ABSTRACT
This chapter describes the activist aspect, whether in natural processes or the machine analogy or, more fundamentally, in the sociological, biological, or cultural interpretation of "life" in the writings of Hannes Meyer and Gropius. Meyer, who early in his career was concerned with garden city theories and worker and cooperative housing projects, joined the ranks of the avant-garde around 1924. For Andreas Dorschel, this activist, processual aspect was the crucial reason for the attractiveness of the term "function". The understanding of the concept of function based on the three identified aspects seems still possible and fruitful for the modernism of the 1920s. The Gropius was interested in the question of which creative materials would make it possible to bring the parts into a formal unity. Meyenburg developed his own special interpretation of the concept of function, which, in keeping with his profession as an agricultural engineer, drew on technology as well as biology.
