Functional determinism
which were to constitute the ‘words’ of the new formal language of Purism.* For it is very obvious that they have quite deliberately chosen only those objects which conform to certain pre-established formal criteria, of simplicity, geometrical purity and so on. There has been a great deal of judicious aesthetic selection exercised by Le Corbusier and Ozenfant over and above any ‘mechanical selection’ which might have gone on in the objects’ technical evolution. Many contemporary mass-produced articles, though no doubt cheaply produced and probably functionally quite serviceable, were, not surprisingly, over-ornate, ill-proportioned and certainly not of simple geometric form; as Le Corbusier well illustrates with selected pages from mail-order catalogues reproduced in La Ville Radieuse and elsewhere.9 It is clearly possible to find artefacts with widely differing forms answering to essentially equivalent functional purposes – perhaps decorated in a variety of styles, or even without decoration. Despite this, discussion has continued among design theorists of a materialist persuasion as to whether there might not be at least some types of artefact, particularly mechanical or engineering structures, whose forms would be largely or even wholly determined by functional requirements and the constraints of material and technique. The search for supposed examples of uniquely determined forms appears only to have turned up the crane hook;10 and the general claim is obviously highly dubious. As David Pye has so wittily and persuasively argued, the notion of any manufactured object being ‘purely functional’ or ‘purely utilitarian’ is on closer examination an unreal one; and what are often regarded as ‘unavoidable’ requirements of function, or limitations of material, are in fact matters of intentional choice on the part of the maker.11 Many ‘functional’ requirements may be resolved ultimately into requirements for economy – in the broadest sense of economy in the manufacture, economy in material used, and so on. With the expenditure of more resources, more money or more effort, it will generally be possible to produce objects which will all serve the same intended
* It is perhaps possible to sustain the argument that in certain limited areas of manufacture in the nineteenth century, particularly in artefacts constructed from metal components worked by machine tools, there was some tendency towards geometric design of this ideal Purist character. Herwin Schaefer in his book The Roots of Modern Design (London, 1970) shows some pictures of scientific instruments and other metal tools from the early 1800s which have an uncannily ‘modern’ and Purist appearance for exactly this reason (for instance figure 3, p. 11). But the argument applies obviously only to a very narrow range of materials and processes. Any casting, die-stamping or moulding process would have none of these limitations, for example – a fact to which the output of much nineteenth-century mass production bears eloquent witness. As a matter of fact later on Ozenfant comes to acknowledge this point – with a tinge, one senses, of regret – when he says that the use of such materials as rubber leads away from ‘geometric’ form in design. ‘The tendency towards electrification’ also, he says, ‘is creating machines that are practically formless.’ ‘Our mechanism is primitive, and that is why it still looks gratifyingly geometric.’ Foundations of Modern Art (London, 1931; revised edn., New York, 1952), p. 154. 187