Functionalism (architecture)

In architecture and design is meant by the functionalism receding purely aesthetic design principles behind the shape defining use of the building or the unit. Hence the famous phrase " form follows function " is derived (the " Form Follows Function " ) by Louis Sullivan, who sprang from the popular conception, a contemporary beauty in architecture and design is apparent already from their functionality.

The origins of this view range from the aesthetic theorists of the 19th century ( Lotze, Semper, Greenough ), will apply in Germany until the founding of the German Werkbund under the keywords objectivity and purpose form to the rank of an artistically serious design manner.

Functionalism became after the First World War and after the interlude of Expressionism, the term New Architecture, Bauhaus style or New Objectivity as a design principle again more attention. In Sweden, the functionalism sat among others due to the Stockholm Exhibition of 1930 and the Manifesto acceptera from the 1930s through.

To really generally binding epitome of modern architecture, functionalism in Germany, however, was largely influenced the architectural language of reconstruction after the Second World War and has in this way. Since the early 1970s, the formal poverty and desolation of functionalist planning (the " purpose-built " ) is increasingly in the field of public criticism, which is why postmodernism in the 1980s functionalism finally tried to oppose completely new design principles. In commercial and industrial architecture as well as in public infrastructure is functionalism - but remained always represented - only from funding issues out.

A new relevance as a design principle obtained functionalism in architecture in the second half of the 1990s, after the ebbing of the so-called deconstructionism. In architecture, away from the representational approach in the course of the last decades is dominating again. Currents such as sustainable building are about the pursuit of minimal resource use a functionalist fundamental trait as inclined as energy -efficient construction, in which the shapes of technical stipulations of thermal insulation, tanning and the like follows. The same applies to material-related disciplines such as modern timber construction or loam or alternative locations such as building on the waterfront.