Quote: Form Follows Function

Design functionalism sought to eliminate all forms of decoration - the common aesthetic of the 19th century.The resulting clean unadorned forms that begin to appear in the early 20th century represented an emerging design vocabulary that was best expressed in a quote made by the architect Louis Sullivan in 1896. But later altered enough to capture other ideas and the imagination of a generation of designers.

"It is the prevading law of all things organic, and inorganic, of all things physical and metaphysical, of all things human and all things inhuman and all things super-human, of all true manifestations of the head, of the heart, of the soul, that life is recognisable in its expression, that form ever follows function. This is the law." -Louis Sullivan in an essay: Tall Office Building Artistically Considered

More on Sullivan