journal:

The Old "Form and Function"

By Jonathan Feaster

2007-12-27

In Architecture, one of the axioms goes "Form Follows Function" and there's some essential reading (especially if you're in the architectural field or are interested in architecture) that addresses each of these aspects. For me, the single greatest book on architectural form is The Old Way of Seeing (And How to Get It Back) by Jonathan Hale. When I was in my third year of college, my boss gave me this book and I wish I had come upon it earlier. After I read it, I finally "Got It". I'm telling you, I started to see things in a different way, my projects started to "dance", and instead of having nerve-racking juries I started to look forward to them as the intellectual inquiries that they were meant to be.

As for architectural function, I strongly recommend Why Buildings Stand Up by Mario Salvadori. I also came upon this book in college when it was recommended by one of my structures professors (and cited many times) but didn't read it until recently. Although I did do quite well in my structures courses, this book would have made it even more understandable and interesting for me had I read it at the time. One of my great professors in college, Joe Colaco used to talk about structures in much the same way that Salvadori does and it was so insightful. I'm sure he too was a fan of this book.

Well, JonFeaster.com is still being "remodeled". Basically, all of the data is being converted to a MySQL DB to be more manageable-it's been a long time coming too! I've just been so busy with my other projects.