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4.33 AVERAGE
4.33 AVERAGE
informative
inspiring
reflective
medium-paced
I was the nerdy little girl that checked out books of floor plans from the library - like 10 books at a time - and just went home and looked at them. Picked out features I liked in a plan, looked at how a person or a family would use a space in terms of both furniture and movement. Thought about elevation and sunlight.
And majored in English in college, mostly because the math required by architecture degrees was intimidating, and architecture students were intimidating. Also, I didn't want to MAKE buildings, I just wanted to TALK about them. Someone heard me talking about all of this and give the math excuse and said, "Frank Lloyd Wright was crappy at math too, you know." I'm sure they said other things, but I didn't hear them, because the thought, the mere mention of Prairie School will derail my brain and take it over.
This book was fabulous and made me regret for brief (but recurring) moments my path in higher ed. However, its very presence was encouraging that I can still be well-read and informed on the topic, that there is a place for everyone in the built environment to foster understanding and look with new eyes on the things we construct and inhabit (for many values of "construct" and "inhabit"). Huh, guess that lit degree wasn't useless after all?
The only reason this isn't 5 stars is because I didn't like the wide layout of the book. It was kind of floppy and hard to get my mitts around, and though it provided space for a LOT of photos and drawings.
And majored in English in college, mostly because the math required by architecture degrees was intimidating, and architecture students were intimidating. Also, I didn't want to MAKE buildings, I just wanted to TALK about them. Someone heard me talking about all of this and give the math excuse and said, "Frank Lloyd Wright was crappy at math too, you know." I'm sure they said other things, but I didn't hear them, because the thought, the mere mention of Prairie School will derail my brain and take it over.
This book was fabulous and made me regret for brief (but recurring) moments my path in higher ed. However, its very presence was encouraging that I can still be well-read and informed on the topic, that there is a place for everyone in the built environment to foster understanding and look with new eyes on the things we construct and inhabit (for many values of "construct" and "inhabit"). Huh, guess that lit degree wasn't useless after all?
The only reason this isn't 5 stars is because I didn't like the wide layout of the book. It was kind of floppy and hard to get my mitts around, and though it provided space for a LOT of photos and drawings.
informative
I heard about this book in the context of software, even though it’s very much a book about buildings and architecture. Really great read, there’s so much I’d never considered before about how and why buildings get designed and built the way they are.
I'd make How Buildings Learn mandatory reading for everybody. It's that good.
We spend a lot of time in buildings, but the fact is many buildings are pretty awful. Expensive yet shoddily constructed, full of hidden decay, boring and monotonous, wasting space, and poorly adapted to the climate. Brand's approach to improving buildings is characteristically counter-intuitively Brand; look at the old buildings that have survived and try and find out why they've survived and why they're loved. He does so with clever insights and a succession of photographs taken from the same place over long periods of time to show how different buildings evolve.
McLoving It is McMandatory
Borrowing from architect Frank Duffy, Brand defines a building at several levels. Site is the location and the property lines, as close to permanent as anything humans can make. Structure is the basic frame, the trusses and pillars, which should be good for centuries. Skin separates the inside from the outside, and should last decades before weather and fashion demand major replacement. Services are the utilities, plumbing, electrical, and all the gadgets that make life livable, which tend to last several years. And finally, there's the interior partitions of the space plan and all the stuff of furniture and décor, which is easily modifiable by the inhabitants.
There are two major paths towards being a successful building. The obvious one is named the High Road, landmark structures like English country houses and the Boston Athenæum, where centuries of money and good taste under careful supervision have aided a grand journey towards beloved classic. The other option is the Low Road, structures so cheap and obviously shoddy that no one cares about what happens to them, so they're quickly suited to the needs of their occupants. Brand has a deep love for the hippie compound growing organically off of an initial trailer through accretion and connection of various sheds, or its commercial counterpart in the early 20th century light industrial space, where ample natural light and a solid yet sparse steel frame provide a useful starting ground for second and third acts as professional offices, high end retail, or trendy loft apartments.
One of the better section is a direct comparison of MIT's beloved Building 20, aka the Rad Lab, a WW2 era "temporary" structure which survived until the 1990s, against the trendy I.M Pei designed Media Lab building. Building 20 was long fingers of heavy wood construction, endlessly modifiable by its occupants, where the crudity of the structure created a convivial sense that this was where real work was done. The Media Lab is a modernist monster centered around an inhuman atrium, full of specialist spaces devoted to experiments ended before the building opened. It's impossible to meet anyone, competition for what useful space there is is fierce, and in a final screw you, the fluorescent lights are angled at 45 degrees to the walls, making it difficult to reshape the space.
Brand is savage towards the forces he believes are killing good buildings. He decries architects who designs buildings that play with form and space to make striking photographs, rather than humane and durable structures for their inhabitants. The failure of architects to make workable buildings has lead to the rise of paraprofessional construction managers and facilities managers, who patch up the bad ideas as best they can. Zoning and codes, which strangles construction in paperwork and a civic masterplan that is a bureaucratic utopia of rules, are a sure way to create buildings which are neither High Road nor Low Road, but simply mediocre.
The book is full of useful adages and asides. There's a mea culpa on domes from the Whole Earth Catalog era. Domes are impossible to seal against rain and waste space in innumerable ways. Buildings are destroyed by water, markets, and money. Keep the first two away, and feed the latter in small amounts. The Mediterranean courtyard house is a classic design, but another useful model is the northern European three corridor house, with a large central nave and smaller private rooms under the eaves. Stick to rectangular forms, because they're easy to modify and extend. Overbuild Structure and make Services accessible, because at some point you'll have to get at the pipes and wires, and later occupants may want to add another story. When in doubt, you can always use more storage. To build for the long term, trust in stone, brick, and stout hardwood. Use local materials, and be suspicious of new plastics. A good material will tell you that it needs attention before it fails. Take photographs of the studs, plumbing, and wiring before putting up drywall, because it'll help you later. And for the love of all that is holy, get a good roof, because water will destroy your house in a single season. Simple angled designs shed rain, where flat roofs cause constant problems.
This book isn't flawless. Brand elides the useful role of codes in having buildings that don't catch routinely fire, or not putting an explosive fertilizer factory next to to an elementary school. He is more favorable to the historic preservation movement than I am after decades of weaponized NIMBYism. But there is a lot of pragmatic advice, and the 1990s "End of History" optimism has aged to become its own charming relic. My only wish is that at 25 years on we could get an updated bibliography, but I'm sure that many of Brand's choices are actual classics, and worthy of their own reads.
We spend a lot of time in buildings, but the fact is many buildings are pretty awful. Expensive yet shoddily constructed, full of hidden decay, boring and monotonous, wasting space, and poorly adapted to the climate. Brand's approach to improving buildings is characteristically counter-intuitively Brand; look at the old buildings that have survived and try and find out why they've survived and why they're loved. He does so with clever insights and a succession of photographs taken from the same place over long periods of time to show how different buildings evolve.
McLoving It is McMandatory
Borrowing from architect Frank Duffy, Brand defines a building at several levels. Site is the location and the property lines, as close to permanent as anything humans can make. Structure is the basic frame, the trusses and pillars, which should be good for centuries. Skin separates the inside from the outside, and should last decades before weather and fashion demand major replacement. Services are the utilities, plumbing, electrical, and all the gadgets that make life livable, which tend to last several years. And finally, there's the interior partitions of the space plan and all the stuff of furniture and décor, which is easily modifiable by the inhabitants.
There are two major paths towards being a successful building. The obvious one is named the High Road, landmark structures like English country houses and the Boston Athenæum, where centuries of money and good taste under careful supervision have aided a grand journey towards beloved classic. The other option is the Low Road, structures so cheap and obviously shoddy that no one cares about what happens to them, so they're quickly suited to the needs of their occupants. Brand has a deep love for the hippie compound growing organically off of an initial trailer through accretion and connection of various sheds, or its commercial counterpart in the early 20th century light industrial space, where ample natural light and a solid yet sparse steel frame provide a useful starting ground for second and third acts as professional offices, high end retail, or trendy loft apartments.
One of the better section is a direct comparison of MIT's beloved Building 20, aka the Rad Lab, a WW2 era "temporary" structure which survived until the 1990s, against the trendy I.M Pei designed Media Lab building. Building 20 was long fingers of heavy wood construction, endlessly modifiable by its occupants, where the crudity of the structure created a convivial sense that this was where real work was done. The Media Lab is a modernist monster centered around an inhuman atrium, full of specialist spaces devoted to experiments ended before the building opened. It's impossible to meet anyone, competition for what useful space there is is fierce, and in a final screw you, the fluorescent lights are angled at 45 degrees to the walls, making it difficult to reshape the space.
Brand is savage towards the forces he believes are killing good buildings. He decries architects who designs buildings that play with form and space to make striking photographs, rather than humane and durable structures for their inhabitants. The failure of architects to make workable buildings has lead to the rise of paraprofessional construction managers and facilities managers, who patch up the bad ideas as best they can. Zoning and codes, which strangles construction in paperwork and a civic masterplan that is a bureaucratic utopia of rules, are a sure way to create buildings which are neither High Road nor Low Road, but simply mediocre.
The book is full of useful adages and asides. There's a mea culpa on domes from the Whole Earth Catalog era. Domes are impossible to seal against rain and waste space in innumerable ways. Buildings are destroyed by water, markets, and money. Keep the first two away, and feed the latter in small amounts. The Mediterranean courtyard house is a classic design, but another useful model is the northern European three corridor house, with a large central nave and smaller private rooms under the eaves. Stick to rectangular forms, because they're easy to modify and extend. Overbuild Structure and make Services accessible, because at some point you'll have to get at the pipes and wires, and later occupants may want to add another story. When in doubt, you can always use more storage. To build for the long term, trust in stone, brick, and stout hardwood. Use local materials, and be suspicious of new plastics. A good material will tell you that it needs attention before it fails. Take photographs of the studs, plumbing, and wiring before putting up drywall, because it'll help you later. And for the love of all that is holy, get a good roof, because water will destroy your house in a single season. Simple angled designs shed rain, where flat roofs cause constant problems.
This book isn't flawless. Brand elides the useful role of codes in having buildings that don't catch routinely fire, or not putting an explosive fertilizer factory next to to an elementary school. He is more favorable to the historic preservation movement than I am after decades of weaponized NIMBYism. But there is a lot of pragmatic advice, and the 1990s "End of History" optimism has aged to become its own charming relic. My only wish is that at 25 years on we could get an updated bibliography, but I'm sure that many of Brand's choices are actual classics, and worthy of their own reads.
Mostly skimming and reading captions, but who's gonna call the "good reading practices" cops on me? Don't get me wrong, Brand's insights and examples are interesting. Just needed to have a skim read.
I really enjoyed this book. The author wrote on his website that some people tend to read this and relate it to software development - I'm one of them.
Five stars, because I find myself telling people about this book a lot. It comes up in conversations about homes, design, psychology, and yes, software design. It has a great list of recommended reading at the end. The pictures are wonderful, and the wide format allows for lots of side-by-side comparison.
If I would take away a star, it would be because of the chapters where he complains about magazine architecture: designing a building not so it's livable, but so it looks great in photos. I don't like that practice either, but the whining got tiresome.
But push through those sections, and enjoy the rest of it.
Five stars, because I find myself telling people about this book a lot. It comes up in conversations about homes, design, psychology, and yes, software design. It has a great list of recommended reading at the end. The pictures are wonderful, and the wide format allows for lots of side-by-side comparison.
If I would take away a star, it would be because of the chapters where he complains about magazine architecture: designing a building not so it's livable, but so it looks great in photos. I don't like that practice either, but the whining got tiresome.
But push through those sections, and enjoy the rest of it.
I loved the quiet, contemplative nature of the book. The author picks up case studies of 'style's of how buildings learn: 'low buildings' which by their very lowness, allow their occupants to freely transform them. Of 'high' buildings, and how these deserve a caring warden to allow their graceful aging and depature. On his own house boat, and the various adaptations he has made within it.
It's quite a meditative read, and it /sits/ with you, leaving you with a new vantage point that dwells, examining every space you've inhabited and will inhabit.
My only complaint is that the pacing felt mildly inconsistent. It switches from theory to practice to bureaucracy with a chapter, which was sometimes jarring.
It's quite a meditative read, and it /sits/ with you, leaving you with a new vantage point that dwells, examining every space you've inhabited and will inhabit.
My only complaint is that the pacing felt mildly inconsistent. It switches from theory to practice to bureaucracy with a chapter, which was sometimes jarring.
Definitely changes the way I look at every building. Some parts are pretty utopian, but better than the cold dystopia of condo boxes called modern life.
