How Buildings Learn: What Happens After They are Built

506 Pages·1995·18.391 MB·English

by  Stewart Brand

PENGUIN BOOKS
HOW BUILDINGS LEARN
Though honored as a writer—with the National Book Award for the Whole
Earth Catalog, Eliot Montroll Award for The Media Lab, Golden Gadfly
Award for his years as editor of CoEvolution Quarterly—Stewart Brand is
primarily an inventor/designer. Trained as a biologist and army officer, he
was an early multimedia artist. He has created a number of lasting
institutions, including New Games Tournaments, the Hackers Conference,
and The WELL, a bellwether computer conference system. He is co-founder
of Global Business Network, a futurist research organization fostering “the
art of the long view.” Based on this book, a six-part television series called
“How Buildings Learn” was made by the BBC in 1997, with Stewart Brand
as writer and presenter.
HOW BUILDINGS LEARN
What Happens After They’re Built
Stewart Brand
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FIRST PUBLISHED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA BY
VIKING PENGUIN, A DIVISION OF PENGUIN BOOKS USA INC.,
1994
PUBLISHED IN PENGUIN BOOKS 1995
20 19 18 17 16 15 14 13
COPYRIGHT © STEWART BRAND, 1994
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
GRATEFUL ACKNOWLEDGEMENT IS MADE FOR PERMISSION
TO REPRINT “THE BED BY THE WINDOW” FROM Selected Poems
BY ROBINSON JEFFERS. COPYRIGHT 1932 BY ROBINSON
JEFFERS. COPYRIGHT RENEWED 1960 BY ROBINSON JEFFERS.
REPRINTED BY PERMISSION OF RANDOM HOUSE, INC.
THE LIBRARY OF CONGRESS HAS CATALOGUED THE
HARDCOVER AS FOLLOWS: BRAND, STEWART
HOW BUILDINGS LEARN: WHAT HAPPENS AFTER THEY’RE
BUILT/BY STEWART BRAND
P. CM.
INCLUDES BIBLIOGRAPHICAL REFERENCES AND INDEX.
ISBN: 978-1-101-56264-2
1. ARCHITECTURE—HUMAN FACTORS. 2. BUILDINGS—
PERFORMANCE.
3. BUILDINGS—UTILIZATION. I. TITLE.
NA2542.4.B73 1994 93-40193
720′.1—DC20
PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
SET IN ADOBE GARAMOND AND HELVETICA
DESIGNED BY STEWART BRAND AND DONALD RYAN
EXCEPT IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, THIS BOOK IS
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CONTENTS
Acknowledgments
Cover Story
1. Flow
2. Shearing Layers
3. “Nobody Cares What You Do In There”: The Low Road
4. Houseproud: The High Road
5. Magazine Architecture: No Road
6. Unreal Estate
7. Preservation: A Quiet, Populist, Conservative, Victorious
Revolution
8. The Romance of Maintenance
9. Vernacular: How Buildings Learn From Each Other
10. Function Melts Form: Satisficing Home and Office
11. The Scenario-buffered Building
12. Built for Change
APPENDIX: The Study of Buildings in Time
Recommended Bibliography: Books for Time-kindly Buildings
Index
A
CKNOWLEDGMENTS
“PORCHES FILL IN BY STAGES, not all at once, you know.” The architect
was responding to a talk I gave at a builders’ conference. “The family puts
screens on the porch one summer because of the bugs. Then they see they
could glass it in and make it part of the house. But it’s cold, so they add a
duct from the furnace and some insulation, and now they realize they’re
going to have to beef up the foundation and the roof. It happens that way
because they can always visualize the next stage based on what’s already
there.”
I didn’t get the architect’s name. He stands in my mind for all the ghost
collaborators on this book that I’ve failed to credit properly. Perhaps culture
is driven most by just such flea-market ideas in a vast network of uncredited
influence. Generic thanks is due to that network.
As for names, I’ll begin with the architects, in honor of the abuse their
profession catches in this book—much of it quoting them, of course. It will
be obvious from the text how much I owe to Frank Duffy*, currently
president of the Royal Institute of British Architects, and to Chris
Alexander*, author of A Pattern Language and professor at the University of
California Berkeley (UC Berkeley, hereafter). Less conspicuous is the
contribution of Sim Van der Ryn*, UC Berkeley professor and former State
Architect of California. He started all this by encouraging me to lead a
seminar called “How Buildings Learn” at the UC Architecture Department in
1988. The students in that course, including many working professionals,
were early co-conspirators.
Others starring in the text are John Abrams*—design/builder on Martha’s
Vineyard (an island off Massachusetts)—and Richard Fernau & Laura
Hartman* (the ampersand signifying they are a firm, in Berkeley). Behind the
scenes but also influential are a crowd of architects and designers—C.
Thomas Mitchell* (author of Redefining Designing), Tedd Benson* (author of
The Timber-Frame Home), Gordon Ashby (museum designer), Robin
Middleton (Architecture Association, London), Jean de Monchaux (then head
of MIT’s Architecture Department), Herb McLaughlin (of KMD, San
Francisco), John Worthington (of DEGW, London), Coby Everdell, (Bechtel,
San Francisco), Bill McDonough (Mr. Sustainable Architecture), Rodger
Messer (CRSS, Houston), William de Cinces (Universal Pictures), Pete
Retondo, Allen Roberts, David Sellars, Edward Shoucair, Richard Tobias,
and Susan Shoemaker.
Planners had a hand in this, as usual—notably “neotraditional” town planners
Peter Calthorpe* (San Francisco) and Andres Duany (Florida), MIT’s campus
planner Robert Simha, and the author of Built for Change, Anne Vernez
Moudon. Hands-on builders included contractor Matisse Enzer*, remodeler
Jamie Wolf*, Whole Earth’s design-maven J. Baldwin*, carpenter and
shipwright Peter Bailey, and information-technology consultant David
Coggeshall. Even more in the swim of my subject were facilities managers
Chuck Charlton (at Stanford University) and Anita Lewis-Antes (at
Princeton). My informants on real estate, where the real power is, included
Dick York (Sausalito, California), Jonathan Rose (New York), Geoff
Woodling (then of Jones Lang Wootton, London), and Nicholas Wakely (of
Vail Williams, England).
Building preservationists, time-intoxicated, gave me early encouragement
and direction, especially Penny Jones*, Director of Preservation Programs at
America’s National Trust for Historic Preservation. Other helpful
professionals were Ward Jandl (National Park Service) and Russell Kuene
(International Council on Monuments and Sites). At every historic building
were keepers of the flame generous with their time and knowledge—the
Duchess of Devonshire* at Chatsworth (Derbyshire), Lloyd Fairbanks at the
Fairbanks House (Massachusetts), Director Neil Horstman and librarian
Barbara McMillan at Mount Vernon, Director Christopher Scott and
researchers Ann Miller and Larry Dermody at Montpelier, Connie
Weismuller at Tor House (California), and Liz Robinson at an old shipyard
called Marinship.
My greatest research joy was in libraries, swarming through photo
collections, reveling in glorious or obscure tomes. Home base was the UC
Berkeley Environmental Design Library, ably run by Elizabeth Byrne. The
value of its immense collection was multiplied by being computer-searchable
from anywhere. Another trove was the Library of Congress—America’s
greatest governmental treasure—where Craig D’Ooge (public relations) and
Ford Peatross (Prints Collection architectural historian) were invaluable.
Betty Monkman guided me through the rich photo documentation at The
White House. Arthur Olivas in Santa Fe did the same with the Museum of
New Mexico’s wonderful collection, well represented in this book. In Britain,
Stephen Croad and Gordon Smith helped me with the huge photo archive of
the Royal Commission on the Historical Monuments of England, London; Jill
Lever showed me choice items in the Drawings Library of the Royal Institute
of British Architects; and Douglas Matthews was gracious at the London
Library.
Boston turned out to be a major resource area, thanks to Rodney Armstrong
and Sally Pierce of the Boston Athenaeum, Sally Beddow and later Kara
Schneiderman at the MIT Museum, and Lorna Condon at the Society for the
Preservation of New England Antiquities. I’m grateful also for special
assistance from Stan Ritchey at the Historic New Orleans Collection, Al
Regensberg at New Mexico’s State Records Center and Archives, Robert
MacKimmie of the California Historical Society (San Francisco), and Paul
Roberts at William Stout Books in San Francisco—a museum-quality
architectural bookshop.
Architectural historians, particularly those specializing in vernacular
buildings, were essential. Dell Upton* at UC Berkeley went through my
photos and helped interpret their mysteries. Christopher Wilson* in
Albuquerque dissected the tangled past of Santa Fe and the Southwest.
Orlando Ridout V in Annapolis demonstrated how to “read” old buildings.
William Seale had the stories behind the stories of Mount Vernon,
Montpelier, Monticello, and The White House, and Conover Hunt illumined
the Montpelier saga. Other instructors were Jules Lubbock, Paul Groth, J. B.
Jackson, Fikret Yegul, Henry Millon, Tony Wrenn, and Robert Irving.
I am indebted to many other writers, notably Clem Labine (founder of Old
House Journal), Joel Garreau* (Edge City), Mira Bar-Hillel (London
journalist), Robert Campbell (Boston architectural critic), and Ellen Perry
Berkeley. Publishers especially helpful in finding original photos included
Lloyd Kahn (Shelter Publications), Cole Gagne (Old House Journal), Wayne
Bonnett (Windgate), and James Robertson (Yolla Bolly). Among the most
supportive photographers were Robert S. Brantley (cover), Art Rogers,
Christopher Simon Sykes, Peter Vanderwarker, and Robert Nugent.
The pleasure of research travel was greatly increased, and its cost greatly