Graz follows…you!

Guerilla Architects invite you to participate in their „computer supported collective action“ through their living installation „StadtProzessor: Graz follows… you!“ that is connected to the practice’s mobile office „Bastian, der StadtSymbiont“. This installation allows you to instruct the architectural collective to realize your utopia of Graz, get an insight of their virtual project cloud and exchange with them through regular Skype meetings.

The established principle of “form follows function”, coined in the time of the dawn of modernism, represents the determination of architects around 1896 to reinvent architecture – to define and establish new principles of shaping space.

Later on, during the 20th century, the architectural form followed many different paths – it was futuristic; it was totalitarian and monumental; it was organic; it was brutalist and postmodern; then deconstructive, and and sometimes still tends towards the neoclassical. Today, we have all of these different layers of architecture and relate to their stories and presence – they are all valuable to us.

Back then architects struggled to emancipate themselves from the past and determined a form that was opposed to the form of the precedent. Nowadays architects are relieved to be compelled by this ideological struggle.
The manifestation of architecture should – more than ever – follow its context, not in the sense of copying the past, but to respect the existing structures and to develop its own identity. We don’t have a choice but to work with our built environment and therefore 
form follows context.

Since Louis Sullivan first coined the phrase “form follows function”, the world population has increased enormously and the majority of built architecture is not designed by architects. Society develops faster than architecture and determines the forms or the 
formlessness of architecture in the urban fabric. In that sense, 
form follows necessity.

Architects have the responsibility of designing not only space, but the impact of design on the emotional connections of the future occupants with space. It is not only a condition of practical functionalism, how we experience our environment, but a condition 
of the distinctive atmosphere, the «genius loci» and the economic-political setting. Therefore architecture should inspire, tell stories and engage the 
imagination to achieve more than just the superficial :
form follows content.

The city is the built reality of its society. The particular spatial situation shapes and is shaped by its citizens. Their needs, wishes and visions determine the physical form. 
Architecture should not be a weapon for controlling the masses, 
but a tool of shaping a better living environment:
form follows society.

The design of our living environment should not be a decision of a minority – it is in everyone’s hands to participate in the future of architecture.

If it is deemed necessary to pursue the significance and impact of one of the most historical phrases of architecture, we prefer to reject the absolute determinism of each statement for a word pair with an overrated ideological program.
Therefore, architecture should not be determined by an abstract concept; instead it should be determined by precisely the thing that it is designed for:

Form follows… us.
It’s not a given architectural parameter of style anymore, but a consequence of our actions. That doesn’t mean that architecture is only defined by “us as architects”, but most of all by you as participating citizens: “form follows you!”