00: theory
I. Form ever follows function
“It is the pervading law of all things organic and inorganic, of all things physical and metaphysical, of all things human and all things superhuman, of all true manifestations of the head, of the heart, of the soul, that the life is recognizable in its expression, that form ever follows function. This is the law.” - Louis Sullivan, 1896
Louis Sullivan wrote these words in 1896, in an often overlooked piece for Lippincott’s Magazine entitled: The Tall Office Building, Artistically Considered. A phrase so familiar that it borders on cliché first appears here, weaved into a typological defense that would give birth to the world’s first skyscrapers -form ever follows function.
One might be surprised to discover that Late Modernist giant Mies van der Rohe doesn’t father this mantra, as most associate it with his work. But in truth this preoccupation with form, and particularly its relationship tofunction, pervades and persists from a time long before even Sullivan’s, back to the Roman architects who debated and eventually declared that all shape should have use.
Understanding form as a concept is easy enough. Shape, scale, color, material, organization – those principles so dutifully controlled by the Modern architect all coalesce intoform. Pure, platonic, true. Only - according to Sullivan, to Mies after him and Fuller after him, and so on – form can be nothing without its predecessor, cannot exist before it. So if function characterizes form-- what, then, characterizes function?
Perhaps this characterization becomes more complex over time, as theories are proven, disproven, decanted, lauded. Sullivan saw function as nature, and design as however close man might come to mimicking its efficiency. Mies and Kahn found function in material and its inherent properties, but arguably lost sight of use in the pursuit of an aesthetic purity, of the sublime. Buckminster Fuller found function in the machine, but a machine remains concerned only with itself, and so the suffering of its inhabitants undermined its function as an environment.
Regardless of one’s chosen understanding of function, it follows that a metric for functionality can be deduced from the method of evaluation. There exists some quantitative methods for determining a building’s performance with respect to its impact on the environment, its structural longevity, the sustainability of its materials and their production. However, as seen with Buckminster Fuller, an environment that completely satisfies its own needs might neglect the needs of its users. The world has seen this – such a function already has form. This project asks-- for whom does any space perform? When a designer calibrates a space for use, for the occupant, what shape does this function take?
The three active participants in dyanmic of function are the designer, the project, and the user. In this case, the project is considered an agent in and of itself. In this relationship, the isolation of projectt and designer without the user produces program, the isolation of project and user without the designer produces performance, but there is a missing connection between the designer and user. This project proposes that observation is the crucial relationship between the designer and user.
II. EMPIRICISM
the theory that all knowledge is derived from sense-experience. Stimulated by the rise of experimental science
agorascope’s approach to observational theory is based in empiricism, which has a long philosophical history. Three major contributors to the philosphical foundation of this project are the Western thinkers seen on the left.
Francis Bacon introduced the idea that all logical conclusions should be drawn from observation, and consequently pioneered the early theory behind the Scientific Method.
Thomas Hobbes was a materialist who believed that all concepts (in this project, concepts refer to ideas with embedded logic) are derived from some material reaction between people and objects.
Auguste Comte took this idea further into the philosophy of positivism, which insists that all social organization should follow the same empirical values as science. In other words, laws (and thereby the laws of public space and cities) should be based in observable logic and not Platonic ideals.