Form Doesn’t Follow Function; It Follows Fuel – GreenBuildingAdvisor

By LLOYD ALTER | October 28, 2025

In 1896 Louis Sullivan wrote (my emphasis)

“It is the pervading law of all things organic and inorganic, of all things physical and metaphysical, of all things human and all things superhuman, of all true manifestations of the head, of the heart, of the soul, that the life is recognizable in its expression, that form ever follows function. This is the law.”

In 1969, Rayner Banham wrote about how fossil fuels and air conditioning changed the way buildings were designed:

“By providing almost total control of the atmospheric variables of temperature, humidity and purity, it has demolished almost all of the environmental constraints on design that have survived that other great breakthrough, electric lighting. For anyone who is prepared to foot the consequent bill for power consumed, it is now possible to live in almost any type or form of house one likes to name in any region of the world that takes the fancy. Given this convenient climactic package one may live under low ceilings in the humid tropics, behind thin walls in the arctic and under uninsulated roofs in the desert.”

In 2025, Florian Urban and Barnabas Calder write:

“Form follows fuel, and very cheap fossil-fuel heat energy continues to shape our architecture today…”

“What is needed, if we are to urgently and radically reduce our environmental harms, is not energy efficiency, but energy reduction: we need to systematically quantify – and radically reduce -the energy hunger of constructing, maintaining and running our buildings.”

In the book, Form Follows Fuel, Urban and Calder examine fourteen buildings, starting with the Great Pyramid in Giza and ending with a giant airport. But in between, we see the evolution of housing from a Scottish “Blackhouse” that got its name because…