Form and Function

I had a reader letter for DOMAI from John:

There is an old joke which involves an artist and an engineer. Naturally they are at a bar-and they are arguing about which profession created the female form. The artist is eloquent about his claim. "Only an artist would have thought of the brilllant articulation of space on the female body-the geometric procession from spheres to triangles. The light and shadow play as deep clefts meet tall plateaus. The change in tone, color, and texture as you move around the body. Clearly artists had to have created the female form." The engineer is equally eloquent. "But those simple things mean nothing compared to how all the parts work together. Touch the body in one place and it emits a sound from another. A simple act can bring a new life. The female body is an instrument more finely tuned than anything in the greatest symphonies. This has to mean that the female body was created by none other than engineers."

Now I have read all your past newsletters, letters, and articles, and I am surprised none of them has come forward with this simple truth. What the artist and engineer are really debating is form vs function. It is debate as old as the ages. And what makes your site stand out from others is you focus on the form and not the function.

Which boldly leads me to take a leap at an old debate. It is not that hard to define pornography. It is the depiction of function. And what is art? It is the depiction of form. I dont presume I am the first to argue this-I just have not seen it where it belongs-on Domai-the epitome of form.

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As a follow up, Irv Thomas (author of Derelict Days) wrote:

What you sent happens to remind me of an argument I had many, many years ago with an instructor in an Art in Architecture class that I was taking. The topic of the test had been Good Design, and we were supposed to speak to a range of instances, whether they were good design or not, the primary criterion being Form follows Function, as was then in vogue.

Where we disagreed was on a single instance: a vehicle shaped like a hot dog (being actually a hot dog stand on wheels). I knew what answer he wanted, but I said instead that it was good design!

He objected, predictably: "A vehicle should look like a vehicle, not a hot dog."

I took a mark against my grade, but stood fast on my point: "It may have been built as a vehicle, but its purpose was advertising and sales: it is Good design!"

I answered:
Surely, and if he'd been a good teacher he would have seen that too.

In any case, what does "look like a vehicle" mean? Unless the form actually inhibits function, what's wrong with it?

What does a chair look like? It can look like anything, so long as you can sit on it.

Of course it's a good ethic to let form be subordinate to function, but you can go too far and neglect form altogether.