Stewart Brand - How Buildings Learn: What Happens After They're Built

Pros: An excellent book on an important and neglected topic
Cons: None

What happens to buildings after they're built? That's the long-neglected question that the writer, inventor, futurist, and gadfly Stewart Brand tries to answer in How Buildings Learn. Although we often think of buildings as permanent and static...

Pros: Wonderful Pictures and Ideas
Cons: May be of little interest to those outside the field

Who says all college textbooks are boring? I spotted this book on the shelves my first semester in school, and talked myself out of plunking down the $25 for it even though it looked very interesting. Finally, last year, it was required reading in one...

Pros: Chronicles the change in form and structure of buildings as people use them
Cons: Many buildings these days get plowed down before they have any chance to learn anything

"How Buildings Learn" by Stewart Brand is an excellent discussion of what happens to buildings after they are built. So much of architectural thought and design hinges on the master attempts of the architect to impose his will upon space and...