Application in different fields
Architecture
The phrase "form (always) follows function" became a battle cry of modernist architects after the 1930s. The credo was interpreted to mean that decorative elements, which architects call "embellishments," were superfluous in modern buildings. However, Sullivan himself did not think or design along those lines at the peak of his career. Indeed, while their buildings could be spare and crisp in their main masses, they often decorated their smooth surfaces with eruptions of lush Art Nouveau and Celtic Revival decorations, usually cast in iron or terracotta, and ranging from organic forms such as vines and ivies, to more geometric and interlocking designs, inspired by their Irish design heritage. Probably the most famous example is the writhing green ironwork that covers the entrance canopies of the Carson Building on South State Street in Chicago. These embellishments, often executed by the talented younger draftsman employed by Sullivan, would eventually become Sullivan's trademark; For architecture students, they are their instantly recognizable signature.
Product design
An episode in the history of the inherent conflict between functional design and market demands occurred in 1935, after the introduction of the aerodynamic Chrysler Airflow, when the American automobile industry temporarily halted attempts to introduce optimal aerodynamic shapes into mass production. Some automakers thought that aerodynamic efficiency would translate into a single optimal body shape, a "teardrop" shape, which would not be good for unit marketing. General Motors subsequently adopted two different positions on rationalization, one intended for its internal engineering groups, the other for its customers. Like the annual model change, the so-called aerodynamic style is often meaningless in terms of technical performance. Subsequently the drag coefficient has become both a marketing tool and a means of improving the marketability of a vehicle by somewhat reducing fuel consumption and by significantly increasing its top speed.
American industrial designers of the 1930s and 1940s such as Raymond Loewy, Norman Bel Geddes, and Henry Dreyfuss grappled with the contradictions of "form follows function" as they redesigned blenders, locomotives, and copiers for mass consumption. Loewy formulated his principle to express that product designs are limited by the functional limitations of mathematics, materials, and logic, but their acceptance is limited by social expectations. Their advice was that for very new technologies, they should be as familiar as possible, but for familiar technologies, they should be surprising.
By honestly applying “form follows function,” industrial designers had the potential to get their clients out of the way. Some simple objects with a single use such as screwdrivers, pencils and teapots could be reducible to a single optimal shape, which prevents product differentiation. Some durable items would prevent the sale of spare parts. (see planned obsolescence) From a functionality point of view, some products are simply unnecessary.
Victor Papanek") was an influential designer and philosopher who taught and wrote defending the principle of "form follows function."
Software engineering
It has been argued that the attributes of the structure and internal quality of a non-trivial artifact of operational software will primarily represent the engineering requirements of its construction, with the influence of the process being marginal. This does not mean that the process is irrelevant, but that processes compatible with the requirements of an artifact lead to more or less similar results.
[7].
The principle can also be applied to enterprise deployment architectures of modern business, where "function" is the business processes that must be supported by the enterprise architecture, or "form." If the architecture dictates how the business works, then the business is likely to suffer from a lack of flexibility, unable to adapt to business changes. Service-oriented architecture has allowed an enterprise architect to reorganize the "shape" of the architecture to meet the functional requirements of a business by adopting standards-based communication protocols that enable interoperability.
On the other hand, domain-guided design postulates that the structure (software architecture, Design Pattern, Application) must emerge from the limitations of the modeled domain (functional requirement).
While "form" and "function" may be more or less explicit and invariant concepts in many engineering doctrines, the metaprogramming and functional programming paradigms are suitable for exploring, blurring and inverting the essence of these two concepts.
The agile software development movement proposes techniques such as "test-driven development" in which the engineer starts with a minimal unit of user-facing functionality, creates an automated test, and then deploys the functionality and iterates, repeating this process. The result and argument in favor of this discipline is that the structure or "form" arises from the actual functioning and in fact since it is produced organically, it makes the project more adaptable in the long term, as well as of the highest quality due to the functional basis of automated testing.
Automotive design
If a car's design follows its function, as in its aerodynamic shape or wide stance for better vehicle dynamics, then its form is said to follow its function.
"Form follows function" can also be a principle applied to the aesthetics that a design can focus on, a concept often seen in the work of Ettore, Rembrandt, and Jean Bugatti.