17. Style Sheets—Separating Form and Content

Louis Sullivan’s Prudential Building, Buffalo, New York. Photo credit: Seth Tisue, http://flickr.com/people/tisue/, CC-BY.

In the last two chapters, we left many aesthetic design choices out of the exercises and focused on the tools for building code. However, aesthetics must not be left out of the conversation. As American architect Louis Sullivan (1856–1924) once said, “Form ever follows function.” Sullivan’s use of steel instead of masonry to create the structure of a building allowed it to be separate from the building’s external elements of appearance. Sullivan is known for solving the problem architects faced when designing for these new buildings, which were no longer constrained by the technical limits of weight-bearing masonry. He embraced the changes that came with the steel frame and created a way to stylize the exterior appearance of the building. His call to allow form to derive from function has profoundly influenced design and art.