If a chair or a building is not functional, if it appears to be only art, it is ridiculous.
We shape a building and thereafter the building shapes us.
I suppose in our culture - in our lifetime - we've always enjoyed people who tell it straight. We like our presidents, our comedians, and our actors to do that . . . It's funny. You say that people prefer a tasteful formalism - as opposed to an oppressive formalism - but I do feel very strongly that form follows function.
Design has to work. Art does not.
Design is everything.
I grew up in a modernist house, in a modernist culture. There was a love for modernism everywhere - the furniture, the books, the food, even the cutlery. So I learned very early to appreciate the value of design and the value of architecture.
Design must be functional, and functionality must be translated into visual aesthetics without any reliance on gimmicks that have to be explained.
Mies van der Rohe's architecture and modern architecture in general suffered from not only being repetitive, but not explaining to the populous what the different rooms were for.
Design can be art. Design can be aesthetics. Design is so simple, that's why it is so complicated.
My weakness ... is architecture. I think of my work as ephemeral architecture, dedicated to the beauty of the female body.
Design is the fundamental soul of a human-made creation that ends up expressing itself in successive outer layers of the product or service.
My work is not about 'form follows function,' but 'form follows beauty' or, even better, 'form follows feminine.'
Good design is also an act of communication between the designer and the user, except that all the communication has to come about by the appearance of the device itself. The device must explain itself.
Without this spirit, Modernist architecture cannot fully exist. Since there is often a mismatch between the logic and the spirit of Modernism, I use architecture to reconcile the two.
I think there is always a need for pure design. With pure design, you don't need so much decoration.
When a man has seen the aerodynamic shape of a Caravelle jet at an airport, he doesn't need aerodynamic furniture.
Frank Lloyd Wright... his things were beautiful but not very functional.
The products people like best start with function and wind up with look.
From the outset, MoMA followed the Bauhaus's strict prohibition against design that even hinted at the decorative, a prejudice that skewed the pioneering museum's view of Modernism for decades.
When you sketch a shoe but don't have the intention to do a proper shoe, it remains a curvy sketch with no detail. The shoe completely morphs to the body.
The bones of my architecture are very much related to the structure, to the physical fact of how a building can stand up; it's also related to geometry and a certain understanding of the architecture in which there is a balance between expression and function.
Part of keeping space open is not to try to choose a form - to spend more time thinking about content, and let form take care of itself.
The most important thing is always to feel comfortable - I would never sacrifice function for style.
Form follows profit is the aesthetic principle of our times.
I love what you might call brutal elegance. Where form and function are really obvious. There is nothing easily broken in this house.
