Editing Form follows function (section)

== Origins of the phrase ==
The architect [[Louis Sullivan]] coined the [[Saying|maxim]], which encapsulates [[Viollet-le-Duc]]'s theories: "a rationally designed structure may not necessarily be beautiful but no building can be beautiful that does not have a rationally designed structure".<ref>{{cite web |title=Viollet le Duc |url=https://www.northernarchitecture.us/architectural-theory/violletleduc-1.html |website=Northern Architecture |date=6 August 2023 }}</ref> Sullivan also credited his friend and mentor, [[John H. Edelmann]], who theorized the concept of "suppressed function" with inspiration for this maxim.<ref>{{cite book |last1=Gregersen |first1=Charles E. |title=Louis Sullivan and his mentor, John Herman Edelmann, architect |date=2013 |publisher=AuthorHouse |location=Bloomington, Indiana |isbn=9781481767965 |page=ix}}</ref>

The maxim is often incorrectly attributed to the sculptor [[Horatio Greenough]] (1805–1852),<ref>Horatio Greenough, ''Form and Function: Remarks on Art'', edited by Harold A.&nbsp;Small (Berkeley, Univ. of California Press, 1947), although the theory of inherent forms, of which the phrase is a loose summary, informs all of Greenough's writing on art, design, and architecture. Greenough was in his architectural writings influenced by the [[transcendentalist]] thinking and the [[Unitarianism|Unitarian]] protestantism of [[Ralph Waldo Emerson]].</ref> whose thinking mostly predates the later [[Functionalism (architecture)|functionalist]] approach to architecture. Greenough's writings were for a long time largely forgotten, and were rediscovered only in the 1930s. In 1947, a selection of his essays was published as ''Form and Function: Remarks on Art by Horatio Greenough''. The earliest formulation of the idea as "in architecture only that shall show that has a definite function" belongs not to an architect, but to a monk [[Carlo Lodoli]] (1690–1761), who uttered the phrase while inspired by [[positivist]] thinking (Lodoli's words were published by his student, [[Francesco Algarotti]], in 1757).{{sfn | Gelernter | 1995 | pp=155–156}}

Sullivan was Greenough's much younger compatriot and admired rationalist thinkers such as [[Henry David Thoreau|Thoreau]], [[Ralph Waldo Emerson|Emerson]], [[Walt Whitman|Whitman]], and [[Herman Melville|Melville]], as well as Greenough himself. In 1896, Sullivan coined the phrase in an article titled ''The Tall Office Building Artistically Considered'',<ref>{{Cite book |url=https://archive.org/details/tallofficebuildi00sull |title=The tall office building artistically considered |last=Sullivan |first=Louis H. |date=1896 |others=[[Getty Research Institute]]}}</ref> though he later attributed the core idea to the [[ancient Roman]] architect, engineer, and author [[Marcus Vitruvius Pollio]], who first asserted in his book {{lang|la|[[De architectura]]}} that a structure must exhibit the three qualities of [[firmness, commodity, and delight]] — that is, it must be solid, useful, and beautiful.{{sfn | Gelernter | 1995 | p=63}} Sullivan actually wrote that "form ever follows function", but the simpler and less emphatic phrase is more widely remembered. For Sullivan, this was distilled wisdom, an aesthetic credo, the single "rule that shall permit of no exception". The full quote is:<ref>{{cite journal |last=Sullivan |first=Louis H. |title=The Tall Office Building Artistically Considered |journal=Lippincott's Magazine |issue=March 1896 |pages=403–409 |year=1896 |url= https://archive.org/details/tallofficebuildi00sull}}</ref>
<blockquote>
Whether it be the sweeping eagle in his flight, or the open apple-blossom, the toiling work-horse, the blithe swan, the branching oak, the winding stream at its base, the drifting clouds, over all the coursing sun, ''form ever follows function'', and this is the law. Where function does not change, form does not change. The granite rocks, the ever-brooding hills, remain for ages; the lightning lives, comes into shape, and dies, in a twinkling.

It is the pervading law of all things organic and inorganic, of all things physical and metaphysical, of all things human and all things superhuman, of all true manifestations of the head, of the heart, of the soul, that the life is recognizable in its expression, that form ever follows function. ''This is the law.''
</blockquote>

Sullivan developed the shape of the tall steel [[skyscraper]] in late 19th-century [[Chicago]] at a moment in which technology, taste and economic forces converged and made it necessary to break with established styles. If the shape of the building was not going to be chosen out of the old pattern book, something had to determine form, and according to Sullivan it was going to be the purpose of the building. Thus, "form follows function", as opposed to "form follows precedent". Sullivan's assistant, [[Frank Lloyd Wright]], adopted and professed the same principle in a slightly different form.{{citation needed|date=May 2021}}