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01 Abstract
Since the acceleration of modernism, architectural philosophy has been largely guided by the primacy of function, efficiency, and program as the determinants of form. Such hierarchy emerged under historically intelligible conditions: the technical limitations of earlier construction methods necessitated an architectural practice in which structural resolution and functional coherence were treated as prior to aesthetic ambition. Within this paradigm, beauty has been conceived as a secondary effect of rational organization rather than as a constitutive principle of design itself. Yet in an age marked by unprecedented advances in digital fabrication, artificial intelligence, and material science, the traditional hierarchy that has long relegated aesthetics to a secondary position should no longer remain unquestioned.
In contrast to conventional architectural practice, the speculative environments produced through cinematic concept art and visual world-building are generated principally for aesthetic effect: they are designed to evoke awe, atmosphere, and emotional orientation in imagined worlds. These fictive worlds reveal an otherwise underdeveloped capacity of architecture to shape perception, desire, and collective imagination. Why is it that aesthetic world-building is treated as essential in the design of fictional environments, yet remains philosophically subordinate in the construction of actual ones? A contradiction which is especially striking given the psychological similarity between imagined and built environments.
As the distance between the conceivable and the constructible continues to diminish, architecture may increasingly be understood not merely as an instrument of use, but as a primary medium of aesthetic experience. By placing architectural theory in dialogue with the aesthetic power of worldbuilding, this paper argues that awe, pleasure, and well-being are legitimate and central determinants of architectural decision-making. Form can begin to follow awe.
02 "Form Follows Function"
Architecture has long been understood as a profession suspended in between practical necessity and artistic ambition. In Vitruvius’s De Architectura, he defines architecture through Firmitas, Utilitas, and Venustas (Strength, Utility, and Beauty). His idea of the architect is not simply just a builder, technician, or artist, but one who is responsible for understanding and implementing all three values. Vitruvius does not treat beauty as something external to architecture, it's one of architecture’s original obligations. This balance is significant because it shows the later dominance of function was not inevitable, utility is just one part of a larger triad, but over time a hierarchy between these values have formed.
“Form ever follows function” is a phrase that was coined by Louis Sullivan in his 1896 essay The Tall Office Building Artistically Considered. Sullivan’s argument was not a rejection of beauty, actually it was the opposite. He argued that the tall building’s form and skin should aesthetically emerge from the inner life of its body. The tall building should not disguise itself with inherited ornament, but express a new modern condition through its steel frames, repetitive offices, and vertical circulation. He gave the building “permission” to liberate it from imitating historical styles of architecture and appropriate new technology and social realities. “Form follows function” was clearly not meant to make buildings ugly or emotionally empty, but it was a claim that beauty can arise from utility, or strength.
The afterlife of this idea, however, has become much more reductive than Sullivan's original intention. Over time “form follows function” has inadvertently become a shorthand for the belief that architectural form must be drawn from program or structure. In other words beauty becomes subservient to utility and strength. The useful building became the good building; aesthetic experience must now be defended only after practical requirements have been fulfilled.
This shift is particularly influential in the modernist movement. Le Corbusier’s infamous description of the house as a “machine for living in” is a clear example of the evolution of this idea. The building is imagined as an instrument, designed to serve modern life with efficiency, clarity, and structural order. Mies van der Rohe similarly liked these ideas and in his work beauty was never abandoned, but it was restrained to the logic of construction and repetition. Modern architecture did not eliminate aesthetics by any means, but it begins to treat beauty as secondary to utility and strength.
(The only one who really got this right, in my opinion, was Antonio Sant'Elia and his use of utility like elevators and cores as direct aesthetic and form-making tools.)
The problem is not that function, structure, efficiency, and utility are unimportant. Architecture must obviously answer to all of them, or it would fail at all levels. The problem is that these requirements have recently been mistaken for architecture’s higher philosophical purpose. What began as a balanced list of Vitruvian disciplines, became a hierarchy used to determine the order in which things are important. I believe this becomes harmful at a high level.
In contemporary architecture the idea loosens, but still very much remains. Architects like Bjarke Ingles are often associated with dramatic massings, iconic silhouettes, and large formal gestures, which in and of themselves are aesthetically interesting, but always justified through diagrams of program, circulation, zoning, or other utilitarian values. The form may be striking, but its legitimacy is always tied to an explicit problem that the building is trying to solve through existing (and it's possible that this is just a marketing strategy, not a design strategy, but I will test this firsthandedly). Aesthetic desire alone seems rarely sufficient. To say that a building should exist because it produces beauty, wonder, and awe, often sounds too indulgent, or difficult to defend and sell.
This imbalance becomes clear through a simple thought experiment: If I were to propose a building that is designed almost entirely for utility, like a warehouse for example, you may readily accept it as necessary and economically justified. But If I were to now propose a building for no other purpose than to be beautiful, you may quickly treat it as excessive and wasteful. Utility in nearly all cases is presumed to justify itself, while beauty must defend its right to exist. Under these present conditions, it's understandable why “beautiful architecture” is a hard thing to create.
03 The Philosophy of "Form Follows Awe"
If the field of architecture has seen aesthetics as subordinate to function, cinematic world-building is a field that has seen the opposite. In concept art, production design, and world-building, the primary task is not to create utility, but to create a world that feels coherent, immersive, and emotionally strong. The fictional building is no longer subject to the bias of utility, it must do something that only the best architecture does, build an atmosphere around the viewer. Concept art therefore provides an interesting foil to architecture. It shows us what can happen when buildings are first composed for perception, rather than function. Scale, light, material, silhouette, composition, and spatial sequence are all evaluated through a singular question; does this move the viewer? Function may surely be implied, but it's rarely the priority.
This is where Kantian aesthetics become useful to us. In Kant’s belief, the judgement of beauty (aesthetics) is not based on a deeper knowledge of an object's use, but a feeling of pleasure it provides (Kant 1790). The beautiful thing must not be understood in order to be appreciated. It requires a “disinterested” viewer which means that aesthetic pleasure is not reduced to ownership, utility, or moral relevance. This is important for architecture because buildings are almost always explained through interests like budget, program, structure, typology, sustainability, and more. While these are very real constraints, they are totally separated from aesthetic experience. The Kantian reading allows us to argue that architecture has aesthetic value, not only when it serves a purpose, but when it can be read free of encounter between itself and the world. In other words, it allows architecture to far exceed its utility.
The idea of Awe also feeds into this argument. Psychologists Dacher Keltner and Jonathan Haidt define awe through two primary experiences, perceived vastness, and a need for accommodation. Awe occurs when a person encounters something so large, complex, or powerful that it conceptually overwhelms them, new categories have to be created in their brain to understand what they are experiencing.
Architecture is one of the only arts capable of producing literal vastness. It surrounds us, exceeds our field of view, controls movement, and stages the relationship between our scale and a much larger one. Cathedrals, pyramids, temples, monuments, towers, ruins, have all operated through the structure of awe. They make us feel small and insist on a confrontation between perception and a larger order. This may explain why, when non-architects are asked to name their favorite buildings, they often name cathedrals, monuments, or public spaces. These spaces aren't loved because of how efficient and utilitarian they are, they are loved because they produce a larger than life encounter. They create mystery and push you into territory unknown - exactly the opposite of what “form follows function” intends to do, even in its original and untainted form.
04 Examples of "Form Follows Awe"
Contemporary fictional worlds understand this very well. Ghost in the Shell (Sanders, 2017), for example, renders urban spaces as a mixture between familiar and unfamiliar. The city created for the movie begins to resemble Hong Kong, or other Chinese or Japanese cities, dense with signage, infrastructure, and transportation, yet small surreal modifications are made in order to control the perception of the viewer. For example, take a subject standing in an ankle-height reflecting pool in the middle of the city. The pool itself has no obvious practical function, but it transforms the image in a huge way. The city becomes dreamlike as it reflects the horizon back onto the ground. It’s a way of re-experiencing something that looks familiar.
Still image derived from Ghost in the Shell (2017)
AI altered still which removes the aesthetic interventions and replaces the water with a typical paved lot.
In other worlds, like those of Interstellar (Nolan, 2014) or Elysium (Blomkamp, 2013), familiar landscapes are turned into foreign worlds. Simple and recognizable things like a baseball field, or a suburban neighborhood are relocated into a space station with an orbital ring. What seems like a small change, visually, produces an otherworldly emotional effect as the collision between recognition and impossibility takes place.
Still image derived from Elysium (2013) showing the Elysium space station as a collection of familiar environments in a completely new composition.
We can understand the individual elements quite easily, but not the world that contains them. This is precisely the structure described by Keltner and Haidt in their definition of awe. Vastness and accommodation.
The worldbuilding of Dune (Villeneuve, 2021, 2024) also follows a similar formula but its primary intention is the production of fear, not inspiration. Arenas, palaces, desert fortresses, and monumental interiors are not composed to optimize for circulation, they are created to make power visible. A Triangular arena for example does not create equality between the various viewers of an event, it points to a specific person of focus, a visual demonstration of power.
Still image derived from Dune: Part Two (2024) showing a triangular shaped combat arena under the lighting of a monochromatic sun.
Above all else, I find the worldbuilding of The Creator (Edwards, 2023) to be most relevant. The world he creates feels particularly plausible because he approaches it much like an architect would. He shoots the film first, as if it were based in reality, and then begins to layer on elements of worldbuilding afterwards. This creates conditions similar to that of architectural renders, which are created in the same way.
Photo of LAX as it was in 2023
Still image of LAX derived from The Creator (2023) depicted in the year 2070.
His futuristic recreation of Los Angeles is a great example of this. At first glance it may feel idealistic, but his additions are actually not far from reality. Some futuristic structures, inspired by industrial and military forms are added, but existing elements like highway infrastructure remain, yet again mixing the understood and the surreal.
Photo of 81 Bond St, Toronto
RIGHT Rendering of an opera house imposed over the site as a studio project of mine. The process is identical to that of The Creator (2023).
His process is incredibly similar to that of our task in an architecture studio. He creates speculative extensions of what already exists. The difference between our work, and his, however, is priority. His priority is to create an aesthetic world around a viewer in order to inscribe feeling, while ours is often rooted in generating the perception of utility. Concept art can therefore reveal a latent potential of architecture - an ability to design through atmosphere and world-building, rather than the priority of utility.
05 Why "Form Follows Awe" works
This is why “Form follows awe” should not be dismissed as aesthetic indulgence. Awe is a form of orientation, it changes the relationship between subject and world. It can produce incredible connections and feelings of humility, wonder, attention and memory. Recent fields such as neuroaesthetics have begun to study the basis of these claims. It studies how human perception, emotion, and well being is driven by aesthetic experiences (Chatterjee, 2014). This research doesn’t mean that beauty can be reduced to brain chemistry, but it weakens the idea that aesthetic experience is simply a form of luxury. Roger Ulrich’s 1984 study (Ulrich, 1984), for example, found that patients recovering from surgery with views of nature had shorter hospital stays than those of patients with a view of a brick wall instead. It’s very simple proof that perception can alter chemistry.
Architecture has always known this intuitively, cathedrals use enormous heights, detailed nature-like shadows, and colored light. Courthouses use symmetry and mass, memorials use silence and calculated lighting. It’s no secret that perception can alter emotion, but it for so long has remained a secondary objective.
A Kantian framework helps institute “form follows awe” as a priority because it separates aesthetic value from immediate utility. A beautiful or sublime architectural experience is valuable because human beings are not merely task-performing organisms, we are perceptual, emotional, symbolic, and imaginative beings. And of course we need shelter - but we’re not cavemen anymore. We can afford to create meaning and orientation in our cities and architecture is one of the only disciplines capable of generating this. This is the strongest argument for aesthetic priority. It exists for human experience, particularly in a world where over 50% of all humans live in an urban environment (UN, 2019). Beauty becomes a public deficit.
Functional architecture is of course necessary, but it isn’t sufficient anymore. A city composed only of efficient architecture may work technically, but it fails the humans who live there. It may move bodies and optimize costs, but starving the public of beauty, mystery, and wonder will surely drive people away. Public access to awe has historically been one of architecture's most democratic gifts. Not everyone can travel the world, own intriguing art pieces, or access cultural institutions, but everyone can move through the street and perceive the world we create for them. The idea of “Form follows awe” aims to prioritize this encounter as a driving factor to enhance ordinary life.
06 "Form Follows Awe" as Resilience to Artificial Intelligence
Under this model of thought, architects could be understood less like problem solvers, and more like directors of experience. Like filmmakers, architects organize sequences of elements like light, suspense, compression, and release. Instead of actors and cameras we work with materials and memory. A filmmaker composes an aesthetic experience for viewers over a curated period of runtime where an architect can compose experience visitors who likewise are temporary.
This analogy is particularly relevant when it comes to the role of artificial intelligence in architecture. As AI is increasingly able to generate plausible images, organise functional layouts, and perhaps even assist in construction documents, the threat is not simply that architects will lose work. The threat is that architecture may become easier to produce without becoming more meaningful. If architecture is defined as a problem to be solved, it becomes particularly vulnerable to an artificial intelligence which is trained to solve problems. If architecture is instead understood as a film-like cultivation of human experience, emotional depth, and memory, it becomes increasingly resilient to automation.
A building that works is no longer enough because “working” is the easiest criteria to automate. The harder, and far more rewarding task, is to design spaces that people remember, love, and return to. The future relevance of architecture may depend on its willingness to reclaim beauty, wonder, and awe.
07 Why Can This Begin To Happen Now?
Historically, it was very easy to dismiss awe driven architecture as technically impossible. The few large and awe inspiring structures that humanity created were only done over the course of hundreds of years and thousands of hours of labor. Architecture was significantly restrained by material science, engineering techniques, and construction tolerances. Under those conditions the prioritization of function was not merely philosophical, but incredibly practical in ensuring a building could be built, before it could be idealised.
But the gap between conceivable and constructible has since narrowed. Computational modeling allows us to simulate complex geometries before construction and digital fabrication allows those same complex geometries to be manufactured without error. Advanced structural analysis makes impossible forms like slender towers or long cantilevers possible. This doesn’t mean that anything we can imagine can now be built but the old argument that aesthetic ambition is technically impossible is far less absolute than it once was. The limitation now is usually not whether it can be built, but whether it should be.
The role of technology is not to trap designers into expressing the technology that we’re using, but to liberate us, and expand the range of possible human environments. It brings us closer to “disinterested” in the creative process and therefore allows us to see aesthetics in a much more honest way, which is only now beginning to become possible.
07 Why Can This Begin To Happen Now?
Historically, it was very easy to dismiss awe driven architecture as technically impossible. The few large and awe inspiring structures that humanity created were only done over the course of hundreds of years and thousands of hours of labor. Architecture was significantly restrained by material science, engineering techniques, and construction tolerances. Under those conditions the prioritization of function was not merely philosophical, but incredibly practical in ensuring a building could be built, before it could be idealised.
But the gap between conceivable and constructible has since narrowed. Computational modeling allows us to simulate complex geometries before construction and digital fabrication allows those same complex geometries to be manufactured without error. Advanced structural analysis makes impossible forms like slender towers or long cantilevers possible. This doesn’t mean that anything we can imagine can now be built but the old argument that aesthetic ambition is technically impossible is far less absolute than it once was. The limitation now is usually not whether it can be built, but whether it should be.
The role of technology is not to trap designers into expressing the technology that we’re using, but to liberate us, and expand the range of possible human environments. It brings us closer to “disinterested” in the creative process and therefore allows us to see aesthetics in a much more honest way, which is only now beginning to become possible.
08 Conclusion
“Form follows function” was not wrong, it was a historical necessity. It produced clarity, discipline and integrity in the buildings that understood it. But when it’s treated as a philosophical truth, it narrows the purpose of architecture and implies that its task is to solve problems of utility. Architecture has always been more than that. Cinematic world-building reveals what architecture sometimes forgets. Environments are never neutral, they shape how reality feels. They can make familiar things sacred, they can make public things memorable, and they can make the future imaginable.
As technology continues to reduce the distance between imaginable and constructible, architecture must reconsider its priorities. It is no longer about whether buildings can be made to stand or function. We’ve proven for so long that it can do that. If architecture is the medium through which life unfolds, then it has a responsibility. Not only to shelter people, but to move them, inspire them, and awaken them.
Form must not follow function, it must therefore follow awe.
09 References
Blomkamp, N. (Director). (2013). Elysium [Film]. TriStar Pictures.
Chatterjee, A., & Vartanian, O. (2014). Neuroaesthetics. Trends in Cognitive Sciences,
18(7), 370–375. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tics.2014.03.003
Edwards, G. (Director). (2023). The creator [Film]. 20th Century Studios.
Kant, I. (2000). Critique of the power of judgment (P. Guyer, Ed.; P. Guyer & E. Matthews, Trans.). Cambridge University Press. (Original work published 1790)
Keltner, D., & Haidt, J. (2003). Approaching awe, a moral, spiritual, and aesthetic emotion. Cognition and Emotion, 17(2), 297–314. https://doi.org/10.1080/02699930302297
Nolan, C. (Director). (2014). Interstellar [Film]. Paramount Pictures.
Sanders, R. (Director). (2017). Ghost in the shell [Film]. Paramount Pictures.
Sullivan, L. H. (1896). The tall office building artistically considered.
Ulrich, R. S. (1984). View through a window may influence recovery from surgery. Science, 224(4647), 420–421. https://doi.org/10.1126/science.6143402
United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs, Population Division. (2019). World urbanization prospects: The 2018 revision. United Nations.
Villeneuve, D. (Director). (2021). Dune [Film]. Warner Bros. Pictures. Villeneuve, D. (Director). (2024). Dune: Part Two [Film]. Warner Bros. Pictures.
Vitruvius. (1914). Vitruvius: The ten books on architecture (M. H. Morgan, Trans.). Harvard University Press. (Original work published ca. 1st century BCE.)
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