How Buildings Learn

The BBC has produced a series of shows with Stewart Brand. Now available on Google Video, Brand explores topics that he wrote about in his book How Buildings Learn.

There are some great quotes in the first show:

Only 1 in 10 buildings are revisited by the architects after they’re in use.

Buildings change and change and change because all the people who use them have their own ideas - and that’s good… but we need a better understanding of the organic change that happens to buildings.

The central problem is that architects don’t want change - but change is inevitable. People who use them change how they want to use them - but we have to understand that.

And this awesome one from Christopher Alexander:

I think people have lost confidence in themselves and to a large extent that’s been done by members of my profession because the building has become the provence of the architect, his plaything - and the architects have worked hard to convince users that they don’t know… it’s got to such an extent that people ask interior decorators to choose their wallpaper… so that this lack of confidence that has been fostered in the population is a manipulation that has been caused partly by the media, largely by the [architectural] profession - and this endangers the fabric of society because if people lose confidence in themselves to that degree then the adaptation of the environment to common sense and everyday use disappears.

And if you enjoyed that…. here are the other episodes:

Part 2

Part 3

Part 4

Part 5

Part 6