At the beginning of the blog, I would like to further discuss about the relationship between form and function in contemporary architecture. Nowadays , we likely heard about the phrase” form follows function….”, but do we really thought about what it means or what it is implies about contemporary architecture?

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“It I s the pervading law of all things organic or inorganic, of all things physical and metaphysical, of all things human and things superhuman… that FORM EVER FOLLOWS FUNCTION, this is the law…”

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This phrase was coined by American architect Louis Sullivan in 1918, who also wrote that “if a building is properly designed, one should be able with a little attention, to read through that building to the reason of that building.” In my understanding, what Sullivan tried to express was that the style of architecture should reflects its purposes, made sense at the time  and continued to do so for much of the last century. The underlying idea was the “efficiency”, no matter in material, space planning or ornamentation, it must provide a way that minimize the construction cost and gain profit as well. But there was also another quotes by Frank Lloyd Wright which stated “Form and function are one …”I my opinion, form is a solution to a design problem. We always carries out site analysis and finally come out with a form of buildings which best suit for the site to encounter all the issues and constraints , and this is the process we actually put ourselves into user’s shoes until we realised the form of building. We shouldn’t said that either functionality or form need to have a higher priority, because both of them are interrelated and design a structure in a way that achieve both form aesthetic and functionality is our duty and compromises have to made during designing.

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But there are many methodologies which affected the relationships between form and functionality of a building. These factors include technology, uses of space and materials for build. Nowadays, most of the building especially cultural heritage area, they are more look into the keyword: “adaptive reuse”. This situation showcases that technology nowadays actually did encourage the interrelationship between form and functionality of a building. The new technology and building materials enables us to actually adapt and modify the old form at the same time perform the new functionality of the structure. For examples, Sekeping Kong Heng by Seksan Design in Ipoh. All effort has been made to preserve the characters of the existing building and at the same time new extension is added to perform more programmes and events.

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Architecture is capable of facilitating intellectual development, of expressing individual and cultural identity, and of expressing ideas which transcend its material, programmatic and structural functions; in short, architecture is capable of being art, or poetry, and being beautiful. To say in another way, cup was designed to be capable of holding a liquid. It was designed after the function of the liquid. Thus the form of the cup reflects the function of the liquid. Therefore I hereby conclude that both function and form for me is a system and must collaborate during the process of designing architecture.