The Fallacy of Functionality

A few weeks ago I read Henry Petroski's latest book, The Essential Engineer, which centers on the differences between engineers and scientists and the work they each do. The footnotes of Petroski's book happily led me to Barry Allen's Artifice and Design, which I am certain I never would have come across otherwise.

Allen's book, among other things, explores the interrelationship between what turn out to be the arbitrarily divided fields of aesthetic and technical design. A good portion of Allen's book is dedicated to exposing the "Fallacy of Functionality." Under that heading, Allen writes:

Form follows function -- every word of this inane apothegm contains a mistake. Form does not "follow" from, or is not determined, derived, or entailed by, anything, least of all somebody's idea of function. ... Technical form is not deductive or calculated. It is underdetermined both by instrumental reason ("function") and the way the world works ("physics"). ...[T]here is no "one best way" to design anything, though there is often a
cheapest way. (p. 125)

Since there is no one best way to make anything technically complicated; since engineering thrives on alternatives and causes options to proliferate..., then technological design is evidently more like composing a symphony than solving an equation, and perception, the aesthetic interface, belongs to the technical conditions of the best work in engineering. (pp. 128-129)

The more complete and profound the conception of a technical problem, the more design approaches the conditions of art. Not "fine art" but working art, artful works, artistry in artifice, poiesis in the double sense of poetry and production, the poiesis of design, whether in a ship or in a sonnet. ...[T]he aesthetic moment cannot be eliminated from the technological design without undermining the best work (p. 181)

Allen supports his arguments with examples from the history of bridge construction, which resonate with me as an engineer, but he could just as easily (perhaps even more easily) support his arguments with examples from the field of architecture -- the field that originated the phrase "form follows function." What is eventually designed depends very heavily on decisions about how that thing will work AND how it will look. Often those initial decisions cannot be separated, and the results in any case can lead in a lot of different directions.

Design to Code, Design to Specification

"Codes, in the business of designing the new, often have to be given a fresh reading and a new interpretation. A code is a historical statement based on experience and testing, but mostly on experience. Design is design of the new and untried, the unexperienced, the ahistorical. As such, the code can never assure the successful and safe performance of the artifact or system in all its ways" (p. 135)

"Designing is not simply a matter of trade-offs, of instrumental, rational weighing of interests against each other, a process of measuring alternatives and options against some given performance conditions. Nothing is sacred, not even performance specifications, for these, too, are negotiated, changed, or even thrown out altogether, while those that matter are embellished and made rigid with time as design proceeds. They themselves are the artifacts of design." (p. 187)


From Louis Bucciarelli's Designing Engineers, (c) 1994 MIT Press.

Redevelopment of the Urban Core in My Lifetime

A wise man once said the following:

A national movement toward the revitalization of the heart areas of our cities is under way. Redevelopment projects in dozens of American cities, dealing partially or totally with core areas, are now in progress. I, personally, know of about forty major ones, but I am sure the number is much greater, because many of those projects have not yet come to public attention.

In and even greater number of cities, citizens' groups formed specifically for the purpose of redevelopment of the core areas are discussing this goal.

If one were to accept the quantity of efforts as a measuring stick, one would conclude that the outlook for a rosy future of the city is excellent. In any case the impressive quantity proves that there is a popular desire for urban improvement.

What is questionable is whether the quality of all these undertakings is such as to give hope that the deep desire will be fulfilled. In this respect, revitalization efforts vary widely. Though all of them deal with the problem of the core, few of them go to the core of the problem...

Our problem...is that past and still-existing trends are working in the opposite direction. In most cities in the United States desirability of the city core has steadily decreased and difficulties in reaching the core have mounted at an even faster rate. Thus our task is one of reversing trends. We have to reverse the trend toward decentralization, which has been spreading urban functions all over the regional countryside, simultaneously robbing these functions of much of their potency. We have to reverse the trend toward residential scatterization, by bringing residence population into the core areas of cities. ...We have to reverse the trend toward decreased use of mass public transportation and increased use of private automobiles for travel to and from the city core because, ...a compact city area cannot be served effectively by automobile transportation only.

...In a free democratic society this task cannot be accomplished by decree. We cannot force people into any action they don't deeply desire. If they don't wish to use public mass transportation because it is overcrowded, undignified, and inconvenient, they just won't do it. If they don't wish to drive bumper to bumper in and out of the city core and then hunt for a parking space, they just won't do it. If they don't wish to come to a place that has little to offer in opportunities, attractiveness, and human experience, they will stay away in droves.

Thus, from a practical point, two sets of measures have to be planned and implemented: [1] those that will make movement to and from the city center as convenient, speedy and comfortable as possible, and [2] those that will lift the environmental qualities of the urban core to the highest attainable level. The aim must be to reshape the heart of the city into a place that offers more than an opportunity for merely one type of activity such as earning one's livelihood; it should be a place where opportunities for self-fulfillment are multiplied a thousandfold.

I tend to agree, and as I read this passage I am struck by how it seems to capture many of the contemporary city planning issues that designers, planners, developers, and activists of my generation are seeking to address. It is therefore disheartening to think that this passage is from "The Heart of Our Cities," a book written in 1964 by Victor Gruen. (Many may know that Victor Gruen is also typically identified as the "father of the mall.")

The disheartening part is the implication that in my entire lifetime to date (having been born in 1963) there apparently has been very little progress in revitalizing the urban cores of most American cities. We are still identifying the same "problems" and suggesting many of the same solutions. Are we at last "reversing trends" as Victor Gruen hoped we would? Should we be moving on to a different conception of what a city is? Or is this a perpetual situation?