The design of buildings ought to be more than just a marriage of form and function, according to architect Ole Scheeren.

‘I want to propose a completely different quality: “Form follows fiction”,’ said the former OMA partner in a TED Talk released on video yesterday.

‘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.’

Scheeren, whose work includes the twisting China Central Television building in Beijing, went on to explain how the inhabitants of buildings should ‘script’ the architecture, while the design should also inform people’s experiences within the space.

He compared the prevailing thought of ‘form follows function’ – first mentioned by architect Bernard Tschumi – to a straightjacket.

‘It liberated architecture from the decorative, but condemned it to utilitarian rigour and restrained purpose.’