You should look at Eisenman's Diagram diaries. You should read essays by greg lynn, sylvia lavin, jeff kipnis. These are the fore most thinkers on form and its influence. It's such a rich topic, I would have a hard time addressing it. But I think we can all agree that Form is essential to architecture, it is the physical manifestation of ideas whether those ideas are about program, or those ideas are about use or affect. I hope this helps. Reading the above should help you formulate how form is not "superfluous" but part of the critical architecture project. If you want info to perhaps the contrary. I'd check out Wes Jone's comic strip The Nelson's, I'd also engage with the work of Lot-ek. Good luck!

Ricox,

As you can imagine, so much has been written on form in Architecture that it's impossible to simply point you to a few readings and say that they have all the answers. The best we can do without an idea of your thesis or ideas that you have already formulated is list a bunch of texts for you to sort through. As for the writing itself, I strongly suggest that you have someone work through it with you after you have finished writing to help you correct errors. Your school probably provides free writing workshops/tutors to help with exactly this.

My suggestions:
1 Define "form." This will help inform the rest of the essay.

2 Formulate a thesis: "Are considerations of 'form' essential to the practice of architecture?" Your answer to that is your thesis and will define the research that you need to do.

3 Research: All of this has been thought out before. Look for people who both agree and disagree with your thesis. If you have a good librarian, they ought to be able to help.

4 Using your research as a foundation, you should be able to form a good argument

A few people who have confronted "form" (in roughly chronological order)

Boullee/Ledoux

Adolph Loos (but first you'll have to define "form")

Hannes Meyer: Might disagree with rob(E) that form is essential to architecture "all things in this world are a product of the formula... all art is composition and, hence, is unsuited to achieve goals."

Mies: Letters to Die Form, other early writings ("Form as a goal is formalism; and that we reject")

Le Corbusier: Towards an Architecture ("Our eyes are made for seeing forms in light")

Louis Sullivan: "Form follows function."

Greg Lynn: Form as a product of context

I also agree with rob's suggestions of people to look at, but would submit that you should not ignore the more historical stuff, because that is what most of the new guys base their own ideas on, and is often more to the point and may be more helpful.

If you can clarify your ideas and post a thesis or a general outline, I may be able to help more.

Most universities and colleges have a department or service that offers a great degree of writing help to students. Use it!

This, of course, means giving yourself enough time: to research, to do a first draft, to submit and get input, and to revise and improve before the assignment is due.

Good luck!

GBB is dead on. Once you realize there is a lineage of form. You can better attack the issues at hand. No piece of architectural theory is a One off genius moment, it is all grounded in a specific historical trajectory. Also, understanding the and being critical of what writers are saying vs what they are doing. Also, ornament and Form are different topics. So defining form is important. For example, when mies says the above "form as a goal is formalism, and that we reject" i believe he is clearly lying to himself and others....but that is another topic! The point, though is to echo what GBB said about zooming in on what you are talking about, then youll be able to select the appropriate mix of current and historical references. Good luck!