Vive la difference!

You can add more to the form than the minimum necessary to carry out the function, but it should make sense to make sure that the form allows the function.

Isn't form a function? If we can ask why, doesn't that mean that there's an intended purpose?

-Audric

With no nod to function, your form won't be satisfying. If your function is enjoyment, you must have paths, areas, seating, etc. If your function is grilling, you must have a grill space. Without function, your landscape will be unintelligible, like walking through a pretty hodgepodge.

But of course, the function of my yard is very much dictated by the form. My deck had to be there. My trampoline is in the freaking way. The trees and their roots aren't going anywhere soon. The fence around the perimeter isn't mine. All of these things dictate how I can use my space and what my function will be.

There's a balance.

But honestly, before discussions such as the "form vs function" debate, I'd never even thought of function as a commodity to consider. Sure I wanted certain things and was likely designing with them in mind. But it wasn't a conscious factor. Now it is.

The function may be to simply have form. "Form follows Function" is only a guide, a starting point to an ending with a million variations. People here ask what are the right "Design" questions. And invariably one of the first is "How will you use this space?" A tea garden will be very different from a tractor pull pit.

jb

I have to tell you JB: A tea garden versus a tractor pull pit is a comparison I have never before contemplated.

IronBelly

Whimsy can be a function. Collecting plants can be a function. Artistic expression can be a function.

I think people tend to think of function as only being technical. They often want to put it in one box and put fun, art, and aesthetics in another.

The same holds true with reasoning vs. creativity.

I am new to landscape design but in interior spaces I've had to design, my most successful efforts have come to fruition when I didn't give a flyer about function but instead asked myself "what do I want this space to say? What is the dialogue that would be most interesting between this object and that; light vs. dark; open space vs. closed; tractor vs. tea"...well all right not that last bit, but you get the idea. I have struggled with the whole form follows function jihad since I was in architecture shcool in the early 80's. It seemed so right because it addressed the issue of design in a simple way and to me simple solutions were the most beautiful. But now I wonder if messy complexity, spontaneous inventiveness and an evolutionary process of form are not at least as important as abstract theory and authoritarian dictation of space. (Can you tell how much I miss Jane Jacobs if I may drag in a whole other field, that of urban planning?)

Say, do--these are just different expressions of the same thing. In my non-starring role of being a laag echo, his is the point--functions do not require approval, only identification. Someone could perfectly well say the function of this design is to look pretty from the street, or to display my plant collection. Those are functions. The usual miffs about "who needs this function thing" occur when there is a hidden function desired or when the actual function, once identified, is proven to not be the intended one. As in, Oh, the function of this space is just for me to enjoy my garden. ...And do you, it? ...well...not much. Or when multiple functions--want to barbecue AND provide beautiful views from inside all year round--want to enjoy my garden AND win the garden of the month award--are not identified, so when only one function is designed for, then dissatisfaction affirms the humph, this function thing is hooey.

Frankie, yes. I think that modesty and/or embarrassment sometimes prevents people from being fully honest about what their "secret function" really is, especially when that function is emotional or aesthetic, rather than pragmatic. This ties in a bit to the mood thread, perhaps, on which someone (accordian, was it?) brought up the idea of landscapes which are intended to provoke shock and awe, rather than the more usually cited "relaxation." If ones secret and shamefully exhibitionist desire is to create a spectacle which will provoke surprise or shock or even laughter in a hypothetical viewer (or to rip that viewer's heart out, as someone else claimed), then masking that desire as a bland and generalized "I want it to look attractive" is unlikely to reap very satisfactory results.

The Doubting Thomas: a garden is not a house so it doesn't need to have functions on the same level.
The Romantic: If I make of my garden a beautiful place full of meaning it is inevitable that what follows will define its function.

What was really said is subtly different from all of this...
"functions ever seek their forms". With that said--nothing is following or leading--only searching.

That plural usage, 'forms', does sound different, doesn't it, Miss R.? If the function is juniorballoon's need for a place to drink tea, sit and converse while in the garden, it could lead different people to seek out a lot of different forms - maybe a bluestone terrace or brick patio with chairs & table, or a specially made flat surface on a slope for a pair of adirondack chairs, perhaps a covered porch with a swing, or for INK's romantic gardener, a Jens Jensen Council Ring where you could sip herb tea while perched on large stones set in a circle.

Since I am the one whose secretly exhibitionist desire (!?) was planning a garden that will 'tear your heart out', mentioned in avia's post above, I'd like to note that I wasn't talking about the THE WHOLE garden, but just A Garden.

The space isn't very large; it's what is commonly called a dogleg down here - enclosed on three sides and not visible or accessible unless you walk across the whole back, going around to the farthest corner of the house. The previous owners thought the _function_ for this area was to be a dumping place, and the _form_ this took was a dismayingly large pile of old boards, discarded fencing, loose wires, scraps of edging, unused gutters, fallen branches, half-dead shrubs and several cracked plastic rolling trash carts.

To a gardener who likes to push zone edges, a space like this can have a very different function: the area faces south, and once they were pruned and watered, two medium size deciduous trees make dappled summer shade, so it's pretty nice even in hot weather. Once the leaves are down, the sun hits the brick housewall, making this a very sheltered spot in cold weather. It's not only a pleasant place to be on most days, but some Zone 9 plants don't even freeze here in this microclimate. I hope that I can make it into a Destination Garden, with a beautiful form flowing from this horticultural, sun-catching function.

Annie

"The Romantic: If I make of my garden a beautiful place full of meaning it is inevitable that what follows will define its function."

You don't think you went into the design with the fuction of meaning and "the romantic"? It just happened that in the end it just happened?

I think we are on a different page in what we mean by the term function. You have defined a function and built a garden in such a form to meet that function to my way of thinking.

Then what in the frilly heck is beauty? Is it a function that then suggests the form beauty should take when we identify it as such? I doubt it. Is it something that is a mere by-product if we do a good job creating a form that follows the function we have identified? Maybe sometimes. Is it in the eye of the beholder (to drag out another chestnut)? Maybe, but lots of people mistake familiarity, sentimentality and affection for beauty. Or maybe it's not important, just some pointy-headed idea with no worth in a world where things need to be...functional.

I've heard this phrase a million times relating to architecture and industrial design, and I believe it came into being about the time technology and productivity (mass production) became important in these disciplines. Thus, the modern skyscraper. The whole modernist movement was yet another pull away from and rejection of the over-ornamented Victorian period and style. No more cabbage-shaped teapots!

And what has this to do with one's personal garden? I can think of very modern gardens that will tear your heart out, and others more rococco that will do the same. Contrast the Vietnam war memorial by Maya Lin and Madame Ganna Walska's Lotusland.

Where is the person who wrote about 'thin places'? There is power in the natural landscape that will tear your heart out, and who can say what is the function of the naturally occurring form?

Ok, Ink, paste a label on me.

Good Lord, Annie - I think we must have the exact same dogleg!

Or perhaps not precisely the same: mine is in deep shade, very narrow, and paved in ancient concrete. So for now, I'm sad to say, I seem to be maintaining the previous owners' 'function' for the space, although the precise details of the 'form' have changed a bit. (Mainly, the previous owner's unused roofing tiles, collection of used windows (?), and fallen branches have now been replaced by a wheelbarrow, empty pots, and other assorted gardening detritus. I wonder if this might not be a case of a function following a form, eh? It does make a terribly convenient storage place, that hidden and sheltered little corridor...)

Oh, and just to clarify, I didn't mean to cast aspersions on you, Annie, with that line about shameful exhibitionism. I was just hypothesizing that many people setting out to create a garden might feel reluctant to confess to any aesthetic goal other than "prettiness." Perhaps they feel presumptuous doing so, or are afraid that the listener might scoff. "Pretty" seems such a harmless and modest goal that it can feel - oh, I don't know - safe to pursue, in a way that other aesthetic ambitions sometimes don't.

True beauty, to my mind, always seems to have an element of the strange to it - much, in fact, as 'thin places' do. 'Pretty' does not. So the pursuit of beauty can be very intimidating, in a way, because if you don't quite hit your mark, you're more likely to end up with something just plain odd or even downright ugly than you are if you stick to "I just want to make it look neat and nice and pretty."

I aspire to turn a thick place into a thin place. So far, though, I think the best I've managed to achieve is "still thick, but kinda pretty."

Beauty is beauty. You can make something beautiful or not so beautiful in its form.

If you set out to make beauty, what form will it take? If you chose no form, it is only a concept. If you chose a form, why did you chose it?

If the form is that of a garden, why was it not something else that could be beautiful? I would suggest that you (the generic you) are ignoring the fact (yes, I believe it to be a fact) that there is a greater function that you are chosing to ignore. The function may be a creative outlet and this is the chosen media, or the function is to raise your self esteem by having a beautiful garden for others to shower you with praise over, or the function is to create a place that you can enjoy, or to copy something you read from a feng shui article, .... there is a function, or more likely multiple functions or the choice of media (a garden) would be irrelevent.

Beauty is not a form. It is a description. The garden is the form. What you tried to achieve with the garden is the function. It is that simple. If to create something beautiful was the goal, it was the function. If the result was a garden, it was the form that was created for that function. Why is this so difficult?

It is difficult Andrew because making a garden is not architecture and too much emphasise on purpose is anethema to what we want to be doing in our garden. I get home from work and I want the space I am in to be purposeless, functionless and to call my enjoyment of the birds, the buds and the burgeoning life I do not see elsewhere a function is missing the point. A garden is different so general rules don't apply

This is very long - but now you have me all wound-up and jabbering. Catkim, I don't know anything at all about 'thin places'. As to natural beauty - some areas of trees were kept when they built this subdivision 30 years ago, which became local parks. But within the individual, wooden privacy-fences, every tree & plant arrived after the houses were built, via human, bird or squirrel.

Avia, I didn't think you were casting aspersions. I was just trying to explain that since this garden is not easily visible, it may be shameless in emotional content, but it's probably not exhibitionist. Except now that I'm telling you all about it, maybe it has become both those things.

Laag, you are probably right and I obviously don't understand the relationship between function and form at all! I keep trying to think about these ideas in the abstract, but somehow the concrete always wins. I'm a rather pragmatic, unfashionable, married-for-ages, mother of 4 adult children. I had no intention of making a romantic or emotional garden at first, but accordian, I have always, in my amateur way, strived to make my gardens beautiful. This is the 5th place we've owned during the last 30+-years, with houses of various shapes and sizes, in a couple of states, built anywhere from 1944 to 1985. And each time we have been either the 3rd or 4th owner. Three of these houses were bought from the kind of guy who only mowed the lawn while the house was up for sale.

Each piece of land was changed when we left it, with hardscape and paths, places to sit, a vegetable garden, and flower borders. At some point in the late seventies, our borders started to be mixtures of small flowering trees, shrubs, evergreens, vines, perennials, bulbs with some space for annuals. Once Ann Lovejoy's book, American Mixed Borders, came out, I realized that what we had been attempting had a name. Although few garden professionals ever came to any of these houses, regular folks like our neighbors, families and friends, realtors, neighborhood associations and garden club members thought what we did each time was unusual, but they also said how much they enjoyed being in the garden spaces we had made.

We moved to this house less than 2 years ago, and my first thought for that dogleg was just to get rid of the junk. There were also a dozen small trees [mostly crepe myrtles] that had seeded along the foundation, and the house inspector advised us to get them out. Because it seemed stupid to have to drag trash containers across the whole back of the house every week, my husband built an enclosure for the cans nearer the gate, so going to the dogleg no longer had a purpose, unless you were an AC repair person.
Avia, we don't have concrete except for the AC pad, just dirt. There was a small patch of St Augustine grass living under the weeds. That first winter I noticed the suncatching nature of this area, and experimented to see if container plants would survive up against the brick.

We ripped out 100 square feet of Hall's honeysuckle while tearing down a shed in the main part of the garden, and under the vine were 3 sections of heavy, old white ornamental iron railing. It's considered a very Austin thing to use old metal like this for trellises and decoration - we'd seen stuff like that on garden tours. Figuring we'd eventually want it, we stashed it in a corner. After a year of tripping over the railings, I asked my husband to make two of the sections stand up against the wooden fence at the back of the dogleg. There's a live oak in the front yard, with the top visible above this fence. He used the third section at the entrance, angled to a post. This got the railings out of his way, and gave me a place to try out some flowering vines. But once the slightly battered, curlecued white metal was set up in there, the space felt different, like it should be something else besides a tidy, secluded suntrap. It seemed to call for things like beat-up white pots and faded decor and old standard plants like Aspidistra, Liriope & Box and fragrant plants like Jasmine and Mockorange. We bought a plain, slightly cracked, backless concrete bench to put against the brick.

This whole idea is just a few months old, barely in progress, and maybe it will never touch anyone's heart but mine. I want it to be useful and let me grow plants I've always read about, and I want it to be beautiful in a sort of pensive, scented, lovelorn way. Already it's starting to feel old, and slightly shabby, and secluded, and very, very Southern.

Thank you for listening,

Annie

"Form follows function," originally cast by Sullivan as "Form ever follows function," really refers to the Modernist idea that embellishments for the sake of decoration should be eliminated from design. That trend was as much economically motivated in the beginning as it was an artistic evolutionary leap from the previously ornamental conventions of design. The 'form' referred to was decoration, as well as particular appearances in structures, especially high-rise buildings, driven by precedent models through the previous century. Designers wouldn't depart from the standard of the day because they didn't want to be ostercized for being contrary to popular acceptance of decor and decoration. Many designers jumped aboard the new wave of 'form follows function' because it gave them freedom to depart from traditionally acceptable decoration, which meant that shapes, spacial organizations, utilitarian expressions, and standard materials could be finally embraced. That form is done away with was not so much the intent as that function is evident before decoration is considered. Was decoration considered, then? Wright saw to it, as did Le Corbusier, and van der Rohe, though in details such as line, larger organizational principles, simplicity of shape, and expression of important architectural foundations such as structural elements, supporting elements, relationships of floors within a structure, concrete and glass patterns, etc.

What this means to me in the landscape, or in the garden, is that precedent models are not as important as the idea that the freedom to express the intent of spaces in the garden can be as desireable as the shape or 'form' of the space. What is the space? In times past it had been more important that it be beautiful only, but not necessarily useful. There is nothing wrong, in my opinion, with beautiful only, I'm just suggesting why the expression was ultimately received so widely as to progenerate an entire era of modernist design.

For me, I like decoration. I like texture for the sake of contrast and perspective enforcement. I like color for color only. I love garden spaces that languish partly in shade and partly in sun so as to invite one to wander through both with the desire to experience both. I love water in the garden for the purpose of romance without function. There is, however, a good point to be drawn from the reasoning--that function can be the designer's precedent for concept as much as form alone, and in some cases, if a 'dialog' between modernist architecture and the garden space or landscape it rests in is desired, it may be the best precedent (surely, though, we can dress it up just a bit these days, can't we?).

Rick

Perhaps we are talking at cross purposes and saying exactly the same thing?

Ink, while you adamantly state that your enjoyment of your garden is purposeless and therefore functionless, that very enjoyment is a function - it's inescapable, whether you want to acknowledge it as a specific function or not.

And a very strong argument can be made for the making of a garden as architecture. One of the definitions of architecture is the "formation or construction as the result of conscious act". Unless you allow your garden to spring up naturally around you, the conscious selection and planting of trees, shrubs, flowers is an exercise in architecture. There is always a purpose in constructing a garden, whether it be screening or enhancing views, providing shade, growing vegetables and other edibles, making a safe play area for the kids, enjoying a few colorful flowers and the birds, bees or other wildlife or accenting the home or providing 'curb appeal'.

The form will spring from this purpose - location of the vegetable garden in a very sunny area, a large sweep of lawn or construction of a sandbox/play area for the kids, placement of a tree to maximize shade in a specific area - even the oft-debated foundation plantings to provide curb appeal or disguise concrete skirting.

I think some of this discourse and differing interpretation comes from confusion of the terms 'gardening' or 'garden design'. They are not so different - in fact, I'd venture to say that they really are the same. The very act of gardening, the physical cultivation of the earth and the deliberate planting of a growing organism is by definition a design - deliberate, purposeful planning. Whether the act of gardening itself employs what have come to be considered as basic "design principles" is extraneous - it is still an activity undertaken by design and with an ultimate purpose, hence a function and a form.

I used to be adamant pam but I decided to loosen up, for instance I can agree with all except the last bit of your post. 'Gardening' and 'garden design' are not the same anymore than 'driving' and 'automobile design' are the same. Deliberately driving to the coast doesn't make me a designer of the route or the motor car. What you are saying, that all deliberate activity is design and therefore has a function and a form, negates anything that is special about any one activity. This may actually be exactly what design is, a specific activity that sets out with a plan, rather than just digging and planting in the hope that all will turn out well.

I would say that driving a car is more like picking a flower, picking and eating fruit, or sitting or walking in a garden, not planting something. More using what someone else has created.

Anytime someone eyeballs the space they are working with and decides to plant this here and that there, it's "design", however simple or off the cuff. It has a function (whatever the reason is that the planter planted) and a form (the finished planting). Without the function, the form will never happen.

Well, perhaps we can agree to disagree on that aspect, Ink. Any activity undertaken with intent, whatever that intent may be, is at its basest literal sense a designed activity. Whether or not that negates anything special about that activity is, I guess, up to the interpretation of the 'designer'. Why is just digging and planting any less of a plan than something more calculated and considered? Is not the "hope that all will turn out well" indeed a plan of some fashion?

And Andrew, I hope your wish for more philosophical discussions on this forum has been fulfilled. If this isn't an esoteric and philosophically nebulous dialog, I don't know what is :-))

Is 'hope' a plan? If ALL intentional activity is design why do we need a special word to describe it? I think you might be saying that the activity is designed to acheive a goal but I am saying that the result is not necessarily design or if you like pre-designed. Most agree that "form follows function" is a starting point to have us thinking about uses and functions and this can lead to designing a garden around what we plan to do there. If we go outside and start thrashing around believing that no matter what we are doing that the doing itself is design the result may not be pretty.

"If we go outside and start thrashing around believing that no matter what we are doing that the doing itself is design the result may not be pretty."

Indeed! And it is often not. And I believe that is what separates a designed intent (a plan of any form) from a design governed by those principles we have come to recognize. Or 'gardening' from 'garden design'.

I don't understand that Pam, can you re-phrase.
The Three Year Old: Why mum?
Mum: Because a famous man said it.
The Three Year Old: But why mum?
Mum:I don't know, because.
TTYO: Why?
Mum: Just because.
TTYO: Why mum?

The doing itself is design? Does that mean when I wake up in the morning and go to use the little girl's room that I am designing? I don't think intent equals design. Though intention might, by one definition, be synonymous with design I do not think that's what we're talking about here. Nor does action equal design, especially when that action is driven by an uncontrollable force (ie, the little girl's room).

Yes, at it's very basest literal sense you could argue that any action or lack of action undertaken with a plan or purpose is design. I go to the bathroom in the morning with the purpose of relieving the discomfort I feel. (Is the action the form or the funciton?) But just like going out in the backyard and thrashing around, that idea of design doesn't address what we are talking about here.

Devil's advocate: There must be someone in this world whose purpose is solely to go out in the back yard and thrash around. I'm guessing laag would say that, in that case, whatever mess was made was the form - the function was the thrashing (?)

Performing natural bodily functions is hardly the same thing as creating a garden, whatever it's scope or reason for being. My dogs go to the rest room, too, but they don't design anything. I take that back, they do rearrange their bedding, I suppose they're designing a little spot to relax in. But the morning constitutional is not optional or deliberate, it just happens.

Ah, Saypoint, I have to disagree with that last part. Imagine if it really just happened... Don't we spend some time when our kids are around 2 or 3 helping them *plan* when and where they will relieve themselves? Our morning consititutional, as you put it, is optional - we can deal with the discomfort for awhile - and deliberate - thus the trip to the proper spot. It's absurd to make that correlate to this discussion, I realize. But, it's just an example of the why doing isn't always the same as designing.

Gardengal knows what it is that I am saying. I really don't think that it is all about number crunching and techno designing that people seem to think I am preaching. I know Mohave read that into my posts many times and now I think you might be, Tony.

I believe it is just the opposite. Rather than taking the artistic expression out of the design process to come up with a technogarden, I am pointing out that artistic expression is an extremely important means toward addressing your needs. Many of you see the artistic expression as the end where I see it as the mechanism rather than the result.

To address Tony's need: "I want the space I am in to be purposeless, functionless and to call my enjoyment of the birds, the buds and the burgeoning life"

Function: a purposeless space
Form: could be anything as long as it serves no purpose

But wait, we want to enjoy birds and buds (is that legal in Canada?) So, we know of a two basic functions. Enjoying birds and buds.

What do you need to do that? Birds and buds need habitat, so that will take a form. In order to enjoy birds, one needs to see and/or hear them, these have physical requirements last time I checked. Depending what Tony means by enjoying "buds" , he'll need a garden (flowers), or maybe a table (Budweiser beer), or perhaps a little privacy (weed). I suspect it is the first bud definition, but in any case there are physical requirements (also known as form).

Now it seems that the problem is in understanding that creativity and artistic expression is actually allowed and encouraged in developing these forms. The "form follows function phrase" seems to conjure images of a bunch of German guys with slide rules and lab coats trying to apply some minimalist sterile vision to these forms.

The other thing that strikes me funny is that it seems people think that I am suggesting that they switch from doing it "the other way" to the "form follows function" method. The truth is that every last one of us is developing form from functions. Even Tony in his purposeless garden is creating a form to address a need.

What we identify as functions, how many we want to address head on, and how we weight them in terms of our values are all going to be different. Hopefully, they won't be too different than your clients.

Does that make more sense?

Andrew, your post gave me a good chuckle.

Garden design is a facet of gardening.

Words can shift in meaning, usually for functional reasons. The "form follows function" or "functions ever seek out their forms" usage has its historical context as someone has already described. It helps account for cabbage teapots and shifts from one historical period to another.

Laag's usage, as I'm understanding it, would include the cabbage teapot. It would grasp the teapot and say, "Dang it! I want my kitchenware to look like vegetables!" It then becomes a matter of mitigating aspects of the situation that oppose the function--ditch the George & Martha Washington salt & pepper shakers--and enhancing those aspects that support the function.

(Thank you, Laag, for "enhance" and "mitigate".)

Moving from the ridiculous to the sublime, I believe that "thin places" are more often discovered than created, except by a very few exceptional artists / designers. But isn't it helpful to know that that is what we're aiming for? Annie is on the trail to creating a very particular mood in a very particular space. Certain choices--not just one way, one path--will enhance her vision. Certain choices--removing debris, building a garbage space elsewhere, etc.--will mitigate the negatives that would stand in the way.

It's hard to use this word function to encompass everything up to and including our personal heartsong, but a rose would smell as sweet

Wellspring

Other beliefs people seem to cling to are these. If you think, you are not an artist. If you are an artist, you are above the need to think.

That last one got my blood pressure up!!! I have dealt with TOO many artists who believe that they are above thinking, that what ever they spew is ART! And then the masses believe it! Without thinking! I wish I could use that manure on my garden, it is so thick! Anyone can "design" or "do art," but the quality is the question. I have seen some really lousy landscape design, like the gorgeous, full shrub beds that look just great until you look up and see the tops of the $1000 trees cut out because they were planted under power lines and they did not want to alter "the design." And I have seen some REALLY bad "art." Training, talent and thought are necessary for making any BEAUTY of any kind and more of these three is usually better. "ART" only happens occasionally even with excellent artists, it transcends the maker and touches souls, just like in landscape design.
NN

I didn't start off to aim this at you Andrew, honest. The phrase is used a lot and like a lot of such phrases they mean slightly different things to different members of the cast. Having drawn such articulate contributions from the playwrights above, including yourself, I think it is likely that we may all be reading from the same script.
The relaxation I am looking for comes from having already made sure everything works the way it should so that the chair doesn't tilt at an angle or the buds slide off the table so that I am just functioning minimaly. I hope that I am not thinking too much, because I want to be an artist.
Good reading all.

I haven't had time to read the whole thread...y'all started a GOOD one, just as I was getting ready to drive to Cincy to get Elder Son at college. I got as far as catkim's question on "thin places." Had to go find the thread.

Linked below!

melanie

Here is a link that might be useful: Thin places

Thanks for the good thread Tony. I agree with your conclusion. I'm glad it was a table needed for the buds rather than incense and a privacy hedge.