Form

The architect must be a form-artist; only the art of form inherent confusion. Much of what we shall have to say
leads the way to a new architecture. August Endell, 1897 about 'form' concerns the working out, in the practice
of an art concerned with making material objects, of
The paradigm of the architect passed down to us through the ambiguity between the two senses of rhe term. The
the modern period is that of the form-giver, the creator German language (which is where the modern concept
of hierarchical and symbolic structures characterized, of form was principally developed) has a slight advantage
on the one hand, by their unity of parts and, on the over English for thinking about this problem, for where
other, by the transparency of form to meaning. English has only the single word, 'form', German has
Bernard Tschumi, 1987, 207 two, 'Gestalt' and 'Form': Gestalt generally refers to
objects as they are perceived by the senses, whereas
In the ninety years between the optimistic enthusiasm Form usually implies some degree of abstraction from
of August Endell and the cynical scepticism of Bernard the concrete particular. 1
Tschumi unrolls the history of 'form', the most important, Until the end of the nineteenth century, almost
but also the most difficult concept within the architecture nowhere except within the world of German
of this century. In a single sentence, Tschumi warns us of philosophical aesthetics was 'form' used in architecture
several of the problems we shall encounter with it: of its in any other sense than to mean simply 'shape' or 'mass',
indispensability to modernist discourse; of the supposition or in other words, than as a description of the sensory
that 'form' is what architects create; of the belief that properties of buildings. It was the appropriation of its
'form' exists to transmit meaning. other 'ideal' sense to architecture that the German
Form is one of the triad of terms ('space' and architect August Endell announced so excitedly in 1897,
'design' are the other two) through which architectural and whose adventures in the world of architecture we
modernism exists. In its dependency on 'form' shall be following here. When in the English-speaking
architecture is not alone - in every other art practice, and world 'form' started to be used in its enlarged, modernist
in culture in general, 'form' has become an indispensable sense around 1930, people frequently had difficulty in
category, without which whole territories of analysis accommodating the new concept within their previous
would remain unknown and be unapproachable. Yet understanding of the term: for example, in one of the first
architecture lays claim to particular privilege in matters English books to attempt to describe the principles of the
of 'form', because of its work in physically shaping the new architecture, Modern Architectural Design (1932),
material objects and spaces that surround us - a claim the author, Howard Robertson, wrote: 'The major
that takes us straight away to the central problem of aesthetic task therefore is to deal interestingly and
'form', one that underlies its entire significance within appropriately with form. It is this preoccupation with
Western thought. There is in 'form' an inherent ambiguity, basic, what one might call "naked" form, which
between its meaning 'shape' on the one hand, and on the distinguishes modern architectural design' (20).
other 'idea' or 'essence': one describes the property of Robertson knew that form was important, bur without
things as they are known to the senses, the other as they quite understanding why, or what it could mean apart
are known to the mind. In its appropriation of 'form', from 'shape'. It is still the case that people frequently use
architecture has, according to one's point of view, either 'form' when they mean no more than 'shape', and a
fallen victim to, or taken mischievous advantage of this nseful mental test of the meaning intended is to try

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 Form

substituting 'shape' or 'mass'. solution to a complex of problems - the nature of sub-

In addition to the 'form/shape' confusion, there stances, the process of physical change, and the percep-
is another more complex problem in understanding tion of things. 1 Against Pythagoras's earlier theory that all
'form' in the vocabulary of architecture in the twentieth things could in essence be described as numbers or ratios
century. This problem is that for much of the time, what of numbers, Plato proposed that geometrical figures,
'form' itself has been taken to mean has been rather less triangles and solids underlay the substance of the world.
important that what it does not mean. It can be argued Plato's argument is developed in the Dialogue of Timaeus.
that the real significance of 'form' has been its use as an There Plato first of all distinguishes between 'that which
oppositional category to define other values: 'form', this always is and never becomes' and 'that which is always
flabby container, has, as we shall see, accommodated becoming but never is'. The first is 'apprehensible by
itself to an astonishing variety of sometimes quite intelligence with the aid of reasoning, being eternally
contradictory concepts, but it has also been used as a the same', the second is the object of sensation; what is
defining category against a succession of other values. unchanging and known only to the mind is the 'form',
To anticipate the discussion that follows, it has been contrasted with the thing, known to sense. This
opposed variously to: decoration; mass culture; social distinction, fundamental to Plato's thinking, is repeated
values; technological experimentation and development; throughout his philosophy: 'particulars are objects of
and functionality. sight but not of intelligence, while the Forms are the
To talk about architecture without using the word objects of intelligence but not of sight' (Republic, §507).
'form' may now seem inconceivable, but let us be clear In making any thing, argues Plato, the maker follows the
about one thing: 'form' is merely a device for thought - 'form', not things already existing (§§27-28). Elsewhere,
it is neither a thing, nor a substance. And as a device in the Dialogue of Cratylus, he gives as an example a
within everyday architectural speech, its availability is of carpenter making a shuttle: 'And suppose the shuttle be
relatively recent origin, for it has only entered currency broken in the making, will he make another, looking like
within the last century. To those who say that the the broken one? Or will he look to the form according to
apparently commonsensical consensus that surrounds its which he made the other?'. The answer, of course, is to
use hardly merits bringing it in for questioning, we can the latter; and Plato continues 'Might not that justly be
only reply that its very normality is precisely what should called the true or ideal shuttle?' (Dialogues, vol. 3, §389).
make us suspicious of it. Like a virus that invades a cell From this, it is readily apparent that as far as Plato was
and becomes part of it, 'form' has entered criticism so concerned, forms were always superior to things made in
completely, overcoming all resistance, to the extent that their resemblance. Returning to Timaeus, Plato develops
now we can hardly speak about architecture without it. the distinction between the form and the thing as follows:
As the historian David Summers has warned in relation
to visual art, 'Form is far from the neutral taxonomic there exist, first, the unchanging form, uncreated and
and developmental category it might be thought to be';' indestructible, admitting no modification and entering
the same goes for architecture. no combination, imperceptible to sight or the other
senses, the object of thought: second, that which bears
'Form' in Antiquity: Plato and Aristotle the same name as the form and resembles it, but is
What made 'form' such a pliable and versatile concept, sensible, has come into existence ... is apprehended
so convenient to the purposes of twentieth-century by opinion with the aid of sensation. (§52)
architecture? Part of the explanation for this lies in its
long history within Western philosophy, during which it Forms, as objects of thought, find their correspondence
served as the solution to a wide variety of philosophical in things, which are bounded by surfaces, all of which
problems. It is worth looking briefly at the philosophical according to Plato are composed of either one of two
uses of 'form' before it was appropriated by architecture, types of triangles (§53). In the Republic, Plato explains
both in order to find some of the causes for its attraction, that philosophers, in pursuit of the intelligible forms, starr
but also because in its various original purposes are with basic geometric figures, 'though they are not really
revealed the sources of some the confusions in its modern thinking about them at all, but about the originals which
architectural currency. they resemble'. And he continues, 'The figures they draw
The principal originator of the concept of 'form' or model ... they treat as illustrations only, the real
in antiquity was Plato. For Plato, 'forms' provided the subjects of their investigation being invisible except to

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 Form

the eye of the mind' (§510). By presenting as a series of development of like characters in the child' (§640a).
·shapes' those features of objects that were the inherently Elsewhere, Aristotle argues that same is true of all
invisible form of things, Plato set up that confusion over processes of material production, for everything must
the two senses of form with which the modern use of the come from something: thus he says 'house comes from
concept is still entangled, and in no field more than so house', for no house can exist independent of the material
than architecture. object (Metaphysics, §10326). And even in the case of
In Plato's pupil Aristotle, we find a reluctance to works of art, which have spontaneous novelty, they have
make categorical distinctions between forms and things. their pre-existing cause in the skills and abilities of a
In general, Aristotle refused to accept that forms had human, sentient artist, and in the identifiable conventions
any absolute existence independently of the matter of of that particular art. Although 'Art indeed consists in
the objects in which they were found: 'Each thing itself the conception of the result to be produced before its
and its essence are one and the same' (Metaphysics, realization in the material' (Parts of Animals, §640a),
§ 1031 b ). Although Aristotle used 'form' in a variety Aristotle's sees this 'form' as like the genetic transmission
of different senses, both referring to shape and to idea, between organic objects, not as an uncreated,
his most inclusive definition, and the one that most indestructible pure object of thought. In the distinction
comprehensively conveys his thought, is when he says between Plato's 'form' as an unknowable, pre-existing
'By form I mean the essence of each thing and its primary idea, and Aristotle's 'form' as the genetic material
substance' (§10326). Aristotle's discussion of form has produced from the mind of the artist, we have a further
other interesting aspects: thus he conceives the form of cause for modern ambiguity.
things existing in what they are not, or in what they have
not yet become. In other words, form may be conceived Neo-Platonism and the Renaissance
of as a lack (Physics Book II, chapter 1, §1936); and this Aristotle's metaphor of building to describe the
attraction of two opposites he describes in terms of relationship between form and matter was used by
gender, 'what desires the form is matter, as the female successive philosophers in later antiquity and the Middle
desires the male' (Physics, Book I, chapter 9, § 192a). Ages though, confusingly, it was most popular with
But one should not see Aristotle's notion of 'form' as neo-Platonists who adopted it in order to identify the
merely arising out his critique of Plato, and a reluctance causes and origins of beauty - which was not at all the
to accept the absolute priority to what is always purpose for which Aristotle had intended it. Thus the
'impercetible to the sight or the other senses'; Aristotle's third-century AD Alexandrian philosopher Plotinus, in the
ideas about 'form' arose from his consideration of a Ennead, to show that beauty lies in the Ideal-Form, asks
different question, the generative process of plants and
animals. At the beginning of On the Parts of Animals, On what principle does the architect, when he finds
Aristotle argued that it was wrong to look for the origin the house standing before him correspondent with his
of organic things in the process of their development, inner ideal of a house, pronounce it beautiful? Is it
but that rather one must start by considering their not that the house before him, the stones apart, is the
characteristics in their completed, final state, and only inner idea stamped upon the mass of exterior matter,
then to deal with their evolution. Aristotle justified this the indivisible exhibited in diversity? (Hofstadter and
by an analogy with building: Kuhns, 144)

the plan of the house, or the house, has this and Plotinus's fifteenth-century Florentine translator, the
that form; and because it has this and that form, neo-Platonist Marsilio Ficino, outlines a similar argument
therefore is its construction carried out in this or to identify beauty as in the independence of form
that manner. For the process of evolution is for the from matter:
sake of the thing finally evolved, and not this for
the sake of the process. In the beginning, an architect conceives an idea of the
building, like an Idea in the soul. Then he builds, as
Plants and animals have their pre-existence not in an nearly as possible, the kind of house he has thought
idea, but in an actual predecessor in time - 'for man is out. Who will deny that the house is a body, and that
generated from man; and thus it is the possession of it is very much like the incorporeal idea of the builder
certain characters by the parent that determines the in likeness to which it was made? Furthermore, it is

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 Form

I
{opposite) Michelangelo, Tomb of Giuliano de'Medici, Medici Chapel, San Lorenzo, {above) A. Palladio, Villa Godi, Lugo di Vicenza, 1532-42. 'Buildings are esteemed
Florence, 1531-33. Sculpture, according to Vasari {following Michelangelo), was more for their form than their materials': Palladio, like most architects until the
'an art which lifts the superfluous from the material, and reduces it to that form modern era, used 'form' as a synonym for 'shape'.
which is drawn from the mind of the artist'.

to be judged like the idea more because of a certain definition of lineamenti has little in common with any
incorporeal plan than because of its matter. Therefore, notion of form, ancient or modern: Alberti describes
subtract its matter, if you can. You can indeed lineamenti as 'the correct, infallible way of joining and
subtract it in thought, but leave the plan; nothing fitting together those lines and angles which define and
material or corporeal will remain to you. (Hofstadter enclose the surfaces of the building' (7). 4
and Kuhns, 225) The Aristotelian notion of form, as a property of
all material things, seems to have featured little in
These and similar conceptions of 'form' deriving from Renaissance architectural thought, though it did appear
classical philosophy circulated amongst Renaissance in relation to sculpture - defined by Vasari as 'an art
humanists during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. which lifts the superfluous from the material, and reduces
However, their influence appears to have been it to that form which is drawn in the mind of the artist'
insignificant in the day-to-day vocabulary of architecture, (1878, vol. I, 148); and Michelangelo's view of sculpture
where 'form', in so far as it was used at all, was generally as what encloses the artist's idea had, as Panofsky points
only a synonym for shape. Thus Vasari, in his life of out, a definite Aristotelian basis.' A rare case of a more
Michelangelo, records 'The people of Rome ... were Aristotelian view of 'form' used relative to architecture
anxious to give some useful, commodious and beautiful occurs when Daniele Barbaro, Palladio's patron, wrote
form to the Capitol' (1965, 388). The exceptions to this as follows in his commentary on Vitruvius: 'Imprinted
are those Renaissance humanists who were concerned to in every work raised up from reason and accomplished
show that architecture conformed to ancient philosophers' through drawing is evidence of the artist, of the form
conception of the world, and indeed provided an and quality that was in his mind; for the artist works first
analogue for its processes. Alberti, in De Re Aedificatore, from the mind and symbolizes then the exterior matter
written in the mid-fifteenth century, managed to make after the interior state, especially in architecture' (11).
use of several of the antique theories of 'form' already
mentioned. His well known claim that 'within the form Post-Renaissance
and figure of a building there resides some natural In general, it can be said that while the notions of form
excellence that excites the mind and is immediately developed in ancient philosophy were of interest to
recognized by it' (302), is based upon the Pythagorean humanist scholars, they had little impact on the ordinary
theory of numbers and arithmetic as the basis of practice of architecture, or its vocabulary, until the
everything. On the other hand, when he says that 'It twentieth century. Throughout the sixteenth, seventeenth
is quite possible to project whole forms in the mind, and eighteenth centuries, and indeed until the twentieth
without any recourse to the material' (7), this accords century everywhere except in German-speaking countries,
with neo-Platonist thought; and Erwin Panofsky when architects and critics talked about 'form', they
interpreted Alberti's distinction between materia, the almost invariably meant only 'shape'. When Palladio
products of nature, and lineamenti, 'the products of stated that 'buildings are esteemed more for their form
thought', in the same terms. Panofsky, with a modernist's than for their materials' (Burns, 209), it does not appear,
propensity to see everything in terms of 'form', translated notwithstanding his association with Daniele Barbaro,
lineamenti as 'form', but this is unconvincing, for Alberti's that he had anything metaphysical in mind. Nor, for

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 Form

example, when the French theorist Quatremere de Quincy Kant

wrote in 1788 that 'stone, in copying itself, or to put it The discipline of philosophical aesthetics in the late
better, in copying nothing, has offered no form to art', is eighteenth century took off with the realization that
it likely that he meant more than 'shape'. And when Sir the source of beauty lay not in objects themselves, but
John Soane, in his Lectures, said the student 'will learn in the process by which they were perceived. In the
to appreciate that succession and variety of forms' (591) development of this argument, 'form' was to be a key
found in the works of the sixteenth-century Italians, his concept, no longer (as it had been throughout antiquity
use of the word was entirely characteristic of English and the Renaissance) a property of things, but exclusively
nineteenth-century writers. And even when in 1825 of the seeing of them. The single most important
Joseph Gwilt wrote in his introduction to his edition contributor to this new approach was Immanuel Kant,
of Sir William Chambers's Treatise that 'Form alone whose Critique of Judgment (1790) established 'form' as
fastens on the mind in works of architecture' (76) - the basic category for the perception of art. Kant argued
although this might sound like a 1920s modernist - he that the judgment of beauty belonged to a separate
was simply stressing that it was not materials themselves faculty of mind, unconnected to either knowledge
that mattered, but the way they were arranged. Nor, (cognition) or emotions (desire). Our ability to make
when Viollet-le-Duc announced at the beginning of his sense of the bewildering variety of sensations presented to
Lectures (1860) that his purpose was 'to inquire into us lay in the existence within the mind of constructs of
the reason of every form - for every architectural form space and of time, and of a faculty of 'form', which Kant
has its reason' (vol. 1, 7) should we imagine that he described as 'that which so determines the manifold of
was talking about an abstract concept. Although Viollet appearance that it allows of being ordered in certain
referred repeatedly to 'form' in his Lectures, his purpose relations' (Critique of Pure Reason, 66). It is important to
in doing so was to stress its dependence upon the stress that for Kant, form was different to that aspect of
structural principle employed: things which is known through sensation - that is matter;
and form is not matter. Aesthetic judgment, the
form is not the result of caprice ... only the expression perception of what the mind finds pleasing, occurs
of structure ... I cannot give you the rules by which through its ability to recognize in the external world
the form [forme] is governed, inasmuch as it is the features that satisfy the internal concept of form. Kant
very nature of that form to adapt itself to all the stresses that aesthetic judgments are only related to 'form·
requirements of the structure; give me a structure - 'in a pure judgment of taste the delight in the object is
and I will find you the forms that naturally result connected with the mere estimate of its form' (Critique of
from it, but if you change the structure, I must Judgment, 146). Everything about an object that brings to
change the forms. (vol. I, 283-84) mind either knowledge or desire is irrelevant to the pure
aesthetic judgment, 'whose determining ground, is ...
The transformation of 'form' into an altogether simply finality of form' (65). And anything that gives
more vital and dynamic concept started in Germany, rise to charm, or other association, that is to say all
in the 1790s, and until the early twentieth century contingent properties like colour, or ornament, is
remained almost entirely confined to German-speaking superfluous: as Kant puts it, 'In painting, sculpture,
countries. Even there, for most of the nineteenth century, and in fact in all the formative arts, in architecture
discussion of 'form' was largely restricted to philosophical and horticulture, so far as fine arts, the design is what
aesthetics, only in the 1890s becoming widely used by is essential. Here it is not what gratifies in sensation, but
artists and architects in its by then greatly expanded merely what pleases by its form, that is the fundamental
sense. The new interest in 'form' that developed in the prerequisite for taste' (67). Kant also excludes from
1790s had two distinct aspects, each in their own way aesthetic judgment those aspects of an object that
important for the subsequent development of the concept. concern its usefulness, since these involve knowledge
The first emerges from the philosophy of aesthetic about what the object does or is, and so belong to
perception developed by Kant; the second from the cognition, and not to the aesthetic: 'the aesthetic
theories of nature and natural generation developed judgment ... brings to our notice no quality of the objn."!..
by Goethe. but only the final form in the determination of the pow=
of representation engaged upon it' (71). Not surprising},.
since it would have undermined his argument that ·for="

154
 Form

were a property of the beholders' mind, Kant was Goethe

unspecific about the appearance forms might take Schiller's concept of 'living form' corresponded closely
;::i objects - though he did suggest that forms of the to the ideas that his friend Goethe was developing about
~egular geometric kind favoured by neo-Platonists natural science. In his research into the morphology of
are not conducive to aesthetic judgments, for they plants, undertaken from the late 1780s, Goethe wanted -
are presentations of determinate concepts, whereas in an essentially Aristotelian quest - to find an original
irregularity, because it is not suggestive of purpose, plant, to whose Urform all other plants - even those not
allows more freedom to the exercize of purely aesthetic yet existing - could be related. Goethe's thinking focussed
iudgments (86-88). particularly in what he saw as the inadequacy of the
The significance of Kant's thought, in the history of methods of biological classification developed by Linnaeus
·form', was to establish that 'form' lies in the beholding, and later Cuvier, methods which essentially categorized
not in the thing beholden, and that in so far as the plants and animals according to their component parts,
mind recognizes beauty in objects, it is because it sees as if they were constructed in the same way as man-made
within them a representation of that form, independent artefacts. For Goethe, this system failed because it neither
of content or meaning. Kant's contemporaries, the took account of the essential coherence and wholeness of
Romantic writers Goethe, Schiller and A. W. Schlegel, specimens, nor of their quality as vital and living; as he
while they were enthusiastic about Kant's account of remarked to Schiller, 'there ought to be another method
the relationship between the beholder and the object of presenting nature, not in separate pieces, but as living
in creating aesthetic experience, felt that his abstract actuality, striving from the whole to the parts' (Magnus,
scheme failed to provide a satisfactory account of why 69). Moreover, the Linnaean system treated natural form
we take pleasure in forms, and in the nature of that as essentially static, neglecting that in nature, as Goethe
pleasure. Schiller, in his On the Aesthetic Education of put it, 'nothing stands still'. 6 The alternative method of
Man (1794-95), developed the notion of 'living-forms' classification proposed by Goethe placed all specimens
to describe what made works of art aesthetically within a series from the simplest to the most complex;
satisfying. Schiller proposed a scheme in which human from the features common to all specimens, Goethe
psychology could be accounted for through two drives - deduced the existence of an Urpflanze (an archetypal
'form-drive' and 'sense-drive', while a third drive, original plant), from whose form all other plants might
'play-drive', allowed each of the two main drives to be contrived. As he wrote to Herder in 1787,
recognize their opposite, while retaining their integrity.
The outward objects to which the play-drive The archetypal plant [Urpflanze] will be the strangest
corresponded were 'living-forms'. Schiller explained growth the world has ever seen, and Nature herself
how these were manifested: shall envy me for it. With such a model, and with the
key to it in one's hands, one will be able to contrive
the term beauty is neither extended to cover the whole an infinite variety of plants. They will be strictly
realm of living things nor is it merely confined to this logical plants - in other words, even though they
realm. A block of marble, though it is and remains may not actually exist, they could exist. They will
lifeless, can nevertheless, thanks to the architect or not be mere picturesque and imaginative projections.
sculptor, become living form [lebende Gestalt]; and They will be imbued with inner truth and necessity.
a human being, though he may live and have form And the same law will be applicable to all that lives.
[Gestalt], is far from being on that account a living (Italian Journey, 299)
form. As long as we merely think about his form, it
is lifeless, a mere abstraction; as long as we merely Seen in these terms, the 'Urform' was a principle of all
feel his life, it is formless, a mere impression. Only organic material, in accordance with which all generation
when his form [Form] lives in our feeling and his life took place. And Goethe was at pains to stress that in no
takes on form in our understanding, does he become sense could the form be considered apart from the inward
living form. (XV.3) spirit: as he wrote,

For Schiller, as for Goethe and Schlegel, the subject of all Nature has neither core
art was to articulate in such 'living forms' the life we feel Nor shell,
within ourselves. But everything at once does spell.

155
 Form

IF/I/It ✓ ,l/./yhl///(l/111~
. ,,,

Archetypal plants, from J. W. von Goethe, Zur Naturwissenschaft, 1823, vol. 2.

Goethe speculated upon the existence of an archetypal, original plant, from
which the forms of all other plants might be deduced.

Look to thyself, and thou shalt see we must understand the exact meaning of the term
Whether thou core or shell mayest be. form, since most critics, and more especially those
(Magnus, 238) who insist on a stiff regularity, interpret it merely in
a mechanical, and not in an organical sense. Form
For Goethe and the other Romantics, exactly the same is mechanical when, through external force, it is
principles of organic form found in nature applied imparted to any material merely as an accidental
equally to art, and indeed to all products of human addition without reference to its quality; as, for
culture. The very same concept of Urform was adapted example, when we give a particular shape to a soft
by Wilhelm von Humboldt to the study of language, mass that it may retain the same after its induration.
whence in turn it provided an analogy for architecture, Organical form, again, is innate; it unfolds itself
in the thinking of Gottfried Semper (see chapter 5, p. 71). from within, and acquires its determination
The significance of Goethe's theory was to provide a contemporaneously with the perfect development
theory of 'form' which acknowledged the ever-changing of the germ. We everywhere discover such forms in
features of nature - and of art - without positing the nature throughout the whole range of living powers.
existence of an absolute ideal category, known only from the crystallization of salts and minerals to plants
to thought. One of the clearest, and perhaps one the and flowers, and from these again to the human bod,-.
most influential statements of the Romantics' conception In the fine arts, as well as in the domain of nature -
of 'organic form', occurs in Schlegel's Lectures on the supreme artist, all genuine forms are organical,
Dramatic Art delivered in 1808-9, and translated into that is determined by the quality of the work. In a
English in 1846: word, the form is nothing but a significant exterior.

156
 Form

the speaking physiognomy of each thing, which, as Hegelian statements of the notion of form. On the other
long as it is not disfigured by any destructive accident, hand, his description at the beginning of Der Stil of the
gives a true evidence of its hidden essence. (340) project as a search for the common Urform that underlay
the successive transformations of art (seep. 71 above),
While the Romantics' notion of 'living form' preserved was clearly indebted to Goethe; as too was his statement
the Kantian idea that form was a property of the beholder in the Prolegomenon to show not 'the making of artistic
as much as of the object, it also threatened the purity of form, but its becoming' (183).
Kant's conception, for form was in danger of becoming,
as Schlegel said, a sign of something else, of an inner life Formalism
force. While the Romantics were at pains to preserve the If 'form' was already a confusing concept in the early
unity between the two concepts through their insistence nineteenth century, what happened to it later in the
that it was through the subject's sense of their own century made it even more so. From the 1830s, German
psychology that they were able to recognize the living philosophical aesthetics was divided between two schools,
form in the object, a tendency to separate the mental one generally referred to as idealist, concerned with the
category from the property of objects became apparent signification of forms;' the other, formalist, concentrating
in the development of idealist philosophy in early upon the mode of perception of forms devoid of
nineteenth-century Germany to which we shall now turn. suprasensory meaning. Common to both, but with an
utterly different meaning to each, lay the single term
Philosophical Idealism 'form'. Within the field of philosophy, formalism was
For idealist philosophers, of whom Hegel is the most the more dominant school for most of the century.
famous, the appearance of things presented to the senses The leading post-Kantian was J. F. Herbart, whose
concealed an Idea that lay within, or beyond - an contribution to aesthetics was, as Mallgrave and
approach based upon Plato, even if it was also critical Ikonomou put it, to argue that 'the meaning of a work
of him. The purpose of aesthetics was to reveal that of art is superfluous because each work consists, in
underlying Idea: in art, 'every definite content determines essence, of a set of unique relations of form, composed by
a form [Form] suitable to it' (Hegel, Aesthetics, 13). The the artist with craft and intention' (10). Herbart defined
possible content signified by the form ranged from the aesthetics in terms of the psychological reception of the
character of individual artists, to the character of whole elementary relations of lines, tones, planes and colour,
' civilizations or epochs. Considered in terms of the
practice of art, the idealist attitude towards 'form' is
and much of his work was devoted to psychological
aspects of this process; and indeed, his work contributed
well summarized by a later idealist philosopher, Robert as much to the early development of psychology as it did
Vischer, in an essay of 1873: 'form', he argues, is the to aesthetics. One of Herbart's better-known disciples
'surrogate' of Idea, and it is the aim of the artist 'to was the Swiss pedagogue Friedrich Froebe!, whose 'gifts'
emancipate this idea' (120). (see ill. p. 158), sets of progressively more complex
It will already be apparent how very confusing colourless, geometrically shaped bricks, provided an
a concept 'form' had become by the early nineteenth object lesson in the process of Herbartian formalist
century in Germany: on the one hand, in Kant, aesthetics - the bricks are 'pure forms' from which the
exclusively a property of perception; on the other hand, young child learns of what the world is made. The legend
in Goethe, a property of things, recognizable as a 'germ', that the presentation of a set of Froebe! bricks guided
or genetic principle; and in Hegel, a property above and the young Frank Lloyd Wright's future choice of career
before things, knowable only to the mind. It is hardly provides an unexpectedly direct connection between
surprising that when architects first started to make use Kant's aesthetics and modern architecture. 8
of 'form', all three different senses were easily mixed up. Herbart's aesthetics were developed by other
The first architectural writer in whose work 'form' was philosophers in the second half of the nineteenth century,
an important concept, Gottfried Semper, employed it in at principally by Robert Zimmermann, who developed
least two senses. For Semper, 'the forms of art ... are the an extensive 'science of form', which concentrated
necessary outcome of a principle or idea that must have particularly on the relationships perceived between forms,
existed before them' (quoted in Ettlinger, 57); or as he put rather than the forms themselves. Something of the
it elsewhere, form is 'the idea becoming visible' (Der Stil, potential for the application of formalist aesthetics to
trans. Mallgrave, 190) - both of which are purely idealist, architecture was realized in an essay by the architect

157
 Form

Froebel Gift no. IV, c. 1890: 'Pure forms'. The philosopher Herbart's idea that forms
exist independently of meaning was developed into a pedagogical system by the
Swiss educationalist Friedrich Froebe!, whose 'gifts' - sets of plain wooden bricks -
provided the child with instruction by stages in the elements of which the world
is supposedly made.

Adolf Goller, 'What is the Cause of the Perpetual Style nothing to natural reason' ('Style Change', 196). This
Change in Architecture?' (1887), in which Goller surprising view, anticipating the development of abstract.
proposed that 'Architecture ... is the true art of visible non-objective art and suggesting that its origin lay in
pure form' (198). Goller defined the beauty of form as architecture, was possible because of Goller's rigid,
'an inherently pleasurable, meaningless play of lines or of Kantian exclusion from 'form' of anything that signified
light and shade' (195); 'form delights the spectator even a content.
without there being any content' (Aesthetik, 6). Unlike Goller's essay was unusual, and from the 1870s, what
painting or sculpture, 'architecture offers us systems of reanimated the potentially arid formalist approach to
abstract, geometrical lines without the images of concrete aesthetics was the recovery of the earlier, Romantic notior:
things that we encounter in life. In viewing architectural of 'living form' to create the more scientific concept of
works, we therefore lack the latent ideas or memories that 'empathy'. The basis of this, that works of art hold
invariably and necessarily come to mind with painting interest for us because of our ability to see in them the
and sculpture. It follows that architectural forms mean sensations that we know from our own bodies, was first

158
 Form

made explicit by the philosopher Hermann Lotze, in observations follow from this proposition. First of all, it
1856: 'no form is so unyielding that our imagination allows him to see ornament not - as most modernists
cannot project its life into it' (I, 584 ). Taken up by the were to do - as what is antagonistic to form, but rather
philosopher Robert Vischer, empathy was first related to as 'the expression of excessive force of form' (179).
architecture in an important and influential, though Secondly, there are his comments on 'modern' (i.e.,
entirely speculative, essay of 1873, 'On the Optical Sense Renaissance and post-Renaissance) architecture: 'The
of Form'. Applied to architecture, empathy was to be modern spirit characteristically prefers the architectural
fruitful in enriching the concept of 'form' in the 1890s. form to work its way out of the material with some
Although it was widely taken up, the two writers with effort; it does not look for a conclusion so much as for
most influence on its subsequent use (and not just in a process of becoming: a gradual victory of form' (178).
architecture, but in all the arts) were the art historian Thirdly, and perhaps most importantly, he acknowledged
Heinrich Wolfflin and the sculptor Adolf Hildebrand. that if 'form' belongs primarily to the viewer's perception,
We shall now consider in more detail what these two then historical changes in architecture are to be under-
had to say about 'form'. stood primarily in terms of changes in the mode of vision
- in other words, that vision has its history as well as
Wolfflin architecture. This proposition, which follows naturally
Wolfflin's doctoral thesis, 'Prolegomena to a Psychology from Kant's aesthetics, was to present something of a
of Architecture', was presented in 1886 (although not problem in the subsequent modernist use of the concept
published until the 1930s), and states particularly clearly of form, for it undermined the argument that new forms
the conception of form contained in his later and well were the necessary outcome of new material conditions;
known books, Renaissance and Baroque (1889) and and it also called into question the widespread suppos-
Principles of Art History (1915). The opening question of ition - for example in the teaching of the Bauhaus - that
the 'Prolegomena' is how is it that forms of architecture in dealing with form one was dealing with a timeless, uni-
can express a mood or emotion? Wolfflin's answer was versal category. This fundamental difficulty may be one of
in the principle of empathy - 'Physical forms express a the reasons why, as we shall see, there was little interest in
character only because we ourselves possess a body' the further development of 'form' after the 1920s.
(151); for 'Our own bodily organization is the form
through which we apprehend everything physical' Hildebrand
(157-58). Having established a correspondence between Adolf Hildebrand's essay The Problem of Form in the
the sense of our own body and of the work of Fine Arts (1893), although principally about sculpture,
architecture, Wolfflin turns to an account of architecture has some important things to say about architecture, and
in which the conception of 'form' is clearly indebted to as it was widely read in avant-garde circles in the early
Goethe and the Romantics (the source he acknowledges part of the twentieth century, appears to have had some
is Schopenhauer): influence on architectural thinking. The book is directed
against 'impressionism', against the view that the subject
What holds us upright and prevents a formless of art consists in the appearance of things. Hildebrand
collapse? It is the opposing force that we may call starts by distinguishing between 'form' and appearance:
will, life, or whatever. I call it force of form things present themselves in a multitude of changing
[Formkraft]. The opposition between matter and appearances, none of which reveals the form, which
force of form, which sets the entire organic world can only be perceived by the mind. 'The idea of form
in motion, is the principal theme of architecture .... is the sum total that we have extracted by comparing
We assume that in everything there is a will that appearances' (227-28). The sense of form is gained by the
struggles to become form and has to overcome the kinaesthetic experience, the real or imagined movement
resistance of a formless matter. (159) necessary to interpret the appearance things present to the
eye. Developing out of this argument, Hildebrand has one
He continues, emphasizing in a manner reminiscent of profoundly original observation, and one which shifted
Aristotle, the coexistence of form and matter: 'form is the entire conception of 'form' in architecture, and that is
not wrapped around matter as something extraneous but that the 'form' in architecture is space; in architecture, he
works its way out of matter as an immanent will. Matter says 'space itself, in the sense of inherent form, becomes
and form are inseparable' (160). A number of interesting effective form for the eye' (269). Although the concept of

159
 Form

'spatial form' had certainly been used before (see

Wolfflin, 'Prolegomena', 154), it is to Hildebrand, as well
as to the aesthetic philosopher August Schmarsow, that
we owe the proposition that 'form' in architecture is to be
identified primarily through the experience of space.
Schmarsow presented a more developed version of this
theme in a lecture given the same year as Hildebrand's
book. In 'The Essence of Architectural Creation' (1893)
Schmarsow argued that the particularity of architecture
lies in the fact that the viewer's empathetic sense is
directed not to its masses, but into its space. Schmarsow
proposes a direct equivalence between architectural space
and the body's form:

The intuited form of space, which surrounds us

wherever we may be and which we then always erect
around ourselves and consider more necessary than
the form of our own body, consists of the residues of
sensory experience to which the muscular sensations
of our body, the sensitivity of our skin, and the
structure of our body all contribute. As soon as we
have learned to experience ourselves and ourselves
alone as the centre of this space, whose co-ordinates
intersect in us, we have found the precious kernel ...
on which the architectural creation is based. (286-87)

Schmarsow subsequently elaborated this argument, and

as a contribution to the meaning of 'form' relative to
architecture, it was fundamental to both Paul Frankl's
Principles of Architectural History (1914), and to the
Getty tomb, Graceland cemetery, Chicago, L. Sullivan, 1890. Forms, in Louis Sullivan's aesthetics of modern architecture. For example, in 1921,
remarkably perceptive summary of their purpose in architectural discourse, 'stand
H. Sorge! in Architektur-Aesthetik wrote, in what was by
for relationships between the immaterial and the material, between the subjective
and the objective'. then a fairly unoriginal remark, 'The "problem of form"
in architecture must be transposed into a "problem of
space'" (Neumeyer, 171).

We might at this point take stock of what, by about

1900, 'form' had been used to mean. There are at least
four sets of opposing ideas:
(i) 'form' as a property of the seeing of objects (Kant),
or of the objects themselves;
(ii) 'form' as a 'germ', a generative principle contained
within organic matter, or works of art (Goethe); or as
an 'idea' preceding the thing (Hegel);
(iii) 'form' as the end of art, and entire subject of art.
as Goller had proposed; or as merely the sign, through
which an idea or force was revealed;
(iv) 'form' in works of architecture presented by their
mass; or by their space.

160
 Form

Loaded down as it was with the burden of beyond the immediately perceptible world of the senses;
::-epresenting some of the major divisions of thought in (3) it connected the mental apparatus of aesthetic
nineteenth-century aesthetics, it is hardly surprising that perception with the material world; and (4) it gave to
::he term lacked clarity when it started to be ,videly used architects a description for that part of their work over
in architectural vocabulary in the twentieth century. which they held exclusive and unequivocal control. None
Indeed, as we shall see, in its ambiguity lay part of its of these factors describe what 'form' actually meant in
appeal. modernist discourse, and to find this out, we must look
at the various oppositions in which it was used.
So far, we have considered the later development of
·form' only within the German-speaking world. Its entry, Form as resistance to ornament. This is the first and
in its newly enlarged sense, into the English-language probably most familiar use of 'form' within modernism,
\·ocabulary of architecture occurred in the United States, as a means of describing, and validating, that aspect of
where the Vienna-trained architect Leopold Eidlitz, in his architecture which is not ornament. This sense is made
book The Nature and Function of Art (1881), was the dear for example by the German critic Adolf Behne,
first to present an essentially Hegelian view of 'form' to writing in the l 920s: 'The concept of "form" does not
an American audience. Eidlitz's attitude to form can be deal with accessories, decoration, taste or style ... but
summed up in his statement, 'Forms in architectural art with the consequences arising from a building's ability
are the expressions of ideas in matter' (307). Eidlitz's to be an enduring structure' (13 7). The main source of
book precedes the much better-known and quite unique rhe anti-decoration concept of form lay in the polemics
discourse on 'form' by Louis Sullivan in Kindergarten against Secession artists and designers in Vienna in the
Chats, numbers 12, 13 and 14 (1901). These essays, l 890s, evolved most famously by Adolf Loos. Although
usually read for Sullivan's views on 'function', are even his essay 'Ornament and Crime' of 1908 is the best-
more interesting for what he says about 'form'. To quote known expression of this point of view, it is important
a characteristic passage: to understand that Loos was able to reach the position
advanced in this essay through the already existing
Form in everything and anything, everywhere and propositions about 'form'. In an earlier article, 'The
at every instant. According to their nature, their Principle of Cladding' (1898), Loos had written 'Every
function, some forms are definite, some indefinite; material possesses its own language of forms, and none
some are nebulous, others concrete and sharp; some may lay claim for itself to the forms of another material.
symmetrical, others purely rhythmical. Some are For forms have been constituted out of the applicability
abstract, others material. Some appeal to the eye, and methods of production of materials' (66). Loos was
some to the ear, some to the touch, some to the here attacking the simulation of one material in another,
sense of smell ... But all, without fail, stand for characteristic of Secession work. The notion that each
relationships between the immaterial and the material has its own forms is directly derived from
material, between the subjective and the objective - Semper, and one might find its origin in a sentence such
between the Infinite Spirit and the finite mind. (45) as the following from Der Stil: 'Every material conditions
its own particular manner of formation by the properties
Even from this passage, it will be dear that Sullivan was that distinguish it from other materials and that demand
primarily inspired by the 'organic form' of the German a technical treatment appropriate to it' (§61, 258).
Romantics, of Goethe and Schiller, and their view that However, Loos's rendering of Semper's idea about the
in this lay the correspondence between nature and art. relation between form and materials is rather reductive,
As an expression of their relevance to architecture, and suggests a literal determination of Form by Material
Kindergarten Chats cannot be equalled, at any date or that Semper had been keen to avoid; for Semper, all forms
in any other language. were the outcome of an idea or artistic motive, which
was simply modified by the particular material in which
'Form' within twentieth-century modernism it was worked. While Loos removed all mention of 'Idea',
Architectural modernism adopted 'form' and made it the underlying conception of form which he is employing
its cardinal term for various reasons: (1) it was not a nonetheless remains idealist, and allows him to argue that
metaphor (if its biological derivation was overlooked); there is a 'form' which is inherent to material, and which
(2) it implied that the true substance of architecture lay is endangered, or destroyed by decoration. Loos set the

161
 Form

r
C

Interior, ZentralSparkasse, Mariahilf-Neubau, Vienna, Adolf Loos, 1914.

p
precedent for twentieth-century modernism's use of 'form' person something resembling bodily pain and the n
as resistance to those despicable tendencies, the same uncomfortable sensation that is produced by dirt
ornamental and the decorative.

Form as antidote to mass culture. In a long speech

and foul smells.

While this may sound not unlike Adolf Laos's objections

....
0

entitled 'Where Do We Stand?' delivered at the 1911 to ornament, in fact Muthesius's object of attack was very lJ
Congress of the Deutsche Werkbund, the architect different. As Frederic Schwartz has shown, in pre-1914
and critic Hermann Muthesius drew two specific Germany, 'culture' was a central and much discussed pi
oppositions, between 'form' and 'barbarism', and concept in the developing discourse of resistance to the C
'form' and 'Impressionism'. Muthesius spoke alienating effects of capitalism.' 'Form' therefore was,
as follows: amongst other things, a guarantee against the soullessness
of modern economic life. Muthesius returned to this later
What we are pleased to call culture is unthinkable in the speech with his attack upon 'Impressionism':
without a compromising respect for form; and

--
formlessness is just another name for philistinism. It is evident that the ephemeral is incompatible
Form is a higher intellectual need in the same way with the true essence of architecture ... The present Cl
that cleanliness is a higher physical need, because the impressionistic attitude towards art in a sense is
sight of crude forms will cause a really cultivated unfavourable to its development. Impressionism is

1 62
 Form

conceivable in painting, literature, sculpture and to

some extent perhaps even music, but in architecture it
does not bear thinking about. The few individualistic
attempts already tried out by some architects to
illustrate what might be an impressionistic manner
are simply horrifying.

While this is an explicit attack upon Art Nouveau, as

Schwartz points out, the reference to 'Impressionism',
in the context of the Werkbund, refers to a discourse
about the relationship between art and the market, and
described both a social condition and art's response to it.
Impressionism describes both the effects of laissez-faire -
social atomization, individualism, and the indifference of
those who sell goods to their production or their quality
- and also the characteristics of the goods themselves,
which betrayed signs of over-stimulated, nervous activity.
Evidently 'form', as far as Muthesius was concerned, was
not simply the means of achieving modernity, but also
had the power to resist its worst aspects. 10 Later in the
speech, Muthesius continued: 'The recovery of a feeling
for architectural form is the first condition in all the arts
nowadays .... It is all a matter of restoring order and
rigour in our modes of expression, and the outward sign
can only be good form'. Seen in these terms, 'form' is
what redeems modern industry from its own worst
excesses, and restores it to culture. This conception of
'form' was to be important to modernists in Germany in
the 1920s; an English manifestation was Herbert Read's
Art and Industry (1934). That such ideas could be
accommodated around the concept of form was made
possible by the notion of 'form' set up by Hegel, and
mediated to late nineteenth-century architects by Semper.
Muthesius's exhortations to 'form' as the main theme
of architecture presented certain pedagogical problems
which manifested themselves in the 1920s, for how
was the student to learn the principles of what had
no material existence, but was a purely metaphysical
category? This task was the theme of the educational
programme developed at the Bauhaus under Walter
Gropius's direction, and Gropius's many pronouncements
on the subject attempted to explain how a student was to
learn what, by definition, could not be taught: as Gropius
put it in 1923, 'The objective of all creative effort in the
visual arts is to give form to space. But what is space, Entrance, ZentralSparkasse, Mariahilf-Neubau, Vienna, Adolf Loos, 1914. 'Forms have
how can it be understood and given a form?' (120). been constituted out of the applicability and methods of production of materials.'

When it came to learning the principles of form, Gropius For Loos, 'form' was primarily a means of resistance to the decorative and ornamental
excess of his contemporaries.
explained, the student 'is given the mental equipment
with which to shape his own ideas of form' (123). Quite
how such an individualistic process would lead to the

163
 Form

AEG large machine factory, Voltastrasse, Berlin-Wedding, P. Behrens, 1912.

'Culture is unthinkable without a compromising respect for form; and formlessness creation of the property that was meant to convey the
is just another name for philistinism': to Behrens and his Werkbund contemporaries, supra-individual, collective nature of architecture,
'form' was an antidote to the superficiality and soullessness of the mass culture
created by capitalism.
Gropius did not explain, and he later resorted to a more
straightforwardly materialist explanation of where forms
were to come from: 'by resolute consideration of modern
production methods, constructions, and materials, forms
will evolve that are often unusual and surprising' (1926,
95). At the Bauhaus's Russian equivalent, the Vkhutemas,
concerned with the same problem, Moisei Ginzburg
adopted a more speculative view: Ginzburg referred to

the basic danger of CANONIZATION of certain

forms, of their becoming fixed elements of the
architect's vocabulary. Constructivism is LEADING
the BATTLE against this phenomenon, and studies
these basic elements of architecture as something
CONTINUOUSLY CHANGING in connection
with the changing preconditions of the form-making
situation. IT NEVER ADMITS therefore the FIXITY
OF FORMS. Form is an unknown, 'x', which is
always evaluated anew by the architect.

164
 Form

Interest in 'form' as the means of resisting the effects of

mass culture and of urbanization have been recurrent
throughout the twentieth century. For example, writing
in 1960, the American urbanist Kevin Lynch, concerned
with the lack of intelligibility of contemporary American
cities, wrote 'we must learn to see hidden forms in the
vast sprawl of our cities' (12). He took this up again
when he considered the means of making the city's image
more evident, in an argument which gains much of its
effect from the confusion between form as invisible idea,
and as physical shape: 'the objective here is to uncover
the role of form itself. It is taken for granted that in
actual design form should be used to reinforce meaning,
and not to negate it' (46).

Form versus social values. In the early 1920s 'form', so

highly valued within the Deutsche Werkbund, began to
treated with great suspicion by certain German architects.
Mies van der Rohe, then a member of the G group in
Berlin, wrote as follows in 1923:

We know no forms, only building problems.

Form is not the goal but the result of our work.
There is no form in and for itself. ... Form as
goal is formalism; and that we reject. Nor do we
strive for a style.
Even the will to style is formalism. (Neumeyer, 242)

For so-called 'functionalist' architects, amongst whom

Mies van der Rohe included himself in the early 1920s,
the end was, as the critic Adolf Behne put it, to 'arrive
at a negation of form' (123). What underlay this was
a complete rejection of the nineteenth-century Kantian
tradition in which utility was excluded from the aesthetic
in architecture: as a product of philosophical aesthetics,
'form' had no place in the scheme of those architects who
saw architecture as purely the application of technology
to social ends. Indeed the rejection of form was one of
the clearest and most explicit ways of affirming their
attachment to the view of architecture as committed to
social purpose. And from this point on to draw attention
to an architect's concern with 'form' has always been a
way of simultaneously signalling their neglect of social
questions. This occurs particularly in the pejorative use
of the word 'formalist', as in the Czech critic Karel
'Form Qualities of the City': nine dfagr'��s from Kevin Lynch's The Image of the
Teige's 1929 attack on Le Corbusier's Mundaneum City, 1961. Reading from top left 'singularity or figure�background clarity'; 'form
project, which 'in its obvious historicism ... shows the simplicity'; 'motion awareness'; 'time series'; 'visual scope'; 'continuity'; 'dominance';

non-viability of architecture thought of as art. It shows 'clarity of joint'; 'directional differentiation'. 'We must learn to see hidden forms In
the va,t ,;p1',;1wl of our citie,· to Lynch and other urbanists, 'form' was the property
the failure of Le Corbusier's aesthetic and formalistic that would overcome the alienation of modern cities - and it was the task of the
theories ...' (89). In recent times, 'form' has regularly urban designer to discover and reveal 'form'.

165
 Form

been used to imply a neglect of social concerns, as

for example when Diane Ghirardo writes: 'Perhaps
the fundamental continuity between Modernist and
Postmodernist architects derives from the reassertion
of the power of form, and hence the primacy of design,
to the exclusion of other strategies for improving cities
and living conditions' (27).
Even in the 1920s, the critic Adolf Behne tried in
his book The Modern Functional Building to nullify this
particular polarity, introducing the surprisingly novel
idea that 'form is an eminently social matter'; in this
attempt to rescue the concept of form from what he saw
as the ultimate dissolution of form by the functionalists,
Behne's argument that what he described as 'romantic
functionalism' - in effect the application of a Schlegel-like
notion that the form of each building is the working out
of its particular inner purpose - would lead only to
solutions that were entirely individual and specific to their
own particular circumstances, and which, lacking any
general significance, would lead ultimately to anarchy.
But if each building were considered not individually,
but as part of the collective sum total of all buildings,
it must conform to certain generally valid principles. It
was the consciousness of these general principles that
Behne described as 'form'. As well as recalling the socially
redemptive power of form contained in Muthesius's 1911
Le Corbusier, Mundaneum ProIect, 1928-29. The Mundaneum project attracted formulation, Behne's idea, particularly in its binary
notoriety on account of its dominant pyramid form, which was taken to indicate opposition between the pursuit of individuality and of
the neglect of social content.
a socialized whole, owed a good deal to the sociologist
Georg Simmel, for whom the very possibility of the study
of society had rested upon the coexistence of 'forms of
socialization' with the actual social life experienced by
individuals. Behne might have had in mind an essay like
Simmel's 'Subjective Culture' of 1908, where Simmel
had argued that while truly great works of art might
be distinguished by the individual spirituality of their
creator, such works were of little value from the point
of view of culture, and that the more a work gained
in cultural significance, the less apparent was the
individuality of its creator. Behne proposed that 'form·
in architecture corresponded to 'forms' in society. As
he put it,

Form is nothing more than the consequence of

establishing a relationship between human beings.
For the isolated and unique figure in nature there
is no problem of form. ... The problem of form
arises when an overview is demanded. Form is
the prerequisite under which an overview becomes
possible. Form is an eminently social matter. An,·or&e

1 66
'Horseshoe Siedlung', Berlin-Britz, Martin Wagner and Bruno Taut, 1925-26.
'Form is an eminently social matter': the critic Adolf Behne attempted to reverse
the prejudice against 'form' as inherently asocial by suggesting that 'form' was
the means by which individuals would acquire consciousness of the collective
nature of the society to which they belonged.

who recognizes the right of society recognizes community, it is life itself made manifest'. The notion
the right of form.... Anyone who sees a form in that architectural forms are equivalent to social forms
humanity, a pattern articulated in time and space, (whether they derive out of, or themselves constitute
approaches the house with formal requirements, social forms, is left ambiguous in the Smithsons' text) was
in which case 'formal' is not to be confused with the single most important new sense of 'form' to emerge
'decorative'. (137) out of modernism - and is one that has been the most
problematic and controversial.
Behne's idea enjoyed some currency amongst the
proponents of the New Architecture in Germany in the Form 11ersus Functionalism. At the time that Simmel
late 1920s: we find his contemporary, the architect Bruno was promoting sociology as a science of 'forms' , similar
Taut, making the same connection, in reverse, when he things were happening in other disciplines outside the
writes 'Architecture will thus become the creator of new visual arts. The field within which 'form' was to have
social forms' (7). The idea reappears some time later, in most significance, with the most far-reaching effects, was
1955, used by the Smithsons, when writing about linguistics. In the nineteenth century the study of language
housing: 'Each form is an active force, it creates the had already benefitted from Goethe's theory of form that

167
 Form

had influenced Humboldt's On Language (1836). In form to meaning' (1975, 15). Eisenman's single-minded
the early twentieth century, the importance of 'form' pursuit of 'the structure of form' has a surprising
in lingusitics was to be asserted again by Ferdinand de similarity to Frank Lloyd Wright's views about form
Saussure, in lectures given in 1911, and later published earlier in the century. Eisenman's belief that there exists
as Course in General Linguistics, in which he famously 'an unarticulated universe of form which remains to be
formulated the principle 'that language is a form and not excavated' (1982, 40) is curiously similar to Frank Lloyd
a substance' (122). The significance of this proposition Wright's view that 'in the stony bonework of the Earth,
for the development of linguistics, and of structuralist ... there sleep forms and styles enough for all the ages,
thinking in anthropology and literary criticism, is well for all of Man' (1928, Collected Writings, vol. 1, 275).
known; its influence upon architecture was not felt until Although Wright believed that all the forms of
later, in the 1960s, when it provided the means to attack architecture lay hidden in nature, whereas Eisenman
functionalism, then regarded as the dominant and least believes that they are to be found within the processes
satisfactory aspect of architectural modernism. of architecture, both share the view that forms are already
For a circle of Dutch architects, of whom Aldo van in existence, only awaiting discovery by the artist. Both,
Eyck and Herman Hertzberger are the best known, and in common with a great many other architects, seem to
for the Italian architect Aldo Rossi, Saussure's proposition have lost sight of the fact that 'form' is no more than a
that language was a form, not a substance, was device of thought, that can hardly have a determinate
fundamental, as was the notion that the meanings of existence prior to thought.
language were arbitrary. In resisting the reductiveness
of functionalism, the notion that forms in architecture Form versus meaning. In Hertzberger and in Eisenman
existed prior to, and independently of any specific we have already seen 'form' validated in order to expel
purpose to which they might be put, or meaning that questions of meaning from the architect's domain.
might be attached to them, was of particular significance. A corresponding, but converse argument, that too much
Rossi formulated this argument primarily in terms of attention to form had destroyed interest in meaning, was
'types' - though the distinction between 'form' and 'type' put most famously by the American architect Robert
was not particularly clear, and indeed he used the terms Venturi. Introducing the second edition of his Complexity
interchangeably. Thus for example, in the introduction to and Contradiction in Architecture, Venturi wrote that 'In
the Portuguese edition of The Architecture of the City in the early '60's ... form was king in architectural thought,
1971, Rossi wrote 'the presence of form, of architecture, and most architects focused without question on aspects
predominates over questions of functional organization. of form' (14). For Venturi, this meant that architects had
... Form is absolutely indifferent to organization precisely neglected meaning and signification. His second book,
when it exists as typological form' (174). The stress upon Learning from Las Vegas (1972), written with Denise
the fundamentally non-physical, and linguistic sense of Scott Brown, 'a treatise on symbolism in architecture'
'form' is made clear by Herman Hertzberger in a recent (xiv), was intended to address this state of affairs.
interview: 'I am a little tired of people who try to link Against what they called 'Heroic and Original' modern
forms to signs, because then you get into the meanings architecture, in which 'the creation of architectural form
of forms. I don't think forms have a meaning' (38). was to be a logical process, free from images of past
In the American architect Peter Eisenman's twenty­ experience, determined solely by program and structure'
year crusade against functionalism, 'form' has again been (7), and whose 'total image derives from ... purely
the instrument of attack. Against orthodox modernist architectural qualities transmitted through abstract
thinking, exemplified by Le Corbusier's statement that form' (129), the authors proposed 'Ugly and Ordinary'
'A work can only affect us emotionally and touch our architecture. With its assortment of references to
sensibility if its form has been dictated by a genuine conventional roadside constructions, in 'Ugly and
purpose' (1925a), Eisenman has repeatedly asserted that Ordinary' architecture, the 'elements act as symbols as
there is no correlation between form and function, nor well as expressive architectural abstractions'; as well as
between form and meaning. As Eisenman put it, 'one representing ordinariness symbolically and stylistically,
way of producing an environment which can accept or they are enriching 'because they add a layer of literary
give a more precise and richer meaning than at present, meaning' (130). The modernist obsession with form,
is to understand the nature of the structure of form itself, resulting in what Venturi and Scott Brown called 'ducks_
as opposed to the relationship of form to function or of denied attention to meaning.

168
(above) Central Fire Station, New Haven, Connecticut, Earl P: Carlin, 1959-62.

{right} Fire Station no. 4, Columbus, Indiana, Venturi and Rauch, 1965-67.
Venturi, in his stand against modernist 'form', compared the New Haven fire station,
'whose image derives from ... architectural qualities transmitted through abstract
forms', to his own 'Ugly and Ordinary' Columbus fire house, whose image comes
from the 'conventions of roadside architecture' - false facade, banality, familiarity
of the components, and the sign.

Form versus 'reality'. Modern art, and particularly

abstraction, had a direct relationship with theories of
'form' developed in late nineteenth-century Germany:
Hildebrand's essay of 1893, and the writings of the
historians Rieg!, Worringer, and Wolfflin in Germany,
or of the critics Clive Bell and Roger Fry in Britain, all
contributed to the generally understood significance of

1 69
 form

'form' as the pure substance of modernist art. Form versus technical or environmental considerations.
However, against this, there has always been some The opposition between 'form' and 'structure' or
resistance: in 1918-19 the Dadaists, Tristan Tzara 'technique' originated in the nineteenth century with
and others, were promoting chaos, disorder and lack Viollet-le-Duc. As Viollet put it in his Lectures, 'all
of form as the qualities of art; this interest continued architecture proceeds from structure, and the first
amongst the Surrealists, and was best expressed by condition at which it should aim is to make the outward
the French critic Georges Bataille, whose 'Critical form accord with that structure' (vol. 2, 3); the error of
Dictionary' in 1929 included an entry on 'L'Informe', the Renaissance was that 'Form was then the leading
the 'Formless', a category that celebrates meaninglessness, consideration; principles were no longer regarded, and
'a term that serves to bring things down in the world ... structural system there was none' (vol. 2, 2). This
What it designates has no rights in any sense and particular polarity of 'form' is a familiar one within
gets itself squashed everywhere, like a spider or architectural modernism. An example occurs in the
an earthworm'. Against philosophy, which wants writing of the historian and critic Reyner Banham in
everything to have form, 'affirming that the universe the late 1950s and 1960s. Banham's resistance to 'form'
resembles nothing and is only formless amounts to combined various tendencies - Situationist sentiments,
saying that the universe is something like a spider the aformalism of certain visual artists, and a strong
or spit'. element of technological rationalism; one of his first
An anti-form movement emerged again in France in pieces with an anti-form theme was his 1955 article
the 1950s amongst the Situationists. Here its purpose 'The New Brutalism', where the quality he singled out
was not aesthetic, but an opposition to the process of in Alison and Peter Smithson's Golden Lane Competition
reification, of the tendency of capitalist culture to turn entry (see ill. p. 172) was 'its determination to create a
ideas and relationships into things whose fixity obscures coherent visual image by non-formal means, emphasizing
reality, a process in which 'form' is variously both cause visible circulation, identifiable units of habitation, and
and symptom. In a generally inexplicit way, the fully validating the presence of human beings as part of
Situationists were resistant to 'form'; in so far as there the total image'; while of the same architects' Sheffield
could be a Situationist architecture at all, this presented University Competition design, 'aformalism becomes as
a paradox, and part of the interest of the work of the positive a force in its composition as it does in a painting
Dutch artist/architect Constant ;'-Jieuwenhuys was to try by Burri or Pollock' (359). But Banham's hostility to
to conceive architecture which had no form, but which 'form' was to be connected principally with an
dealt with 'reality' without distorting it or fixing it so enthusiasm for technological innovation: the lesson he
that it became an obstacle to the freedom to live out drew from the work of Buckminster Fuller in particular
one's life. The Situationists' general condemnation of was that a purely technical approach to issues of
the world of appearances took, in architecture, the guise
of proposals for an architecture which was ephemeral,
transient, Judie, and lacking in any determinate form.
In his utopian city 'New Babylon', Constant proposed
a city not of static elements, but of 'ambience', in which
'the rapid change of the look of a space by ephemeral
elements' would count for more than any permanent
structure (Ockman, 315). There was a strong current
of interest in the inexplicit anti-form tendencies of the
Situationists during the 1960s and 1970s, manifested
particularly in the work of the Archigram group,
and in the earlier writings and work of the architect
Bernard Tschumi.
While the question of a 'formless' architecture will
Cedric Price, Fun Palac::e, key drawing, 1964. 'Formless' architecture, of indetermin.atle-
no doubt continue to interest people, it nevertheless volume, and capable of endless change and rearrangement.
depends upon the prior existence of a concept of
{opposite) Constant, 'New Babylon', drawing, 1961. Constant, a one--time member qi
'form'; formless architecture is not one in which 'form' the Situationist International, in his 'New 6abylon' developed between 1959 and
is non-existent. 1966, investigated a city without 'form'.

170
 ..
..
1\

,,

.::onillUction might lead to results that would be was a blend of Situationism, providing ever-changing
lll!cre.:ognizable as architecture. Of Fuller's Dymaxion opportunities for encountering and reproducing everyday
House he remarked - approvingly - 'the formal life after one's individual desires, combined with an
qu.aliries ... are not remarkable' (1960, 326), and it application of the most up-to-date technological systems,
'llo.15 distinguished instead by the adaptation of aircraft through which it was to be realized. A similar unlikely
.:onstruction techniques to building, and its innovative combination of Situationist liberation with a fascination
use of mechanical services. Banham's belief that the future for high technology occurred in the work of Archigram
of architecture lay with technology, with its inherent in the 1960s. However the most prominent essay in
mdifference to 'form', underlies his 1969 book The this idiom of Judie formlessness, the Centre Pompidou
Architecture of the Well-Tempered Environment (see in Paris (1971-77), disappointed its critics by reverting
especially 21ft). Something of this approach appears to strongly architectural conventions of mass and
in the work of Banham's friend Cedric Price, whose volume, reminiscent of the American work of Mies
"Fun Palace' project of 1964, described by its promoter van der Rohe.11
Joan Littlewood as 'a University of the Streets', was a
structure with an indeterminate form, capable of endless What will happen to 'form'? That it is not a permanent
rearrangement. Price explained: 'The complex itself, or timeless category of architectural discourse is clear.
having no doorways, enables one to choose one's own Developed in the nineteenth century as a solution to
route and degree of involvement with the activities. certain specific problems - in particular the nature of
Although the framework will remain a constant size, aesthetic perception, and the processes of natural
the total volume in use may vary, thus presenting a morphology - 'form' was an extraordinarily productive
changing scene even to the frequent user'. The Fun Palace concept both for these and many related fields. But

1 71
 Form

Competition entry, for Golden Lane, City of London, Alison and Peter Smithson,
collage, 1952. Reyner Banham - an outspoken critic of 'form' - in 1955 singled
out the Smithsons' Golden Lane project as creating 'a coherent visual image by
non-formal means'.

whether it has been so successful an aid to thought about l For discussion of the difference between these two words, see Schiller, On the
the different problems confronting architecture in the Aesthetic Education of Man, edited and translated by Elizabeth 1VL Wilkinson and
L.A. Willoughby, Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1967, 308-10.
twentieth century is more doubtful. To take one in
2 David Summers, 'Form and Gender', in Bryson, Holly and Moxey (eds), Visual
particular - the relationship of buildings to the social Culture. Images and Interpretations, Hanover, New Hampshire, 1994, 406.
life in and around them - it might be said to have had 3 See Popper, 'The Nature of Philosophical Problems', in Conjectures and
disastrous consequences through its part in sustaining the Refutations, 1963, 66-96.
belief in architectural determinism. The premise of this, 4 Panofsky, Idea, 1968, 209. See Alberti, On the Art of Building in Ten Books.
1988, 'Lineaments', 422-23.
the 'form-function' paradigm, in which it is alleged that
5 See Panofsky, Idea, 1968, 115-21.
the form of inanimate things directly influences human 6 Fink, Goethe's History of Science, 1991, 88-89; see also Magnus, Goethe .is.;
behaviour, is, as Bill Hillier points out, absurd, and a Scientist, 1906, especially chapters 4 and 5; and Chomsky, Cartesian Linguistll·s.
violation of common sense (1996, 379); and as he argues, 1966, 23-24.
7 See the Introduction to Mallgrave and Ikonomou, F,mpathy, Form and Sp.ice.
the confusion and misconceptions surrounding this whole
1994, 1-85, for a full account of this subject.
subject arise in part from the misapplication of 'form' to 8 See Levine, Frank Lloyd Wright, 437, note 5, for references to this topic.
a problem for which it was not originally devised. 9 Schwartz, The Werkbund, 1996, 15-[6.
In a sense, 'form' is a concept that has outlived its 10 Schwartz, The Werkbund, 1996, 91-95.
usefulness. People talk of form all the time, but they 11 Sec, for example, Colquhoun, 'Plateau Beaubourg', in Essays m Archrtfft:r.=..
Criticism, 1981.
rarely talk about it; as a term it has become frozen, no
longer in active development, and with little curiosity as
to what purposes it might serve. Ask this question, and it
may lose some of its seeming naturalness and neutrality.

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