Stewart Brand’s How Buildings Learn BBC Series
Stewart Brand’s book, How Buildings Learn, is one of the best design/architecture books I’ve ever read. It rails against the spartan, impractical, and wasteful aesthetic of “magazine architects” — those designers whose buildings are conceived more as a piece of art than a functioning building, like the MIT Media lab by IM Pei pictured on the right.
It’s a study of buildings and spaces after being built, an important and oft neglected facet of the architectural field.
The accompanying BBC series is similarly down to earth and practical. It takes someone with a particular straightforwardness and insight to interview the men who wash the windows on Frank Gehry’s Prague-based Dancing House, rather than the superstar architect himself.
The whole 6-part series has been put on Google Video. Watch parts One, Two, Three, Four, Five, and Six, all for free, of course.
Via Kottke.
Tags: Architecture, Long Term Thinking
August 13th, 2008
at 9:41 pm on August 16th, 2008
It is a masterwork and I had no idea there was a series, thanks!
at 1:39 am on September 8th, 2008
Thanks so much for the pointer, Neale. That’s brilliant!