ARTICLE READING 

During the modernist movement, Le Corbusier played and important role in giving form and coherence to modern architecture together with other leaders such as Ludwig Mies Van der Rohe. in this time, the understanding of "form" must be determined by their function and materials to achieve a perfect or what architecture should be all about.  Instead of viewing a building as a heavy mass made of ponderous materials, the leading innovators of modern architecture considered it as a volume of space enclosed by light, thin curtain walls and resting on slender piers. Simple forms with clean lines were more favored and with that, the death of ornamentations. 

 

After 1960, a less evolutionary and more revolutionary critical reaction to modern architecture, first articulated in the writings of Robert Venturi, began to form. Architects have become more concerned with context and tradition. Ornament, once banished by modernism, has returned, and continue to evolve till the  20th century contemporary architecture. However, ornamentation today has changed, it is no longer the same as to the traditional ways, it has become apart of the building form, to put it in other words "form as an ornament". 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

in Contemporary architecture these type of buildings can be seen as "iconic". These buildings are built with forms that are unusual, with twisting shapes, dynamic curves, flashy facades, and some even looks as if they are defying gravity all for the sake of aesthetic value. This is when the debate of " function follow form" comes in, in today's architecture. It is when the form is decided or designed beforehand and the functions of the spaces are fixed in later on. One example of architect that shows this method of design in their works is Frank Gehry. He explained that most of his designs expressed "movements", his buildings were designed to look or to express something, going against the modernist movement's quote, " Form follow function" by Louise Sullivan.

These unique forms could not be done back then because there were a lot of restrictions in doing so, but the advancement in technology today allows us to go beyond. New Materials are created, designs are incorporating with computer technologies to help creating this unique forms. This allow us to express and venture more into new things, there are less restrictions because with the technology we have today it is possible to make anything, there are no limits anymore.

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However, when we neglect to design a space follow by its function, does that make it a bad design? Contemporary architecture no longer have site context and that any iconic building can be built in any parts of the world. In my opinion, i think that it is great that we are exploring new things and incorporating architecture more with technology and science. We should be able to express or showcase what we have to offer as an artist or a designer, but we should not forget functionality. Architecture should built together with the environment as Leopold Eidlitz in 1881 insisted that " what should be impressed on the mind of the architect is that architectural forms, like all art organisms, and like the organisms of nature, are the result of the environments".