The Revolutionary Function of Architecture
Three constraints for architecture:
- T1: Function of a building (function)
- T2: The spatial parti & poetic themes (form)
- T3: Transcendence (form enables function)
Developers and rationalists optimize for T1, and designers and artists optimize for T2, but T3 covers the existential purpose of architecture. Can form transform itself beyond a shell for inhabitation, and actually transform its inhabitants? This has been called “the revolutionary function” of architecture, and Modernism is a textbook of failed attempts.