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Title: How Buildings Learn: What Happens After They're Built by Stewart Brand ISBN: 0-14-013996-6 Publisher: Penguin USA (Paper) Pub. Date: October, 1995 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $30.00 |
Average Customer Rating: 4.5 (18 reviews)
Rating: 3
Summary: Morality in building
Comment: The best part of this book is its historical photos, a history of our society told by its buildings. Worst part is its premise: that once we understand the importance of adaptability in buildings, we will build differently.
The fact remains building owners will never pay more than is necessary to meet their forseeable needs. (And if it weren't for building codes, even health and safety would be compromised.)
Another point: Although he values ordinary buildings, and wants an architecture free of pretense, pretense of some sort is the essence of architecture, which, as Frank Lloyd Wright said, begins where function ends. Do we really want a world of plain utilitarian structures?
So the book ends up being more of a criticism of our short-sighted culture, using buildings as examples. The arguments may not hold water, but the vast amount of research that obviously went into this book to document how buildings change over the decades still makes it interesting.
Rating: 5
Summary: This Book Effectively Merges Technology with Preservation
Comment: Stewart Brand's How Buildings Learn: What happens after they're built is as much a reflection of his life as it is about architecture. This potent clearly written essay provides valuable insights for a wider ranging audience while poking fun at established norms in the information age. Depreciatory of modernism casting doubt on the success of popular monuments paying homage to their creators, Brand does not limit his criticism of Wright for Falling Water in southwestern Pennsylvania or I.M. Pei's Media Lab Building at MIT. The strength of the book is the candid and thoughtful approach, interrelating complex issues with simple strands. Weaving a tale of old stuff in a new world, Brand proposes that buildings are most useful to their occupants and neighbors when they adapt. He assures that change will happen and that the only enduring monuments are those that can transform with time. Brand relies on a variety of primary and secondary sources and reinforces his examples with candid photographs, often visually comparing and contrasting to make his points. For each of these archetypes he tests the building against its function to perform basic living needs. He candidly makes observations without concern for political correctness within the broader architectural community.
Proposing six shear levels within a building based on their ability to temporally adapt, How Buildings Learn uses Site, Structure, Skin, Services, Space, and Stuff as a highly successful outline in delivering its message (p. 13). One source attributes this paradigm to that developed by British architect and historian F. Duffy's "Four S's" of capital investment in buildings. The site is eternal, yet often ignored by architects. The structure is most permanent defining the form and lasting 30 to 300 years. The skin is the part the architects get to play with. The services change every 10 to 15 years and, for ease of adaptation, should be kept separate to allow slippage from structure. The space (interior partition and pedestrian flow) and people's stuff change continually at the will of the occupants. After defining these layers, Brand then maps how buildings acclimatize over time based on their architecture.
The architecture is divided into three paths: low road, high road, and monumental. As a counter-culturalist, Brand observations should surprise no one that those dysfunctional places revered by society adapt the worse while despised "low visibility, low-rent, no-style" structures are functional, cost effective, and adapt easily to change. Contrasting the "temporary" World War II government warehouse Building 20 at MIT to I.M. Pei's Media Lab on the same campus, Brand illustrates his points with human testimonies and photographs. Though scheduled for demolition a number of times over the decades, Building 20's adaptable character has resisted. On the contrary, it appears the only forces retaining the overly designed and dysfunctional Media Lab are economic and social: the millions of dollars expended for its construction and the people that approved the funding for a monument to its designer. High Road buildings are high maintenance, described by Brand as a "labor of love measured in lifetimes." Citing original work by the Duchess of Devonshire, he attributes the character of these buildings to "high intent, duration of purpose, and a steady supply of confident dictators" (p. 35).
Unlike Low Road buildings that demonstrate value through utility, or High Road buildings that endure for their beauty and majesty, the worst buildings for adaptation are Famous buildings. For this arena, Brand has a target-rich environment. One book reviewer describes these buildings as "ignoring time, while time does not reciprocate." Because of its leaky roofs, Falling Water becomes, "Rising Mildew" and a "seven-bucket building" (p 58.) Famous buildings cannot adapt. They either exist as monuments to their creators, requiring significant investment to preserve, or as relics on the landscape succumbing to the forces of nature disintegrating into the landscape upon which they sit. Brand applied a similar logical approach to contrast exposed building elements. The Eiffel Tower, though despised by the locals at its inception, now stands as a monumental icon to the technical advances of the early twentieth century. The structure is beautiful in the nude. On the contrary, the exposed systems on the twenty-first century Pompidou Centre - originally celebrated for innovation and creativity - are now rusted and cracked. Without intervention, Famous buildings are destined to return to the landscape from which they were created.
How Buildings Learn mirrors Brand's interest in preservation and high technology. While one might interpret preservation and modern construction materials as diametrically opposed disciplines, Brand alleys these concerns. The chapters on Preservation and Maintenance allude to the desirable attributes of quiet, populist, victorious, and romantic. The space materials create environmental stewardship through their speed, efficiency, strength and effortless implementation. Traditional or "vernacular" materials will be touchable and aesthetic but come at a higher price. Smart materials, created from advanced processes, are cheaper and may provide the economic incentive to preserve an old building that might otherwise succumb to the financial pressures created by vernacular restoration. Brand suggests that future buildings will learn more quickly. He uses computer advances in sensory and motor response as metaphors; however, does not suggest to what part of his six "S's" illustration this prediction relates.
As a matter of fact, Stewart Brand has a history of predicting technical change and has built a contrarian consulting organization around this ability. Unlike most management consultants, yet consistent with How Building Learn, Brand helps companies adapt - designing for impending change instead of planning for a strategic future outcome. As Fortune magazine paraphrased him, "If mind-boggling change is the only constant, focusing on the avoidance of major blunders yields better results than the single-minded pursuit of the big win."
Rating: 5
Summary: More that just buildings can learn
Comment: Stewart Brand's "How Buildings Learn" is a well put together book on a
rarely addressed topic. By well put together I mean that it is not only well
written, but well illustrated. The photographs are excellent and help explain
the topic under discussion.
The book is about how buildings change over time. Brand shows numerous
examples of how different buildings have changed with use. More important he
explains what makes a building that can improve and adapt to new uses as it
ages. This is important for architecture since builds often last longer than the
people who design and build them. At some point they may be put to uses that
were never anticipated when they were built.
The author, who is an architect, is highly critical of how his colleges
design buildings. Most buildings are designed without any thought for the
occupants. Nor is any thought given to the uses the building will be put to in
the future. Few buildings are designed so they can adapt to unanticipated uses.
In brands opinion the more impressive the design of the building the less useful
it will be to it's occupants.
Brand offers advise and examples on how to make a building that will last
and be used and loved by its occupants for a long time. These rules are fairly
simple. Several good examples are included. This is the most important part of
the book.
I read this book about architecture even though I am not an architect and
have no particular interest in the subject. This book was worth while because of
the ideas for how to design something complex and long lived so that it will
remain useful. This can be applied to software engineering just as well as
architecture. I do not know of any better discussion of the subject.
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Title: The Clock of the Long Now: Time and Responsibility: The Ideas Behind the World's Slowest Computer by Stewart Brand ISBN: 0465007805 Publisher: Basic Books Pub. Date: April, 2000 List Price(USD): $14.00 |
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Title: The Timeless Way of Building by Christopher Alexander ISBN: 0195024028 Publisher: Oxford University Press Pub. Date: 1979 List Price(USD): $55.00 |
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Title: The Death and Life of Great American Cities by Jane Jacobs ISBN: 067974195X Publisher: Vintage Pub. Date: 01 December, 1992 List Price(USD): $14.95 |
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Title: A Pattern Language: Towns, Buildings, Construction by Christopher Alexander, Sara Ishikawa, Murray Silverstein ISBN: 0195019199 Publisher: Oxford University Press Pub. Date: 1977 List Price(USD): $65.00 |
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Title: Historic Preservation: An Introduction to Its History, Principles, and Practice by Norman Tyler ISBN: 0393730395 Publisher: W.W. Norton & Company Pub. Date: October, 1999 List Price(USD): $26.95 |
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