What is Functionalism in architecture? Funkis explained

Functionalism is a movement in modern architecture that broke through in the 1920s and 1930s. A building was to be shaped by its function and materials rather than historical styles, and the result was simple white houses with flat roofs, large windows and no ornament. In Sweden the style is often called funkis and had its breakthrough with the Stockholm Exhibition of 1930.

Facts

Form follows function

The ideas began earlier. The American architect Louis Sullivan wrote in 1896 that form ever follows function, and the Viennese Adolf Loos attacked ornament in a famous text of 1908. After the First World War a new generation of architects wanted to build for a modern society: housing for everyone, light, air and hygiene, and the new materials and methods of industry.

Historical styles and decoration were seen as dishonest, because they concealed how a house was built and what it was for. The plan should start from how people move and live, and the façade should result from the plan. Read more about the style on the page on Functionalism.

Le Corbusier, the Bauhaus and Mies

In 1927 Le Corbusier formulated five points for a new architecture: the house should stand on pillars, pilotis, and have a free plan, a free façade, long ribbon windows and a roof garden. Villa Savoye outside Paris, built 1928–1931, is the best-known application.

In Germany Walter Gropius designed the Bauhaus Building in Dessau in 1925–1926 for the school that became the centre of modernism. Ludwig Mies van der Rohe built the Barcelona Pavilion in 1929, where the walls stand free like screens under a flat roof. Read more in the guide to the Bauhaus.

Funkis comes to Sweden

The Stockholm Exhibition in the summer of 1930, with Gunnar Asplund as chief architect, showed the new architecture to a wide public: light pavilions of glass and steel, flags, advertising signs and modern homes. The following year Asplund, Sven Markelius and four others published the manifesto acceptera, urging Swedes to accept the modern age.

During the 1930s funkis became the style of the new Sweden, closely associated with the people's home and housing construction. Slab blocks in parkland, with balconies and large south-facing windows, were built in many towns. Markelius designed Helsingborg Concert Hall, and Asplund extended Gothenburg Law Courts with a modern wing.

A softer Nordic Functionalism

In Finland Alvar Aalto developed a warmer Functionalism. Paimio Sanatorium, built 1929–1933, was designed for tuberculosis patients right down to the washbasins and chairs, and Viipuri Library has an undulating wooden ceiling in the lecture hall. Later Aalto's buildings became increasingly organic, with wood, brick and curved forms.

Nordic Functionalism was often less dogmatic than its Continental counterpart. Climate and light were taken into account, and wood and brick were happily mixed in. This is why many Functionalist houses in the Nordic countries have aged well and are still appreciated.

How to recognise a Functionalist building

Look for simple, cubic volumes with flat roofs, smooth rendered façades, often white or pale, and windows set in long bands or wrapping round the corners. Tubular steel balcony railings and round windows can give an almost ship-like impression. Ornament is completely absent; instead it is the proportions, the materials and the light that give the building its character.

Much of what was built after the Second World War, in what is called post-war modernism, builds on the principles of Functionalism but on a larger scale and with other materials. Compare with the guide to Brutalism.

How to recognise it

Exercise

Which event is usually seen as the breakthrough of Functionalism in Sweden?