Form Follows Function

Sullivan coined it, Tschichold made it a method for the page in 1928. What it asks of a floor plan today.

Form follows function means an order of work, not a style. This essay traces the idea from Louis Sullivan in 1896 to Jan Tschichold in 1928 and on to the Crystal Palace. It gives a sheet of eight functions to rank for any event, with rules that turn the ranking into a floor plan.

Form follows function is Louis Sullivan's phrase from 1896. Its real meaning is an order of work, not a style. Jan Tschichold turned the same belief into a method for the printed page in 1928. On an event floor plan, it means ranking what the space must do before you draw a single table. Position, width and sequence then follow from that ranking.

What Sullivan wrote

The phrase comes from "The Tall Office Building Artistically Considered." It ran in Lippincott's Monthly Magazine in March 1896 (text). Sullivan builds up to it through images of nature, such as the eagle in flight and the apple blossom. Then he states his law. In his words, "the life is recognizable in its expression, that form ever follows function. This is the law."

The law did not forbid ornament. Sullivan's own Wainwright Building in St. Louis and Guaranty Building in Buffalo are covered in it. For him, function included expression. A tall building should look tall, and say so with pride.

What Tschichold made of it

Tschichold published Die neue Typographie in Berlin in 1928. The English edition, The New Typography, came out in 1995. Ruari McLean translated it, and Robin Kinross wrote the introduction.

Tschichold's method made clarity the purpose of a page. Layout followed content, which usually meant asymmetry. Hierarchy followed importance. Standard paper sizes replaced arbitrary ones.

Tschichold did not use Sullivan's phrase. Reading the two together is this essay's own reading. But the method is the same. Decide what the thing must do, then let every visual choice serve that.

The recantation

In 1946 Tschichold argued in print with Max Bill. Bill attacked him in "Über Typografie" in May. Tschichold replied in "Glaube und Wirklichkeit" in June (Hyphen Press). By then he held that the New Typography suited ads and jobbing print, not books. In the late 1940s he redesigned Penguin's books along classical lines.

The lesson is not that function failed. Function differs by job, and a method used as dogma stops being functional. A symmetrical banquet, centered on a head table, can be exactly the functional answer.

A ranked list of functions

This is the core method, and the sheet a planner can copy. List the eight functions every plan serves. Rank them for this event. Then give out space, position and clarity in rank order.

• Arrival and orientation: Most guests arrive in a short window, or the venue is new to them
• Access control and registration: Badges, bag checks or accreditation are required
• Circulation, main and secondary: Crowds move between zones at fixed times
• Dwell and conversation: The event's value lies in meetings and networking
• Presentation and sightlines: A stage, screen or reveal carries the message
• Service and back of house: Catering, AV and changeovers run during the event
• Step-free access: Always; it is a requirement, not a preference
• Egress: Always; local code sets the minimum, and the plan never goes below it

Four rules turn the ranking into a plan.

1. The top-ranked function gets the clearest, widest and most direct space.
2. Position follows rank, so the top function sits nearest the doors or on the main axis.
3. Sequence follows the guest's path for the top-ranked flow.
4. Lower-ranked functions fit around higher ones, never across them.

Two briefs in the same hall show how far the method moves a plan. At a product launch, the path from door to reveal ranks first. So the plan is a single controlled route that holds the reveal back. At a congress, changeover between sessions ranks first. So the plan has wide cross-aisles, breakout rooms near the foyer and short walks. Start either one with how to make an event floor plan.

Hierarchy, asymmetry, the module

Tschichold's tools carry straight over to space. Take hierarchy first. The main aisle is wider and straighter than the others, so the eye and the feet both know which is which. Then take asymmetry. When all the doors are on one wall, do not center everything on the room's axis. Sightlines belong to the hierarchy too, so the most important view gets the clearest line.

Use standard modules where they help, such as booth sizes, table sizes and staging decks. Drop them where they do not. Exit widths and travel distances are not design choices. They follow local codes and the authority having jurisdiction. That is what fire marshals look for in an event layout.

The Crystal Palace

Joseph Paxton's building for the Great Exhibition of 1851 in Hyde Park is the method made visible (ArchDaily). Paxton came to it from glasshouses. He had built them as head gardener at Chatsworth.

The building was a prefabricated system of iron and glass on a repeating module. The largest pane of glass then made set the size of that module. It was designed, built and opened in less than a year. Later it was taken down and rebuilt at Sydenham.

Form followed the job. An exhibition hall had to be temporary, fast to build and full of daylight for the goods on show. Every part of the building answered one of those needs.

Function includes meaning

Sullivan's function was never only utility. The welcome, the reveal and the applause are functions of an event too, and form should express them. When emotion leads instead of function, the plan changes, as form follows function vs. form follows emotion argues.

Sullivan's law starts with what the space must do. Monet builds a to-scale layout from a venue plan and a brief, then re-runs checks on exit clearance, crowd flow and the main walkway after every change, so function stays first while the form moves.