Time For Another TEDtalk > Why Great Architecture Should Tell A Story

Architect Ole Scheeren designs buildings that generate both functional and social spaces.

When Ole Scheeren (TED Talk: Why great architecture should tell a story) unveiled his design for a complex of residential towers in Singapore, his clients were stunned. “There was a moment of silence, and I could feel that there was a degree of disbelief in the room.” Why? Because Scheeren had turned 12 towers on their sides, and stacked them like Lincoln Logs. It would take him two weeks to convince the clients that the plan could even work — but he relishes conversations in which he can challenge the ingrained notion that the only way is up. He invites us to reimagine our cities’ skylines via five of his iconic buildings.

"For much of the past century, architecture was under the spell of a famous doctrine. "Form follows function" had become modernity's ambitious manifesto and detrimental straitjacket, as it liberated architecture from the decorative, but condemned it to utilitarian rigor and restrained purpose. . . I want to propose a completely different quality.
If form follows fiction, we could think of architecture and buildings as a space of stories -- stories of the people that live there, of the people that work in these buildings. And we could start to imagine the experiences our buildings create."

Whole transcript http://www.ted.com/talks/ole_scheeren_why_great_architecture_should_tell_a_story/transcript?language=en#t-26839