P1: Points & Lines

In different ways and to different degrees, all of these discourses figure into Allen's work, or better, the working though of these discourses does, for none of these lines of thought are left untransformed. Rather their coordination requires that questions of formal meaning be deposed by questions about the effect or performance of formal organizations, both semiotic and material;” pg1

How often are architects caught designing without context or function in mind? Even more so with the digital modeling push where they are aimlessly designing on an infinity plane with the absence of materiality and context. Is digital modeling becoming overly concerned with form and less concerned about the true nature of space and function?

Allen's more recent efforts surely coincide with this interest in architecture as effect, but his attitude toward form is more particular. "Form matters, but more for what it can do than for what it looks like," he declares. Or alternatively, "Form matters, but not so much the form of things as the forms between things." This attitude seems to me a logical progression from a general concern with the scene of production to this more particular, strategic space between the built thing and the uses it then enables and supports: forms between things constitute a site for actions, a staging of a vantage ground from which effects are launched. Neither form nor function is abandoned. Rather, form is reconceptualized as a condition conducive to certain outcomes, certain possibilities of activity and habitation. Form is an instigator of performances and responses, a frame that suggests rather than fixes, that maps or diagrams possibilities that will be realized only partially at any one time.” pg2

It is not so much an issue of prioritizing form before function and vice versa, it is about balance. A natural balance in which both factors harmonize. No matter the process of design, successful and spatial architecture needs balance.