Form follows failure (not function)

In Henry Petroski's 1992 book, The Evolution of Useful Things, he asserts that form doesn't follow function, form follows failure.

Petroski cites a number of people discussing design and failure, including architect Christopher Alexander and designer David Pye. Petroski notes,

According to [David] Pye, "function is a fantasy," and he italicizes his further assertion that "the form of designed things is decided by choice or else by chance; but it is never actually entailed by anything whatever."

Quoting Pye further,

The concept of function in design, and even the doctrine of functionalism, might be worth a little attention if things ever worked.  It is, however, obvious that they do not. .... Nothing we design or make ever really works. We can always say what it ought to do, but that it never does.

Is there a solution? According to Pye,

All designs for devices are in some degree failures, either because they flout one or another of the requirements or because they are compromises, and compromise implies a degree of failure ....
It follows that all designs for use are arbitrary. The designer or his client has to choose in what degree and where there shall be failure.