What happens to buildings after their built? When the users take over and begin to reshape the building to suite their own needs? In 1997, BBC TV aired a six-part, three-hour series, based on Stewart Brand’s book, "How Buildings Learn". The whole series has been posted on Google Video in six 30-minutes parts. (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6). [via kottke.org]
"One of the main problems is that architects and their clients often concentrate more on the look of a building than its eventual use or function. [..] Works of architecture tend to have great facades to look impressive and original in the magazines, but the ways these buildings might work, develop or grow don’t appear in the magazines at all and so they are given low priority.
[..]
Buildings keep changing: people either have to or want to keep reworking them to seek the unfolding patterns of their lives. Architects understand their buildings to be finished and perfect but it’s impossible. Reality makes the new building necessarily unfinished and imperfect but perhaps perfectible in time. If that reality were designed for, architects could do civilization a great service. Buildings need to learn the same way we do. Give them time."
January 25, 2009
How Buildings Learn.
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Christoph ,anarchitecture
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2 comment(s):
Buildings are not static entities...they do seem to learn over time. Thus, function contributes to the aesthetic quality of architecture.
Interesting... Also, when you make passive buildings (that can work without any heating or ar conditionning), you consider an "adaptation time" (about 1 year), during which the building and its users learn how to accomodate to each other, so to speak...
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