Form follows function is one of the first rules or "laws" of design that all design and architect students learn and they pretty much carry it with them through their professional careers. It's ...

The function-follows-form Sydney Opera House, designed by Jorn Utzon, exemplifies this. Advertisement. Long before the modernist phrase was coined and codified, function determined architectural form.

Happy birthday, Louis Henry Sullivan.. The father of the skyscraper, patriarch of modernism, coiner of everyone's favorite design phrase, "form (ever) follows function," was born on this day in 1856.