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How Buildings Learn: What Happens After They're Built

  • Book
  • 1994
  • #Architecture
Stewart Brand
@StewartBrand
(Author)
www.goodreads.com
Paperback
4.6/5 153 ratings
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4.35/5 1.5k ratings
2 Recommenders
4 Mentions
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Buildings have often been studied whole in space, but never before have they been studied whole in time. How Buildings Learn is a masterful new synthesis that proposes that building... Show More

Buildings have often been studied whole in space, but never before have they been studied whole in time. How Buildings Learn is a masterful new synthesis that proposes that buildings adapt best when constantly refined and reshaped by their occupants, and that architects can mature from being artists of space to becoming artists of time. From the connected farmhouses of New England to I.M. Pei's Media Lab, from "satisficing" to "form follows funding," from the evolution of bungalows to the invention of Santa Fe Style, from Low Road military surplus buildings to a High Road English classic like Chatsworth—this is a far-ranging survey of unexplored essential territory.

More than any other human artifacts, buildings improve with time—if they're allowed to. How Buildings Learn shows how to work with time rather than against it.

(From Goodreads)

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Number of Pages: 252

ISBN: 0140139966

ISBN-13: 9780140139969

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Stewart Brand @StewartBrand · Mar 7, 2014
  • Curated in 76 Books to Sustain and Rebuild Humanity
Michael Nielsen @michael_nielsen · Dec 23, 2021
  • Curated in Books that make you happy & excited
Austin Kleon @austinkleon
  • Curated in 20 great books I read in 2020
My wife read this in architecture school, and we’ve had this on our bookshelf for over a decade now. I’ve gotten a lot of it through osmosis, but I figured since I was working on these house collages, now was the right time to read it. So good! Like Christopher Alexander’s A Pattern Language, its lessons apply far beyond architecture. I think designers, in particular, would benefit greatly from reading it. Maybe my favorite book of the spring.
Michael Nielsen @michael_nielsen
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  • Michael Nielsen
    • Collection
    Books that make you happy & excited
    15 curations
  • Stewart Brand
    • Collection
    76 Books to Sustain and Rebuild Humanity
    76 curations
  • Austin Kleon
    • Collection
    20 great books I read in 2020
    20 curations
  • Michael Nielsen
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    Goodreads favorites
    28 curations
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