Form follows human function

MIT’s new Stata Center lurches impressively over Vassar Street, a mélange of surfaces and cylinders intersecting at odd angles. Designed by Frank Gehry, it’s seen as the pinnacle of hip, postmodern architecture in Boston (which ain’t saying much), and supposedly is surprisingly functional inside despite its odd form. I therefore feel decidedly square saying it but I must: I think it’s rather ugly. More than anything, its ornamentation seems ostentatious to me, arbitrary, like a sculpture pretending to be a building. Part of me still believes in that mantra of modernist architecture, form follows function. Politically and spiritually, this at least seems like an honest goal, far more than mere irony and whimsy.

Yet as I’ve been reviewing the works of Mumford and Kunstler, I’ve been realizing how much of modern architecture and modern town planning has been a disaster. Often the scale of the projects has been all wrong, and the projects have not really been focused on human needs at all. There’s typically no respect for public space, no creation of places for human interactions. And they are often just plain ugly, all gray concrete and blacktop, which on our New England winters gets pockmarked with salt stains.

And so I’ve been struggling between these two parts of myself. I want architecture and urban planning to reflect some of the honesty of modernism, and yet I want beauty and even a bit of whimsy and ornamentation. It strikes me that both post-modernism and modernism have same fault, at least as they are often practiced: An utter lack of interest in what the users of the space want, and what will seem beautiful in the context of its surroundings. Form does not follow the true, human function of the building but instead a perverted function set by someone other than the users. For modern architecture, it became cheapness of construction; for post-modern architecture, it has become hip irony; for urban planners, it became moving cars efficiently. The solution, in my humble opinion (as an ecologist who is admittedly not trained in architecture), is not to abandon “form follows function” but to make sure society gets the function it wants.

As a counter-example to the Stata Center, I would offer the Levine Science Research Center at Duke University. It too is in a generally postmodern style, but all the whimsy is directed toward parodying and playing with the lines of the nearby gothic architecture, so it fits right in on campus. It has all the functional traits the Stata Center aims to have- good lighting, large conference rooms, flexible lab space- while also managing to form a large courtyard and quadrangle with other buildings, which are filled with students and staff just enjoying a beautiful public space. It may not make the cover of any magazine, but I'll take it over the Stata Center any day.

-Hamlet's Dreams

Comments

[urbano dela cruz]

I wouldn't go so far as calling the Stata center "ugly" but I do think it's a little self-conscious. then again, posing among stuffy, hunkered concrete slabs of the rest of the newer buildings in MIT, it does give the place a bit of whimsy. (not that the crazy MIT kids need it)

btw, have you seen the work of West 8? (http://www.west8.nl/) particularly borneo-sporenburg?

[Hal O'Brien]

The problem is, form does not follow function, at least in the "Modern", post-WWI era. All too often, starchitects and urban planners with a tin eye for human observation try to impose form from above.

Rather, function follows form -- well designed buildings, spaces, and cities will generate pleasant events. Ill-designed ones will generate unpleasant events.

Hence, Corbu's Ville Radieuse giving us the riots of just a few months ago, while Venice remains as Serene a Republic as ever.

{shrug}