Function, Functionality, Functionalism
The requirements of economy
Useless work on useful things
The minimum condition
Form eschews function
Feeble and ugly
Functionalism can be a kind of religion
Each element performs many functions
The informing idea of functionalism
Same name in the same basket
The plan must anticipate all that is needed
The element becomes a sign
Classical absurdity
205. Structure Follows Social Spaces
Roaming and capricious
What are those borders made of?
Presentable
A strangely negative character
Sine qua non
The contribution that something in them yet compelled them to make
Something more is required
Mechanisms and organisms
The center of the way
The Evolution of Useful Things
The usages of life
Form follows function
Against form follows function
UI and Capability
Embracing design constraints
An Article by Adrian RoselliConstraints have been shown to generally improve innovation. Giving targets and parameters helps ensure a team is working in unison. Identifying what is out of bounds can further focus that team.
A Plea for Lean Software
An Essay by Niklaus WirthSoftware's girth has surpassed its functionality, largely because hardware advances make this possible. The way to streamline software lies in disciplined methodologies and a return to the essentials.
Beauty in flight
A QuoteAll of us had been trained by Kelly Johnson and believed fanatically in his insistence that an airplane that looked beautiful would fly the same way.
— Ben Rich, Skunk Works
Stealth Architecture: The Rooms of Light and Space
To absorb it or build your own
Robert Smithson and other so-called land artists simply disengaged from architecture, placing their works in America's open landscape, leaving behind the museums and galleries Smithson referred to as "tombs". A new "expanded field" allowed artists to contextualize their work beyond the institutional frame of the museum or the commercial structure of a gallery. Richard Serra, who also began to move outdoors, at times chose to "attack" architecture, creating structures that disrupted or overwhelmed the buildings around them.
The artists of the Light and Space movement took another tack. Rather than fight or flee the architecture, they explored and manipulated it, approaching architecture as a kind of found object, creating a series of rooms that incorporated architecture and architectural structures directly into their art. Bruce Nauman summarized it well: "When you work in a gallery or museum, the architecture is a given. If you wanted to have a show, you didn't have a choice, except to deal with it. You had to find a way to either absorb architecture into the piece of build your own."
A stealth architect
By the 1970s, Irwin was in effect a stealth architect. We often talk about the ephemeral qualities of light and space in Irwin's installations, but what make those qualities palpable to our perception are practical structures—windows, walls, corridors, doorways, and skylights—in other words, architecture. And Irwin was keenly aware of how best to use all of those structures. One of his greatest talents has been to engage bad or benign architectural situations, disappearing into their details, changing them, and creating and entirely new quality of space.
The measuring unit of all space
The piece was titled The Portal, referring to a large opening in the center of the wall. Whether you want to call it art or architecture, it was a testament to the amazing presence that can be shown by a simple wall, which [Tadao Ando] has referred to as "the measuring unit of all space."
The walls are reserved for the sun
Maria Nordman always insisted, "Nothing should hang on a wall. The walls are reserved for the sun." It was like being inside a large cardboard box that had been gently slit open with an X-Acto knife, allowing thin planes of light to emerge. It is well known that Nordman avoided using the camera to document her installations, feeling that it abstracted and framed various aspects of the experience, which is best absorbed more holistically. It is ironic that Nordman's rooms often took the form of a kind of architectural camera in which slits in walls and corners created mysterious apertures that allowed light to leak into a room at a glacial pace. Being inside one of Nordman's spaces is like being inside a camera operating in exceedingly slow motion.
A little too something
As Irwin had chosen a stairwell for his UCLA installation because it was curious in its banality and innocuousness, Bruce Nauman became interested in corridors and shafts as overlooked and slightly eccentric spaces. He was particularly interested in those that had "a kind of constriction that wasn't natural or was a little too long or a little too something—like the architect just hadn't really thought it out."
Various titles of Bruce Nauman artworks
- Sound Breaking Wall
- Get Out of My Mind, Get Out of This Room
- False Silence
- Flayed Earth Flayed Self (Skin/Sink)
- Room with My Soul Left Out, Room That Does Not Care