Word: function
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...even the dissidents agree that the day is not too far off when man will have a valid function in space. As instrumented spacecraft get more and more sophisticated, it becomes more and more difficult to transmit, record, digest and interpret their food of raw data. The best solution at present is to put small computers in the spacecraft. One kind, called a "Tele-bit," translates the data from the instruments into figures that are sufficiently simple to send over the transmitter and can go directly into a big ground computer. But when spacecraft begin to work at such distances...
...Kahn, the great moment in architecture was when "the walls parted and the column became." But he does not believe that columns need look like classic colonnades-all form and no function except to support the roof. He has planned one towering office structure that looks like giant Tinker Toys studded with pyramid-shaped joints that are used as service areas. "I like my buildings to have knuckles," he explains. "Joints are the beginning of ornament." He has also used daring devices in more down-to-earth buildings. His Yale Art Gallery, for example, uses exposed reinforced concrete tetrahedrons...
...usual hallway cubicles, Kahn gave the researchers clear, unpartitioned studio spaces. His next project: a new research institute in San Diego. Calif, for Polio Vaccine Discoverer Dr. Jonas Salk. which Kahn intends to make "a realm of spaces" where form will truly enhance the institute's function as an academy of biology...
Kahn applies his concept of form and function to the greatest single problem facing architects today: finding a solution to the choking clutter of the nation's big cities. Fascinated since his student travels abroad by the medieval walled city of Carcassonne in France, he came to the conclusion that what gave it coherence was that every aspect of the city was ordered around a single principle, namely, defense. Today Kahn believes that the modern city will renew itself around the principle of movement. His fertile imagination visualizes the idea in terms of a river. Great expressways would channel...
...schools. He believes that percentile grades are "relative hogwash," and that essay exams are irreplaceable. "The fact that not one complete sentence (or paragraph) has to be composed either in the Verbal section of the Scholastic Aptitude Test or in the Achievement Test in English composition has destroyed the function of the old entrance examination that served as a national unifying force in the teaching of reading and writing...