"Form should express function"
1856–1924
Louis Sullivan was an American architect that studied the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the École des Beaux-Arts, Paris. Like many other modern architects, he too contributed to the development of modern architecture.
Sullivan takes a different perspective of the relation between form and function that genuinely stands out among the crowds. Some believed that form should follow function, while others give very little importance to form at all. Still others say that beauty is the key to great architectural design. Sullivan believed in a harmony between form and function. Form should express function. In this sense both are related to each other, because in his works: whatever the form is, it is describing the function of the building; whatever the function is; it is a reflection of the form of the building.
He began working in the firm operated by Dankmar Adler in Chicago in 1881. Sullivan designed over 100 buildings for this firm and became very successful. In 1889, he completed a ten-story Auditorium Building in Chicago. As a large-scale project, he executed the designs for a hotel, an office building, and a theater.
The ten-story Wainwright Building was completed in 1891 in St. Louis, Missouri. Equipped with a metal frame, Sullivan was careful in implementing the steel frame so that it didn't interfere with the structural skeleton.
1901 was the year Sullivan began to put his principles into action in his essays, collected as Kindergarten Chats published in 1918. The Autobiography of an Idea (1924), which he wrote in his last years, contains the philosophy of his life and work.
Later, he completed vast commercial structures and became the founder of the Chicago School of architects. His most famous pupil was the architect Frank Lloyd Wright, who acknowledged Sullivan as his master.
As a personal "signature" to accredit his work, Sullivan is known for his stamp and ornament that exist on all of his buildings.