Universal Principles of Design, Revised and Updated

Form Follows Function

Beauty in design results from purity of function.

The form follows function corollary is interpreted in one of two ways—as a description of beauty or a prescription for beauty. The descriptive interpretation is that beauty results from purity of function and the absence of ornamentation. The prescriptive interpretation is that aesthetic considerations in design should be secondary to functional considerations. The corollary was adopted and popularized by modernist architects in the early 20th century, and has since been adopted by designers in a variety of disciplines.1

The descriptive interpretation—i.e., that beauty results from purity of function—was originally based on the belief that form follows function in nature. ...