Stewart Brand's thinking about architecture seems to have two basic elements: a strong influence from the design patterns approach of Christopher Alexander, and Brand's own interest in the time dimension. Much of the book is infused with deep contempt for the practice of architecture as it has become in the past century. He reserves special scorn for Frank Lloyd Wright and for contemporary 'magazine architects'. Brand's view, hardly controversial, is that architects should focus on designing buildings that work instead of buildings that merely photograph well. Part of making a building that works is designing it in such a way that it can evolve over time as the occupants' needs change, or the occupants themselves are replaced.

Don't get me wrong: this is not a 'negative' book. It is filled with insight, ideas, and suggestions. And many of the photographs are fascinating, showing buildings at various times in their history, evolving, always growing, sprouting new facades, new floors, new rooflines.

I wish that I had read this book when I was much younger. It might have saved me from a couple major real-estate mistakes. Now that the housing market is in such disarray, reading and understanding this book at a deep level might be very beneficial for those young enough to benefit from buildings that will last a lifetime or more.

The book addresses another one of these important but rarely discussed architectural issues, which is how building age and evolve over time. What happens when we build projects that by their shape and choice of materials cannot change and evolve but simply freeze and decay. That fate will impact many trophy prize winning architectural projects. The book does a fairly good job at covering all aspects of this topic. I would have liked however more contemporary examples of buildings with specific illustrations to make the subject matter more current to our existing design practices. As a side note some supporting information is incorrect because the data provided to the author by the sources he interviewed was misleading but there was little opportunity for the author at the time to know the difference.

In 1997 the BBC aired a six-part TV series called, "How Buildings Learn," based on my book. I was the presenter and co-writer, James Runcie produced it, and Brian Eno provided original music.

The series is now available online at Google Videos. Episode 1 is at the link; from there you can find the other episodes.
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=8639555925486210852

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!!

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.