Architecture Forms Functions

Some books merely discuss architecture. Others arrive like a confident man in a roll-neck sweater carrying tracing paper, speaking warmly about concrete, proportion and the moral destiny of the built environment. Architecture Forms Functions (1966) by Anthony Kraft is very much in that second category: a gloriously period piece from the great age of modern architectural seriousness, when buildings were not just buildings but Statements, and a staircase could apparently embody the future.

Published in 1966, this is a book from that wonderfully optimistic moment when architecture still felt capable of reorganising civilisation, preferably in clean lines and with a great deal of glass. The title alone is deliciously stern: Forms. Functions. No frippery, no apologies, no chapter called “Cosy Corners”. This is architecture presented as an idea, a system, a way of thinking about how humans might live if only they could stop cluttering everything up with antimacassars and decorative ducks.

Anthony Kraft guides the reader through a world in which shape and purpose are engaged in an elegant, occasionally severe conversation. This is the language of design before everything became “content”. Walls matter. Space matters. Light matters. The relationship between beauty and utility matters very much indeed. One can almost hear the ghostly rustle of black polo necks and the clink of ashtrays in some mid-century European studio while earnest people discuss whether a civic building should aspire to monumentality or simply very efficient window placement.

And yet that is exactly the charm of a volume like this. It captures an era when architecture books were often produced with immense visual confidence. They did not beg for attention; they assumed you would sit down and properly look at them. Expect the kind of thoughtful images, diagrams and layouts that make even a municipal structure appear faintly heroic. This is the sort of book that can persuade you that a housing block in the right light is not merely a housing block, but an argument about society.

There is also something deeply appealing about the slightly utopian air that hangs over 1960s architectural publishing. Here was a time when designers, planners and theorists all seemed to believe that if one got the form right, the function would follow, and civilisation itself might become a bit more orderly. Whether history entirely supported that theory is another matter, of course. Modernism gave us some masterpieces, some concrete poetry, and some places later described by residents in language not wholly fit for print. But that tension is part of the fascination. Books like this preserve the idealism before the rain got in.

As an object, this Crappy Old Books copy sounds exactly as one would want it to be: fine condition, and well preserved in an archival plastic jacket. In other words, it has survived the decades with more dignity than many actual buildings of the period. While countless fashionable interiors have come and gone, and plenty of bold 1960s structures have been neglected, reclad or condemned as “problematic”, this book has simply sat there looking composed and well considered, waiting for a new owner to appreciate its intellectual geometry.

It is also the kind of book that works on several levels. For the serious reader, it is a window into twentieth-century architectural thought and visual culture. For the design enthusiast, it is a handsome mid-century object in its own right. And for the casual browser, it offers that particular pleasure unique to vintage illustrated books: the sense of entering a vanished world in which everyone seemed convinced that the future would be cleaner, brighter and far more rational than the one we actually ended up with.

So yes, Architecture Forms Functions is about buildings, but it is also about ambition, taste and that wonderfully old-fashioned belief that design can improve human life. It is intelligent, stylish, faintly doctrinaire, and all the better for it. A fine surviving specimen from the age of architectural conviction.

Perfect for lovers of architecture, mid-century design, serious-looking books with excellent visual presence, or anyone who likes the idea of owning a volume that seems to disapprove quietly of unnecessary ornament while looking absolutely splendid on a shelf.

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