Thematic Theories of Architecture: Functionalism, Adolf Loos

자료: Thematic Theories of Architecture, http://www2.uiah.fi/projekti/metodi/13k.htm

Functionalism

The intended uses of new buildings have certainly influenced their architecture long before the emergence of first architects or theories. Examples of this can be seen in ancient vernacular buildings: 
 

Intended use of building:	Arrangement of building,  as generated by the use:
An independent family; co-operation with neighbours is coincidental	One room detached house.
A group of families in collective housekeeping	A group of sleeping rooms around a central kitchen/dining room
A family and domestic animals.	A space for people and another space for the animals in close connection.

Many of these ancient tacit traditions of building became documented already in the first treatises of architecture. The usability of buildings is one of the three cornerstones of Vitruve's theory, and he writes tens of pages about it. From Renaissance onwards it did not receive as much attention from researchers; most of them just mention in one sentence this requirement. At the beginning of the 20th century, some more extensive studies on it appeared, e.g. the following:

• Louis Sullivan (1856 - 1924): Ornament in architecture (1892)
• Otto Wagner (1841 - 1918): Moderne Architektur (1895) among others
• F.L. Wright (1869 - 1959), several short writings.

Despite the influential slogan of Sullivan, "Form follows function" no coherent theory of functionalism was created before the 1920s when it started to unfold in the Bauhaus school headed by Walter Gropius (1883-1969). The results are well presented in the book Bauentwurfslehre (1936) by Ernst Neufert who worked as an assistant to Gropius. On the right is an illustration from it, showing functional space needs in a hospital.

"Function" of the building meant to the first developers and supporters of the Functionalist theory mostly the physical requirements (primarily dimensions) that were necessary to carry out the practical corporeal activities in the building. Psychological needs of the great public were largely ignored. When it thus became necessary to refer, for example, to the concept of "beauty" it was usually defined on the basis of the functionalist doctrine, for example as being equal to good functionality or to high quality of fabrication. Gropius defined:

'Beauty' is based on the perfect mastery of all the scientific, technological and formal prerequisites of the task ... The approach of Functionalism means to design the objects organically on the basis of their own contemporary postulates, without any romantic embellishment or jesting (The Bauhaus Book no. 7 pp. 4 - 7).

If a layman happened to have other ideals of beauty and he or she wanted to have more decoration on a building, these wishes were often disregarded as "bad taste". A manifesto by Adolf Loos (1908),Ornament and Crime, had great influence on architects. Loos declared that people who liked ornamentation (for example, if they wore tattooing) were either immature, primitive or even antisocial. In contrast, cultivated people prefer unadorned, plain surfaces, he said. Accordingly, functionalist architects avoided decoration of buildings and favored simple geometric forms.

Functionalist architects understood how essential it is to base their design on empirical research. Many findings of these studies are still valid and widely applied even by those architects who have long ago abandoned the rectangular formal language of functionalism. However, research on the psychological needs of building users was slow to speed up, which was regretted by several of the pioneers of Functionalism (like Sullivan, Gropius and Breuer) in their more mature age. For example, Alvar Aalto wrote in 1940 in the journal The Technology Review:

During the past decade, Modern architecture has been functional chiefly from the technical point of view, with its emphasis mainly on the economic side of the building activity... But, since architecture covers the entire field of human life, real functional architecture must be functional mainly from the human point of view. ... Technic is only an aid ... Functionalism is correct only if enlarged to cover even the psychophysical field. That is the only way to humanize architecture. (Aalto 1970, p. 15 - 16).