Stewart Brand's How Buildings Learn is half detailed analytical study of real buildings, half manifesto. Brand brings front and center the crucial features of real buildings that architects for the most part love to sweep under the rug, or rather love to sweep under the gleaming mock-ups they parade about to naive clients: how well do buildings really serve their intended purposes after they're complete? How are they changed over time as the demands on them inevitably change, often radically? How hard -- and costly -- is it to make these changes? This added fourth dimension, i.e. time itself, is the source of remarkably rich insights, over and over, as Brand analyzes the lives of real buildings as they age and adapt -- or die.

Brand also skewers the whole profession of modernist-dominated architecture with true aim and vigor. If you've ever been involved in a building project, or if you will be, you will never look at an architect in quite the same way again -- and neither should you. Brand's criticisms of architects' egotism, contempt for clients and neighborhoods, and quixotic and destructive rage for making a mark by being 'original' are right on.

I would give this book six stars if I could. ( )

Outstanding survey of how buildings survive and grow or die over the years. What features make a building useful or useless. Excellent photographs showing stages of growth or decline. Educated and lively text. Read with "Architecture of the Absurd" by John Silber. ( )

Really excellent study of how buildings go beyond architecture as the grow, change, and are readopted. See why some buildings work and others do not. ( )

An eye-opener of a book that shocks the reader with its detailed comparisons of archival photographies and the reasons behind many building modifications. His long-term view transforms buildings into quasi-living entities that learn from their inhabitants and constantly evolve to suit their needs. Looking at some of the book’s photographs of the same building throughout the decades is like watching the ever-shifting clouds in the sky: You can tell it is the same cloud you saw a minute ago, it feels the same, and yet you can barely recognize it now.

It’s a very enjoyable book, and relevant not only to architecture but to any design field. As an Amazon commenter pointed out, simply substituting “building” for “software” in the text gives you an excellent essay on software development. I can imagine it offering the same benefits for many other professions. ( )

I finally read this book after stumbling across it, oversized, on a library shelf. I had it on my reading list that I (used to) keep updated on my Palm Pilot, for a while. Twice, in fact, as it had been recommended from a couple different sources, and when I went to browse the list again, I realized I was removing it from the list for the second time. It was a very good book, achieving what so few nonfiction books do - explaining a subject so well that almost all of the lessons carried over to dozens of examples more of interest to me personally. The subject at hand was the evolution of buildings over time, a subject that had no specific interest to me, but since the book came so highly recommended, from so many sources, when I saw it I checked it out.

Essentially there are no permanent solutions for buildings that are worth having - If it's doesn't adapt, it's obsolete before it's complete. Given this, there are two opposite models that Brand proposes are worthwhile; temporary buildings, and permanent ones. Seriously, the two working paradigms are buildings built over generations, and building so obviously deficient that they are treated as permanent projects. The first category includes buildings like feudal manors, where each addition is the permanent addition of an individual to a family tradition. The second are buildings that was designed to be temporary, such as building 20 at MIT built during WWII as a temporary building that is still standing, in which the occupants feel free to make "improvements," such as nailing up shelves wherever they need them, or inserting extra staircases, etc.

Another theme in the book was that short term planning for an object that is intended for the long term is, well, stupid. And recommended against. More money is spent changing existing buildings than building new ones. I am pretty sure the same applies to computer code,
and many other fields. The solution to this type of problem is to separate and layer different aspects - the load bearing elements should not be in the way of any conceivable floor plan, since the floor plan will change more than the structure. If architecture is seen as art, modernist styles are disastrous because they tend to experiment, and like all experimentation, fail often. This is acceptable unless failures must be used - in architecture this is true.

And of course, like any good book, it makes fun of somebody. The lessons here? Flat roofs are stupid - the reason they slant roofs is to get the water off. Flat roofs fail to do this. Fashionability is a bad thing when the building outlasts the trend. And, of course, most importantly, geodesic domes were a miserable idea, but everyone was high enough while talking about it so that they didn't notice. ( )