This interesting book has photos and thought on how buildings improve with time - and use by humans. Web sites can and should develop the same way with improvements based on actual usage over time.

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Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #116843 in Books
• Published on: 1995-10-01
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 256 pages

From Publishers Weekly
All buildings are forced to adapt over time because of physical deterioration, changing surroundings and the life within--yet very few buildings adapt gracefully, according to Brand. Houses, he notes, respond to families' tastes, ideas, annoyance and growth; and institutional buildings change with expensive reluctance and delay; while commercial structures have to adapt quickly because of intense competitive pressures. Creator of The Whole Earth Catalog and founder of CoEvolution Quarterly (now Whole Earth Review ), Brand splices a conversational text with hundreds of extensively captioned photographs and drawings juxtaposing buildings that age well with those that age poorly. He buttresses his critique with insights gleaned from facilities managers, planners, preservationists, building historians and futurists. This informative, innovative handbook sets forth a strategy for constructing adaptive buildings that incorporates a conservationist approach to design, use of traditional materials, attention to local vernacular styles and budgeting to allow for continuous adjustment and maintenance.
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Kirkus Reviews
Brand founder of The Whole Earth Catalog and CoEvolution Quarterly, launches a populist attack on rarefied architectural conventions. A hippy elder statesman (once one of Ken Kesey's Merry Pranksters), Brand argues that a building can ``grow'' and should be treated as a ``Darwinian mechanism,'' something that adapts over time to meet certain changing needs. His humanistic insights grew out of a university seminar he taught in 1988. Catchy anti- establishment phrases abound: ``Function reforms form, perpetually,'' or ``Form follows funding.'' Thomas Jefferson, a ``high road'' builder, is shown to have tinkered his Monticello into a masterpiece over a lifetime. Commercial structures, Brand says, are ``forever metamorphic,'' as a garage-turned-boutique demonstrates. Photo spreads with smart and chatty captions trace the evolutions of buildings as they adopt new ``skins.'' Pointedly, architects Sir Richard Rogers (designer of the Pompidou Centre in Paris) and I.M. Pei (the Wiesner Building, aka the Media Lab at MIT) are taken to task for designing monumental flops that deny occupants' needs. Later sections track the social meanings of preservationism and celebrate vernacular traditions worldwide (e.g., the Malay house of Malaysia; pueblo architecture; the 18th- century Cape Cod House). Brand also documents his own unique habitats. He lives with his wife in a converted tugboat and houses his library in a metal self-storage container. Here, as throughout, Brand's self-reliant voice rings true--that of an engaging, intellectual crank. Brand makes a case for letting people shape their own environments. His crunchy-granola insights bristle with an undeniable pragmatism. -- Copyright ©1994, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

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Customer Reviews

A great book
A great review, from the experience, of the dynamics of buildings. A change in the paradigm of how we think of buildings. Professionals of the building sector can't miss it!!

Architecture Is Dead. Long Live Architecture.
This is a book someone foisted upon me unawares and I devoured. I write software for a living and I found this book has a lot to say about software that Brand probably doesn't realize he's saying. His constant return to Christopher Alexander is a dead giveaway: The pattern-language movement Alexander started took the software world by storm in the mid 90's. It is now generally assumed that the pattern-language movement in software is still unfolding. The authors of the first major pattern-language texts are heavily involved in the kind of "Agile" design processes that one associates with what Brand advocates in this book: the idea that the end is the beginning and understanding your work must be an evolutionary process where if it's done right, a building and a system is never finished and never perfect but always improving.

essential reading for anyone involved in facility planning or operation
I am an acoustical and systems design consultant who specializes in worship and performing arts facilities, and use this book regularly in my practice. I have found no better resource for introducing the facility planning "layperson" to the enormous blind-spot that many in the architectural design and construction profession have regarding the relevance of buildings to the functional needs that should define their design, as well as the ongoing process of maintaining this relevance over time.

While highly specialized rooms such as auditoria do not usually lend themselves to significant modification over time, or to strategies such as "loose fit," Brand's advice about the risk of architectural experimentation in the fundamental form of most buildings is spot on. This book is an extremely engaging read, and also serves as an excellent introduction to other key literature on architectural programming, scenario planning, the evolution of the architectural profession, and so forth.

As other reviewers have suggested, anyone who lives or works in a building can profit from reading this book. I would add that anyone who works in the construction or facility management industries, or who expects to be involved in planning a building project from the perspective of the owner or user, has a duty to seek out the sort of education that this book provides.