Against form follows function An Essay by Andrea Resmini andrearesmini.com I cannot get past the fact that any *designer* who throws that phrase around matter-of-factly, as in “of course form follows function”, comes out as a complete ignoramus. An ignoramus who's not just repeating an 1896 “law” without any clues as to what it means but who also, most poignantly, demonstrates to possess no knowledge of what has happened in design and architecture since Sullivan and Adler contributed to inventing the high rise building and, by extension, much of the world we live in. Useless work on useful thingsForm follows functionForm follows failure formfunctionarchitecture
From hands to machines It has rarely proved practical to produce exactly the same product by machines as we produced by hand. Mechanization requires you produce an equivalent product, not identically the same one. Richard Hamming, The Art of Doing Science and Engineering: Learning to Learn The Nature and Art of WorkmanshipThe Real World of Technology