A design principle stating that a building's shape and appearance should be primarily determined by its intended purpose and use. This modernist doctrine prioritizes functional efficiency over decorative concerns.
Coined by American architect Louis Sullivan in 1896, though the concept was implicit in earlier functionalist thinking. It became the rallying cry of modernist architecture, rejecting 19th-century historicism and ornament.
Sullivan's Wainwright Building was revolutionary because its vertical facade honestly expressed the steel frame structure inside - no fake stone arches or classical columns, just pure structural expression. This phrase launched a thousand glass boxes, though Sullivan himself never meant function should eliminate all beauty.
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