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
Learning to walk through walls An Article by David R. MacIver drmaciver.substack.com I have a running joke that one of the most useful things I do when coaching or consulting is to say to people “Yes, that does sound like a problem. Have you tried solving it?” Part of why this is a joke is that actually most of the useful work happens prior to the point - the hard part is actually articulating what is going wrong well enough that it seems like a soluble problem - but there is genuinely something useful about this, because often it feels people are looking for permission. Without the external prompt, solving their problem is not something they noticed that they were allowed to do. A Burglar's Guide to the City problemsgames