FUNCTION IS FAKE

You can’t understand architecture with regard to function.  Function is a bore.   Function has never made sense.  Function is fake.  

“Culture imposes accepted understanding of function.” Deetz.

“Where function enters into the analysis of a building’s performance, it is generally assumed rather than quantified.” Upton

With the term function, we mean an object / building which is designed to enhance the experience / performance of a human.

You can worship in a school building and have classes in a church.  You can live in a factory and can manufacture things in a house.  You can attend a musical performance in an underground shelter, or in a moving ship, or in a concert hall.  A musical performance can be just as compelling if it is heard in an open field.

Example: we are taught that the straight lines of the Bauhaus in Dessau function as a unified environment for human creation.  Why are we not taught to understand the Bauhaus building, for example, as the result of forces of generation?  It is of far greater help to us if we understand this building as a system of geometric connections.  

To address function, literal strings are required.  We are taught to employ words to describe the function of a form.  I invite you to try to address function without the use of words.  You can’t do it.  

Whereas function is fake, geometric connections are real.  Geometric function and geometric responses to context, are not fake.  Geometric connections exist.  Forms would not exist without holistic geometric responses.

“Of the two key concepts, function and expression, the former is most familiar to architects, although there is no agreement on its meaning.  The latter, expression, although equally fundamental, is all but absent from most systematic discussion of architecture.”  Arnheim.

As designers of form, we should stop thinking in terms of function.  From here on out, let’s let geometry be function.  Geometry was always the function of the Bauhaus. For us now, the function is the resolution and the resolution is the function.  This is liberating, honest, and pure.  With this transformed understanding, function is no longer fake.