I think "form follows function" is too reductive of a precept for design, because it risks making design essentially a technical activity. But I have never read a precept that I think fits better...until now.
To paraphrase the late Luis Barragan: among many feasible design scenarios, I choose the most emotional one.
Barragan added that he used emotions like serenity as organizing themes for his designs. This appealed to me, as I am famillar with the use of themes in the craft of writing to help focus and intensify writing. In dramatic writing, i.e., story telling, emotional themes have long been used to order the choices made in constructing dramas, novels, short stories and poetry. 'Blind ambition leads to total destruction" informs many tragedies. "Love conquers all" informs most melodramas and love stories. Themes used in writing are essentially stories distilled to a sentence. They describe the moral and emotional essense of the drama. Hitchcock used such themes to inform the drama, but he used the one word theme of "suspense" to define, focus and elicit the emotion of his movies. When you watched one of his movies, he wanted you to feel suspense. Stanley Kubrick typically used a constellation of one word themes to inform and focus the constellation of feelings he wanted you to feel.
Pt. 2
When you live in a Barragan house he wants you to feel serenity. I am not sure that Barragan used a conscious dramatic theme in his work to go along with the emotional theme of serenity. He did not articulate one in the reading I did about him. But looking at his buildings, progressions of form and color are everywhere,as are strong images of water flowing dramatically out of form and falling into pools reflecting that forms. Is it dramatic? Yes. Can I articulate the dramatic theme? Not yet. But I think Barragan proves that Modern design not only can be informed by themese of emotion, but is vastly the better for it. In fact, when one evaluates modern and post modern design, or even design periods preceding these, I believe one will begin to find a strong correlation between buildings held in high esteem and the pureness and clarity of emotional themes that inform them. I think great buildings will be found to have strong emotional themes clearly and rigorously informing their design choices. I think fine but flawed buildings will have strong emotional themes slightly out of focus that lead to vagaries in design choices. And I believe that bland, innocuous buildings will be found to be informed by bland or innocuous emotions. And so on. Perhaps I am mastering the obvious for designers here, but I think not for many. There are too many buildings out there without any emotional dimension at all.
Barragan said architecture had grown academic for the last 15 or so years of his life. I infer that he meant architecture had become an exercise in working out academic ideas of form and function. He preferred architecture to be thematically centered on basic human emotions. I agree with Barragan.
Wow!.....great topic!
and insightfully presented....thanks!
under appreciated for so long, Barragan appears to be gaining popularity as his work is better understood and even utilized in a contemporary design context.
i have had the good fortune to have spent a great deal of time in Barragan and Barraganesque buildings in various parts of Mexico.
i always felt that Barragans resdential buildings had a "old soul" like quality. his architecture has been very influential with even low cost homebuilders all over Mexico. from the floating zig zaggy staircases to the vibrant fuchsia offset wall. his designs are evocative, emotional and for me mostly about freedom.
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