Customer Reviews

The Function of Form

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

about the book: it was a little dissapointing, many pictures but weak theory. still you have to meditate for a while on many aspects after come to some practical use. but it's useful. it's not a book for begginers.

I think with all the graphics you can easily feed your imagination.

This is one of Moussavi's "The Function of ..." books, which are great books for students. I would personally recommend the "Ornament" installment. This book explains many (many) different structural solutions that mostly include arches and vaults and the almost infinite variations of them. Still a good book, maybe even a better book for engineers looking to get a broad overview than architects, but still a good book to have.

THE FUNCTION OF FORM is a 'must' for any serious college-level arts collection. It proposes a new theory of form based on repetition and differentiation, offering a way for function in built forms to be conceptualized as a transversal process. Architecture and arts libraries will find this a technical, comprehensive analysis of the parts of forms that interact and reciprocate, going beyond text to pack pages with finished designs offset by pages of diagrams and explanations.

I have to say I'm disappointed too. This book has many, many images but only the first 50 pages are theory; the rest of the book is full of images of grasshopperesque structure systems plus a few other buildings. IMO, If you are looking for a book with information about form and its process I would recommend Cecil Balmond's Informal or Reiser & Umemoto's Atlas of Novel Tectonics better.

I love the book because it is an easy way to remember all different forms and what the form creates around it. Also it is examples of real projects so if you wanna see with material on you can look up the project online.

it's like a catalog of all past forms of architectural structure. for example, all kinds of vaults. the list is long. but for the price amazon offers, it's good bargain.

What else to say but a big WOW.. This book is actually what i really need it.

Concerning the fact that i was interested in origami(tell you the truth i am a bit of an addict), but since i intend to be a
graduate architect, i was searching something that will transcend the function of origami as an "art made of paper" and
searching for a new form in architecture.

So, by and large, this book has its basics in what i needed.. I recommend it to anyone who searches how to learn the "liberty" of melding forms and applying its functionality in everyday life.

Graphics and structural descriptions in the book are excellent.

Narratives consist of architects trying to move the discourse of structural systems to a "higher plane". The resultant is almost unreadable, unless you too have been indocterinated in Harvard-speak. Obtuse throughout. Some interesting ideas are occaisionally offered in a coherent fashion, only to be washed away by more babble. I'm returning the book, as it is not at all what is advertised.

Where was this book when I was in architecture school? I have to say this is one the most comprehensive books ever written about structures that "generate" form... It's way of illustrating concepts with graphics and drawings are the way ALL architecture books should be written. Correct me if you think otherwise but Farshid Moussavi could become the Louis Kahn of contemporaneity...