material needs of the occupants of the building and the expression of structure” (Zurko 1957: 7). As Peter Eisenman wrote, in “Notes on Conceptual Architecture,” “there is no conceptual aspect in architecture which can be thought of without the concept of pragmatic and functional objects” (Eisenman 2004c: 16). But as Le Corbusier wrote in the early twentieth century, “Architecture has a different meaning and different tasks from showing constructions and fulfilling purposes. Purpose is here understood as a matter of pure utility, of comfort, and of practical elegance” (Behne 1996 [1926]: 134). While the emphasis in the functionalism of the twentieth century has been on utility and program, structure plays a role as well, and each has been present throughout the history of architecture in various ways. In the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, geometrical form replaced sculptural form, and “functional goals merely replaced the orders of classical composition as the starting point for architectural design,” as Eisenman wrote in “The End of the Classical” (Eisenman 2004b: 154). There are many examples in the history of architecture which display the contradiction between form and both structure and program. The goal of this thesis is not to challenge or criticize the legitimacy of functionalism in architecture. The synthesis of form and function plays a dominant and valuable role in architectural design. The present thesis is only intended to add another dimension to architectural composition and expression, without diminishing the importance of functionalism. In fact, successful contradiction between form and function can only be achieved after the functional requirements are fully understood. If the definitions of the terms throughout the history of architecture are examined, it can be seen that a contradiction between form and function is often present in architecture. The distinction between form and function is related to what are seen as the “communicative” roles of architecture, in expression or representation, and the “instrumental” roles of architecture, in utility and technology; this distinction can in turn be related to the distinction between “culture” and “civilization,” described by

various authors, including C.P. Snow in The Two Cultures, and Nikolaos-Ion Terzoglou in “Architectural Creation between ‘Culture’ and ‘Civilization’” in The Cultural Role of Architecture. According to Christian Herrmann, the duality of form and utility plays a role in every aspect of human life, including the life of the soul. Architecture has a role, as a work of art, to express a metaphysical or transcendental idea which is not connected to its material presence. This is the definition of art. The transcendental can be the formal, conceptual, expressionistic, intellectual, numinous, spiritual, or aesthetic aspect of architecture. According to Friedrich Schelling, in The Philosophy of Art (1859), because architecture is always necessarily tied to the material, to its physical and structural requirements, in order for architecture to be art, to communicate an idea not connected to its material requirements, architecture must be the “imitation of itself as the art of need” (Schelling 1989 [1859]: §111), that is, its visual appearance must contradict its physical requirements, its form must contradict its function. As Karl Friedrich Schinkel said, “Two elements must be distinguished precisely” in architecture: “the one intended to work for practical necessity and the one that is meant only to express directly the pure idea” (Behne 1996 [1926]: 88). As twentieth-century architectural discourse was dominated by the idea that there should be a causal relation between form and function in architecture, that “form follows function,” the purpose of this thesis is to suggest that the contradiction between form and function also plays a role in architecture. As Madrazo Agudin points out, “in spite of their adherence to functionalism, the architects of the Modern Movement did not leave out the aesthetic significance of form. As a matter of fact, functionalism alone cannot explain the forms of modern buildings” (Agudin 1995: 380). As Rudolf Arnheim asserted in The Dynamics of Architectural Form, “Physical function does not sufficiently determine form and no such determination explains why a visible kinship should result between function and expression” (Arnheim 1977: 256). With expression based in form, “expression is not identical with a building’s physical properties: a building may be soundly built yet look flimsy and precarious. Nor is expression identical with what the viewer, rightly or wrongly, believes the physical structure of a building to be” (p. 254). According to Adolf Behne in The Modern Functional Building, while function is the consequence of individual need, form is “the consequence of establishing a relationship between human beings” (Behne 1996 [1926]: 137). Architecture in its form is an expression of human identity and the human condition, a poetic expression of the human spirit. The juxtaposition of function and form stages a dichotomy between the material and transcendent, the real and the ideal, matter and mind, the instrumental and the communicative, which results in artistic expression and communication. Geoffrey Scott, in The Architecture of Humanism, defined the humanism of architecture as the “tendency to project the image of our functions into concrete forms” (Scott 1980 [1914]: 213). In The Architecture of Humanism, there are examples given throughout history in which the appearance of structure in a building contradicts the fact of structure, the form of a building is unrelated to

its social purpose, aesthetics are unrelated to construction, forms are produced irrespective of mechanical means or materials, forms are designed in excess of structural requirements, and the art of architecture is detached from mechanical science, all of which results in a humanistic architecture. An architecture that displays the contradiction between form and function is a humanistic architecturean architecture that reveals the relationship between the human mind and the material world. Form is a product of the mind, while function is a product of matter.