Ancient Roman architect Vitruvius first established the triad - firmitas, utilitas, and venustas (strength, utility, and beauty) - laying the foundational philosophical line between a building’s practical use and its visual execution.

In a lineage that can be traced back to this triad, prominent American architect Louis Sullivan published The Tall Office Building Artistically Considered in Lippincott’s Magazine. He argued that in nature, “form follows function,” which later became one of the most quoted lines of the debate. He believed that the shape of an eagle, a flower, or a tree grows out of the way it lives, not the other way around. Also known as the ‘Father of the American Skyscraper,’ the architect believed a building's exterior should be an honest expression of what happens inside it rather than a costume borrowed from historical styles.

Sullivan's idea found its institutional home a generation later at the Bauhaus, the German school founded by Walter Gropius in 1919. Gropius and his colleagues argued that objects and buildings should be derived only after carefully studying their purpose, materials, and methods of production. The institute’s curriculum merged art, craft, and industry to encourage the idea that form must be determined by function. This ethos produced the clean geometries, flat roofs, open plans, and glass-and-steel façades that came to define the International Style. Functionalism became a dominant ideology, almost as a motto for Modernist architecture.

Nearly a century after Sullivan, function has expanded far beyond programme alone. Contemporary architects have expanded the definition considerably. Function includes the people who occupy it, the climate it responds to, and the experience it enables. Today, function becomes the process of understanding.

Debating this side of the argument, we spoke to Adhiraj Bhattacharya, Partner at DADO Architecture

One of the defining characteristics of functional architecture is that it rarely calls attention to itself.

This idea echoes one of Modernism’s central ambitions that architecture should improve everyday life through clarity and intuitive spatial experience.

If Modernism believed that beauty emerged from utility, architects like Adhiraj suggest that the principle still holds, provided "function" is understood not as efficiency alone, but as a deep understanding of people, place and purpose

If Modernism sought honesty through restraint, Postmodernism questioned whether restraint itself had become another orthodoxy. Robert Venturi in Complexity and Contradiction in Architecture he attacked the purity of Modernist functionality, introducing the idea of the ‘decorated shed.’ This was basically a functional box with symbolic, communicative applied elements to demonstrate that ‘Form can follow meaning.’

Architectural theorist Charles Jencks and others described postmodern architecture as a reaction against the strict functionality, proposing historical reference and symbolism as valid arguments. In the climate, provocative slogans like “form follows fiasco” and “form follows previous form, not function” came into the picture.

The debate gradually expanded beyond utility to ask whether spaces should also evoke memory, identity and emotion. For landscape designer Kerman Chowna, the Co-Founder of Design Consultants, that distinction feels even more pronounced. Unlike architecture, which often begins with programme and enclosure, landscape is a living, evolving medium. Its success lies not in organising activity but in shaping how people feel,

One of the enduring criticisms of prioritising form is that aesthetics can become decorative or superficial. Kerman rejects that idea outright,

Additionally, Kerman also argues that landscapes cannot be designed through technical parameters alone because people bring memories, rituals and cultural associations into every space they inhabit.

This broadens the definition of form even further, making it an expression of identity, tradition, and lived experience rather than just composition.

Interestingly, Frank Lloyd Wright, who was influenced by Sullivan, argued that “form and function are one,” suggesting a more organic unity rather than a one-way determination. Function influences form, but form also shapes how spaces are used, perceived, and experienced.

Although Adhiraj approached the discussion through function and Kerman through emotion, both arrived at a similar conclusion: neither design process begins with appearance alone, nor ends with utility alone.

Similarly, Kerman comments,

Perhaps this is why the debate has endured for so long. It was never really about buildings or gardens alone, but about what design is ultimately meant to achieve. Whether through architecture or landscape, design is the act of giving shape to the way people live, move, remember and feel.