Twenty architects answered the following questions in a meeting held by Memar: 1) Is function substituted today by modern notions (as many other traditional architectural elements have been), or is it an essential part of architecture — like space or place — and still present even in the most abstract works such as those concerning virtual architecture? 2) Does the notion of function refer to those diagrams and charts that we use to illustrate the accessibility relations between the spatial units of a building, or is it a relation between the form of the spaces and the way they are used? 3) Is architecture's essential duty to respond to the expressed and unexpressed needs of the people who benefit from architecture, or should it answer the questions that are put forward by architecture itself?
Memar editors — opening
Memar, over the past five years, through publishing articles, opinions and notes, has been able — to a limited extent — to respond to the need for the exchange of thought in the architectural professional community. To extend this exchange of thought, we decided that, in meeting and discussion sessions, with the proposal of a topic by one of the architects, we would put it up for debate and publish the results in Memar. To this end, in a letter, with the topic "Function in Architecture" proposed by Kamran Afshar Naderi, we invited those architects whom we thought would be interested in this subject to a meeting held at the House of Iranian Artists on 30 Shahrivar 1382 (21 September 2003). Most of the invitees not only responded positively but actively took part in the discussion. We thank them all. The result of this discussion is read below. In the next issue, after a wrap-up of this discussion, it will continue in the form of several articles.
Topic statement (Kamran Afshar Naderi)
Function — or, in the architects' common usage, "fanction" — is a topic that, at least for the audience of architecture, has lost its journalistic charm. In the past hundred years, whether in the form of acceptance or escape, it has always been a determining factor. Setting aside the slogan-like, dated value of "function" — banner of the early-twentieth-century pioneers of architecture — the principle remains, and so does its real role in architecture. Some of these can be formulated as follows: Is function, like some old elements of architecture, a subject that has been replaced by today's modern concepts? Or is it of the same kind as the basic and essential factors of architecture, such as space and place, that are realised even in the most abstract works — "virtual architecture"? Or, by function, do we mean those diagrams and tables that show access relations between the spatial units of a building? Or is it the relation between the shape and the way of using the space? Is the principal duty of architecture to respond to expressed and unexpressed needs of the people who benefit from architecture, or to respond to the questions it itself poses?
I proposed this subject because I felt it might suffer the fate of the discussion of "Iranian architecture." In a period the matter of Iranian architecture was raised broadly and as an absolute principle, and anyone whose work did not use arches and other signs of Iranian architecture was wholly rejected. Many national projects also fell into this trap, and the situation reached the point where people like myself — who wrote my final-year thesis on Iranian architecture, or those who had written books on this subject — lost the appetite for discussing it. Now the topic has been completely set aside; if there is talk of Iranian architecture, neither its principles nor its methods nor its bases are heard or read anywhere; it is as if no one is thinking about it any more. In my view, the topic of function too is a discussion that can be exaggerated by both its supporters and its deniers. I want to begin this discussion historically. Function is certainly one of the oldest principles of architecture. Vitruvius too, with the term utilitas, meaning usefulness — alongside venustas meaning beauty and firmitas meaning firmness — referred to it; though of course it has a wider domain than function. The history of architecture has shown that the weight of these three parameters has not always been equal. To say that this is the same as function is open to debate. Function in European languages has Latin roots and means literally "to perform an act." In architectural theory the matter is somewhat different. There, by function we do not mean the activity itself or the action itself, but its static reflection in the building. So function refers to the activity… this is an important point.
As a phrase in the history of architecture, "function" is not very old. It goes back to the 18th century. I think Carlo Lodoli, in the first half of the 18th century, in opposition to Baroque architecture and to promote the classical style, spoke of functionalism, and his notes were published after his death in 1786. Then the Neoclassical architects were strongly influenced. The discussion was carried over to America, and Horatio Greenough, the American sculptor-theorist, in 1852 in a book proposed the idea of freedom from ornament and functionalism in architecture. Then Sullivan took it up, and wrote that famous phrase in a book whose title I do not remember — though it was nothing new from him; others before had already discussed it. Later this very phrase became the slogan of the first generation of modernists. In my view, all those who proposed functionalism — their main subject was aesthetics, not attention to function. The matter was reflecting functional and structural relations on the appearance of the building, not that function had been lost in buildings and they wanted to save it. The big advertisement of the modernists of the next period was that new functions need new forms which must result from the analysis of new functions. The principal theme of "form follows function" — where form comes from. From history, from typology, or from the analysis of function?
In short, in the early modernist period — with the disappearance of old styles — they needed new principles for their new experiences. We all know that even Sullivan himself, in his most pure projects (e.g. the Auditorium Building in Buffalo), used classical arrangement. Or in Le Corbusier's work, the forms come from his experiences in sculpture and painting. Mies van der Rohe at IIT designed a complex of buildings of various uses with very similar forms, in a wholly formalist approach. In the early modernist period he was first under the influence of Neoclassical architecture, then of German Expressionism, and finally of Neoclassical paintings.
So we may perhaps say that, at the start of modernism, the situation of architecture had changed and the audience of architecture were no longer the elite. So a suitable method was needed for expanding the audience and communicating with ordinary people. Analysis of the building together with functional justifications was an essential matter in modern architecture. It gave a political lever to architects to claim that their designs derived from real needs and objective comprehensible problems, not from specialised expertise and intellectual necessities — even though the modernist designers were both intellectuals and artists, and their main concern was the same. But, in my view, the issue that the form of the building should have a functional justification, or be functionally legible, has produced a problem. Today's theorists prefer instead of "function" to use "programme" or "theme" or "subject", because the latter covers the set of environmental, cultural, symbolic, aesthetic, objective and practical factors and many other things that, in connection with the general aims of the designer and his world-view and methods, become a project.
In closing my talk I want to add one more point. Functions have a role in architecture, but the important thing is that we define this role. I think Philippe Starck said: "Man needs water, not a tap." That is, when we deal with functions we should always return to the root of the issue and try to understand the deep meaning of uses, with the same Latin sense, and reflect on how much the functions have form-generating capacity and how far they can become subjects of design. If climatic studies — the study of climate, temperature and humidity — are to end up only at the question of how many radiator-fins we need, that is not a design subject. But if cultural matter becomes form-generating, it can be a subject of design. Therefore it is very important that, just as the basis of the discussion of functionalism was, we consider this matter from the aesthetic point of view. Functions have no independent existence outside the architectural design; they come into existence and are defined with it. Architecture needs strong ideas that can organise the architectural form. Finding ideas is a thing, and architecture is another thing. Form does not follow function. Form creates and organises function.
Bahram Shirdel
I want to look at this matter from another angle. The question I have been thinking about is: in what framework of architectural theory does the discussion of function — or function in architecture — sit? I mean the frameworks of architectural theory from modernism until today: in modernism, in phenomenology, the meaning of function in architecture depends on which framework it is set in, and so depends on the era and period in which the discussion takes place. I think in our time the discussion of function is a post-structuralist discussion. In general, the question of function or programme relates to the spaces we architects design — house, school, factory, office, hospital, prison, cemetery: all the projects we design or think about. The question is, what role do architects have in the function of these spaces and in shaping their form or creating space?
If we look at the matter from outside our own work, all these spaces have already been defined by society and the state. In an essay, Foucault has argued that these spaces are raised and shaped in industrial societies in the 18th and 19th centuries, reach their maturity in the 20th century, and that it is precisely these spaces that build the social and political system. Foucault calls them "spaces of control". Only artists and intellectuals have managed to step outside these spaces and not be controlled. Architects think about these spaces and organise them through their work. From the late 20th century, this control system, owing to advanced technology and the swift spread of capitalism — both subjectively and objectively — has come under the full control of large capital. For example, look at one of Koolhaas's projects for Prada (printed in one of Memar's issues): the question is, has this thinking by Koolhaas, as architect and theoretician, brought this architecture into being, or has it been Prada's thinking? Prada's programme is clear: they are a large capitalist who wants to sell their products. So we should ask: has Prada determined the function, or did Koolhaas think it up?
I think the matter is fully clear. Here the architect plays no important role. I think if the question of architects, or our question, is architecture, it cannot take shape inside this capitalist or new-capitalist system today. It must be shaped outside this system, or in critique of and struggle with it, in order to be a free thought.
Iraj Kalantari
Mr. Afshar-Naderi referred to the various readings one can have of function. In any case, architecture is a discipline that requires a demand to be raised, an investment for that demand, and then a commission to an architect to satisfy that need. Architecture is not like painting. Mr. Afshar made good points about functionalist architecture too, and explained with what radical views about function those buildings were built; but after the end of the functional life of those buildings, with their technological life remaining, some of them have changed use. So the importance and effect of the cause that produced their form has been removed from them. You cannot, of course, build a building that is beautiful, lasts a hundred years, and whose function does not change according to the foreseen criteria. Architectural spaces must beyond this also have flexibility to accept the changes that life imposes on them. I do not have a definitive theory on these matters; but I want to say that the phenomenon of function — about which we are speaking — is one of the factors that becomes a means for the architect to think; for that discovery which I believe is a sensory process, not a logical one. For the same reason, to one functional programme different architects give different answers, and even one architect can have different options.
Another important point is that exaggerating the importance of function may bring the danger that the topic in public opinion and among architecture's clients gains such weight that it turns architects into social reformers, into people who take social responsibility. They have even, in a period, to bolster their functional justifications, gone after scientific bases. They tried to use the natural sciences and to claim that some plant has a particular form because it has to resist wind. In my view, if art is to take such risks, this is what such risks look like.
Hossein Sheikh-Zeinoddin
We must observe certain rules in the realm of speech. Architecture is a word but not a single thing. Architecture is not even a single operation. So when we simplify it to a single word "architecture" we run into trouble. I agree with much of what Mr. Afshar-Naderi says, except his closing conclusion (with which I do not disagree, but I would add a bit more). The reason is that our paradigm in architecture is design. Architecture in the speech-paradigm is reducible — a word turned to commonalities and erasing differences. But the question we raise has to do with differences, and we must heed this point.
Another point is that the production of architecture and its evaluation/judgement are two different categories. Both are necessary, but they are wholly different. We find these problems in evaluation. The clear definition of function from the user's needs and demands — about this I do not think anyone has a problem. We sometimes have correct demands, sometimes wrong ones. People do not engage in activity without an aim, but our aims are countless. We factor all this in and call it architecture. My production is in no way the same as yours. But in evaluation we are inevitably forced to use shared words, otherwise we cannot speak with each other. We — when we step out of the realm of production and turn to explanation — fall into a kind of monotony, uniformity and effort to be understood, which makes the question even less understandable and uncategorisable. Architecture is carried out on the basis of intentions; intentions are countless, so architecture too is countless; its methods too are countless. None of the architects who claim attention to function have only "thought function". And none of those who claim "pure form" have managed to realise it.
In short, what I want to say is that everything said exists in architecture. It exists and is realised. The very pleasure of it lies in this. To feel — as an architect — freedom and choice, this is good. Reaching a single ruling, beyond being impossible, is also undesirable. If we set Mr. Afshar-Naderi's closing ruling next to a different ruling and use them in a non-verbal exchange, in the course of the production of architecture, we will see that one suits some architectures and the other suits others. The merit of such discussions is that they bring us a kind of self-awareness about the production of architecture.
Mohammad Mohammadzadeh
I begin with a sentence from Mies van der Rohe: in his view architecture has nothing to do with the invention of new forms, and nothing to do with the personal taste of the architect. Architecture is shaped on the basis of "the spirit of the age". It seems that engaging with modern architecture and "functionalism" cannot be evaluated without attention to the technical contexts and technological achievements of the 19th century and their maturity in the early 20th century. Mr. Afshar-Naderi did not, however, discuss the philosophical context. Positivism and the logical authenticity of phenomena is a very important matter. Before the 19th century, when we examine the history of architecture, we encounter a kind of idealism and Romanticism — examples are seen in the three pyramids of Giza, or in all the great works of architecture before the 19th century. What modern architects rightly did was their approach to the new achievements they encountered in the 19th century and the first half of the 20th: the Industrial Revolution, mass production, and the industrialisation of all phenomena. Modern architecture answered this question correctly. The modern architects did not decide to raise the topic of function; they gave a response to a question that had been formed in society. Mr. Shirdel also pointed out that today some architects react to neo-capitalism as a thought. The social thinking of every historical period must be considered. So to understand modernism we must give due weight to the importance of "philosophical positivism" — which is not unrelated to industrialisation and mass production. Philosophical positivism asks "why" of everything. Function too is a rule that comes into being in answer to a "why." What Mr. Shirdel called "post-structuralism" is, in my view, a kind of return to idealism — though of course with a new approach. Architecture is a mysterious phenomenon, and its mysteriousness comes from the fact that it is composed of a very complex tissue made up of quantitative and qualitative matters. This complex body is not easily knowable. The modernist architects, with their approach to architecture as a machine — to exaggerate — neglected its other dimensions, and this led to the crisis we all know. Even post-structuralists are emphasising specific dimensions of architecture in an extreme way, which I hope will not lead to neglect of the other aspects of architecture.
Bavand Behpoor
I want to ask a question. What I do understand is that function matters. What I do not understand is why, in principle, there are architects who are functionalists. It is true that function can be the architect's raw material; but it is also a constraint that all architects face. Should this constraint not be more the concern of the client? Is there not enough demand for function in architecture? Is freedom not always what needs support? Is the architect not an artist? Do we have a painter who is "for the canvas"? Do we have an oil-painting "advocate," that we should have an architect who advocates function? And finally, is the cause of raising this matter not that no proper criterion has yet formed for measuring the value of architectural form, as has perhaps formed in many other arts?
Iman Raeisi
In my view there are two principal approaches to architecture: one is problem-solving, the other is creation. In the problem-solving approach the place of function is fully clear: function is imposed by the client (just as Mr. Shirdel said). But in the creation approach, function is redefined through the architect. There is also an in-between approach which I do not think is very important, since one cannot push invention and problem-solving forward together. In my reading, architecture is the creation of new types of space; that is, function is in second order of importance, and if we are to think of function, we should think of multi-functionality.
Faramarz Parsi
I wanted to share a restoration experience and draw a non-restoration conclusion from it. In restoration we travel a path opposite to the architects': architects start from a plan, programme and aim, and finally arrive at a building. We start with a building and arrive at the question of what function the building should have. In this process we run into strange things. One is that our client usually does not know what they want, and has no clear aim. Or expresses an aim, but in the end that aim is not what was in their mind. Another is that in restoration we always run into the issue of standards, and we have to bypass them, or to reconcile them with architectural spaces in some form. This always made me wonder how this story is possible — and yet a building is set up in the end that some people use; whichever path we have taken no longer matters. I therefore thought that this famous pair, form and function, has alongside it a philosophical pair: shape and content. Because we equate form with shape, function in some way becomes content. So in our minds form and function become a pair with a one-to-one correspondence. I have come to the conclusion that, in essence, function is form. There is no reason to separate them and ask which follows the other. Both are one thing. The encounter we have with the physical form of the building also takes place with function; and function too in the architect's mind passes through the same process that form and architectural space pass through. So I draw two simple conclusions: one, that function too falls within architectural theory and we must apply the architectural-creativity process to function; two, that standards are by no means impassable.
Reza Daneshmir
What I take from "function" is this: a topic that gained currency in modernism, and whose roots must be sought in the philosophical tendencies of figures like Jeremy Bentham and the philosophy of utilitarians, discussed in the history of philosophy. It also fitted with Marxist thinking, and with the Marxist man, or man as worker, and so was able to be in step with our social and intellectual situation. So I think the human of this kind of thinking — that is, the human of functional thinking, or in fact functional humanism — is wholly different from Renaissance humanism, and since function was fully harmonised with the thinking of utility or being useful, it grew. This thought is, in its essence, a reducer of complexities to economic ones. It is consistent with minimalist and rationalist tendencies, and stands against the thinkings of those who have not pursued this line. Of course this is stating the obvious; these are the matters of fifty years ago. It is obvious that a building should have function. It is obvious that a building without function is wrong. But that function should have priority and authenticity means that some elements are servants of other elements; that in design certain things are second-rate compared to other things. Some things are the principal and other things are the subsidiary. This pyramidal system of value, this kind of pre-judgement, takes from all the elements involved in the process the possibility of acquiring an independent identity. For example, in our architecture we have spaces such as corridor, stairs, structure, wall, ceiling, fence, etc., all of which are in some way "second-rate." Even in calculations we name the structure as "load-bearer." The semantic loads are very precise, and a kind of thinking has produced them.
Mehdi Alizadeh
Function is a fundamental concept, like the basic cells. It is of the nature of space, physical space, that affects all phenomena placed inside it. Change has always existed and will exist; from the beginning it has been so, and after this it will be the same. These four parts — wall, floor, ceiling, level-difference — are functions. The wall is a function we still use in a building with various functions. I do not include doorway and window among the elements of function, because they can take various shapes. All that has been described — arrangement, equipment, fittings, movement — are all subject to change. But what has changed and yet remains constant, whose existence is always [there]… Mr. Engineer Shirdel can express it one way and someone else another. Once I asked Mr. Engineer Afshar-Naderi, when he was talking about stairs: what do you say about the Greek amphitheatres? A Greek amphitheatre is a surface and a level-difference. That is function. What changes our projects is the wall, the ceiling, the floor, the height.
Mohammadreza Ghanei
I see function in architecture as a more general category and, contrary to Mr. Shirdel, I do not look at it from the viewpoint of a particular architectural style or theory. I think we must answer the question of function within the framework of architecture itself. I agree with Mr. Afshar-Naderi and think that function — or programme or theme (which I prefer) — is one of the main factors of a building, that must be part of its spatial essence. So the architect must correctly recognise the relation between the spatial system and the functional system. Yesterday I asked a friend who, in his view, an artist is. He replied: an artist is someone who creates a world in his mind and tries to share others in this world. So I believe that, if this theme is defined, the architect can answer the matter in his own way and even, in the form of the architectural answer he gives, create new expectations and break old standards. So when we speak of architecture, we mean a work that is creative in all its dimensions, even in the functional dimension that we expect from space.
Babak Shokoufi
Architecture, like any other large reality, is composed of a great many smaller realities, and the proximity and intertwining of these together make up the existence of architecture. I think in recent decades, or in the modern period, the discovery of some of the proximate realities and smaller realities of architecture by people thinking about architecture has so excited them that they have, in an exaggerated way, paid attention only to that one specific subject; this caused their encounter with the question of architecture to be unlike architecture itself, which is multi-layered, intertwined, complex and adjacent. For example, the discovery of the role of function in architecture by classical modernists was exciting and led them in directions we all know — perhaps eventually leading classical modernism, in some branches, towards being tedious and remote from imagination, or many of the qualities that were later criticised. The repetition of this — that is, attention to one specific procedure — has its dangers, especially if its inclination is the opposite of the previous state. The fact is that all of what has been said about function exists at the same time: form follows function, and function follows form, and many other things about function affect form, while functions also affect the form of space. Now we cannot, because of an exaggerated attention to function in one period, deny it. Just as we cannot, for example, deny the question of climate (which was raised in our own period in an exaggerated way) and build, in the rainy north of Iran with slanting heavy rain, a building whose open surfaces face the slanting rain.
Arash Mozaffari
With the discussions that have taken place, a question came up for me: do we mean the concept of function or a stylistic [movement]? I do not know whether we are to address function or the architectural functionalist current. I think we must look at this issue more deeply at root. The reason for the rise of "functional architecture" — as defined as the style of "functionalism" — based on what critics have said, is in fact a kind of new envelope for architecture; an appearance affected by internal factors and so producing different forms of architecture. The importance of this is that the aim of functionalism was to create an alternative current. The next stage was the stage of criticism. The old fashion did not pass; it became, from a fashion, a "matter that has been passed over." I think in any case this matter is fully defined. In principle, presenting a manifesto saying that form follows function, or vice-versa, is at present unnecessary. These are discussions defined and separated in some way; and now the projects themselves define their own form. When I first saw the images of Frank Gehry's Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, I was reminded of Boccioni's sculpture that moves and takes form in space; later I saw a book showing that Frank Gehry himself had placed this image opposite the Guggenheim Museum. When you think of its plan — perhaps as Mr. Shokoufi said, the plan is very elementary, a central corridor with many halls connected to it — so this matter has been "elementarily" solved here.
Farhad Ahmadi
A theoretical discussion is in fact made about a real concern. As long as we encounter no direct issue, no question really arises for us — like when we drive. Issues are raised when there is a concern about them. In no period has the concern of architects been separated from the concern of society. For instance, in the modern period the modern movement itself was a revolutionary and critical current against what existed before it. Modernism organises on this basis and is alive by criticising itself daily. For instance, the phenomenological and structuralist viewpoints arise on the basis of criticism of positivist thinking. But the question today is that the earth, with 40,000 km circumference, has 6 billion population. These people must live within this skin, must think of themselves and of generations after them. Although we may give partial solutions in one place, the matter must be looked at in the longer term. Our resources — the resources of planet earth — are not so much that we can use them several times over. Restorative and reusing views also come from here. These are not new things. To my mind today, the concern in architecture is to create — within this place and this being and these materials and energy — a habitable space that includes both qualitative and quantitative matters. Whether we name it programme or function or whatever, that is not my concern; but our work is the creation of such conditions. The principal concern is three kinds of recycling: of energy, the supply of which becomes harder day by day; of materials that do not return to nature and are destroying it; and of space — that is, when we organise space in this way, it should be capable of repeated use. The aesthetics of this architecture comes from the adaptation of this skin to its environment, not from an abstract form. There can of course be many roads to this aim; architecture is not limited to one solution.
Babak Naderi-Azad
In this discussion two points are worth noting: when we name "space" we can imagine two situations for it — one space in its physical sense, whose form is shaped, and another the space we use in conversation, by which we mean the way information is acquired by the person from outside; this has a sensory load. In literature, in poetry and painting we use it in the general sense. In the first sense, form is certainly the first and last word; but in the general sense I do not think form is everything. There I do not see the matter as a contrast between body and soul. The whole body and soul lie in form. In fact both have physical and mental natures. Mr. Alizadeh used a term, "intelligent function." Does our architecture have this quality? Our own architecture — precisely the architecture that did not claim function — none of whose spaces had a singular function: hashti and mahtabi and three-door and five-door, even the tiniest parts, were not meant to answer only one dry function. Although they answer it well, in my view this architecture did not seek to answer five hours of our daily activity. When we think about it… My understanding is that this architecture asks what the human wants to do, and in what conditions he wants to perform these tasks. In fact in how many ways can a person sit? In how many ways can he lie down? All these activities are looked at with another attitude, to answer a wider range of functions. Mr. Engineer Parsi did not address one of the arts of these buildings that are restored: their flexibility. If, for example, Mr. Parsi wanted to restore the buildings of thirty years ago — a hall in the middle, with bedroom, sitting and dining around it — I do not think he could do anything else with them, let alone meet the standards. Those who claim to follow function cannot answer for a lasting use along human life over a long period. By contrast, those who pursue higher concepts can give a more lasting answer to the matter of form and function. So when this question is raised, a kind of definition for it…
Discussion to be continued in Memar 23 with several follow-up articles.
