Back4.20061E
Open climates
FORM AND FUNCTION FOLLOW CLIMATE
pavillon for the new school of beaux-Arts of Nantes, France
Project 2006
Realisation 2007
Client : ERBAN, Ville de Nantes, Le Lieu Unique
Philippe Rahm architectes (Philippe Rahm, Jérôme Jacqmin)
Two major theories are confronted in relation to architectural program and form. The first is American architect Louis Sullivan's famous dictum: Form follows function. The purpose of a building should be the starting point for its design. What is implied here is the pragmatic role of architecture as a spatial response to a program, in terms of surface, spatial relations and construction techniques.
It is in the early 60s that a counterpoint to this modern credo appeared with Function follows form, expressed by Louis Kahn among others. The notion of program was criticized for being a univocal answer to needs and activities. The history of architecture has demonstrated that architectural form is permanent whereas the program and the function of a building as well as its needs might change and transform with time.
Our intention is to question the relation between form and function by exploring how architecture can also depend on a contingent relation to atmospheric conditions generated - as we will see in the installation - as much from form as from function. The aim is to conceive an architecture free of any formal and functional predetermination: variable, fluctuating, open to meteorological variations, passage of time, seasonal changes, night and day alternations as well as to sudden appearances of unanticipated functions and of unexpected forms. We are working towards the reversal of a traditional method the traditional architectural methodology in order to allow a new spatial organisation where function and form will be revealed spontaneously through climatic conditions. We are searching for an architecture that substitutes functional and symbolic constraints for a freedom of use and interpretation allowing an openness towards unexplored dimensions, where architecture provokes the emergence of time, space and practices within its own subject.
