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In The Function of Form, internationally acclaimed architect, Farshid Moussavi, provides a provocative critique of the historically opposing relationship between function and form to reveal the contradiction at the heart of modernism. We need to move away from the definition of function as utility, she argues, to align it with how function is defined in mathematics, biology or music. Form, on the other hand, should be considered not only in the way buildings are produced, but also how they perform sensorially. Function and form, considered together in architecture, stand in opposition to the dualism which defined our approach to the built environment throughout the twentieth century. This book provides a thought-provoking account of the challenges facing the 21st century built environment, and an enlivened awareness of the wider possibilities of architectural form.

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CHOICE Review

This book, according to editor Moussavi (Harvard), "explores the idea of architecture as a continuous process of creating novel forms and identities through the repetition and differentiation ... of virtual forms.... It seeks to establish a ... relationship between architecture's past and its future by analyzing virtual and actualized forms that have been created throughout history and exploring their potential." The problems begin with the fact that "70% of the cases ... are speculative." How can speculative forms exist in history? Without an engineering and cultural evidence basis for the designs' computer-generated permutations and combinations, how can readers understand which ones provide real possibilities for future structural or enclosure forms? Following an introductory essay, each of the seven chapters covers a different material system--from grids to domes and plates to membranes. The chapters themselves delve into different subsystems, each identified by a base unit, which is tessellated--in computer modeling--in "three directions ... to test its potential to produce ... different forms of enclosure." This well-organized tome is largely 3-D computer-generated drawings--none of in-depth value. Readers are left with two questions: What is the book's point? Where is the structural analysis for these "virtual forms"? Summing Up: Not recommended. L. B. Sickels formerly, Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation