brand: how buildings learn

Reading Stuart Brand’s “How Buildings Learn” is enjoyable and fascinating – thinking about how form follows function…sometimes…or form is ego-filled and aesthetic, architects don’t use the spaces they create and insist upon their talents and genius being ‘art’ rather than ‘craft’ is particularly familiar. But he starts the book by saying, “We shape buildings, and they shape us, and on and on.” This is what I’m intrigued by.

DeCearteau says it too – we give meaning to things in the way that we use them over the way they were intended, and he goes so far as to imply that the original intentions are methods of control, oppression, etc. (Kevin Lynch makes similar allusions in ‘Good City Form.’)

The thing I’m waiting to see from Brand is an acknowledgement of the wealthy framework that he writes from. (I understand now that wealth is associated with whiteness because of the way racism evolved in this country as a color-coded construct, and non-whites were systematically denied and blocked from acquiring wealth. This went on overtly for years, impeding generations the opportunity of family wealth, property, inheretance, etc. which probably impacts non-whites as much if not more than current conditions and obstacles to equality.) He’s heralded low-road buildings for their flexibility for users and lack of impact on aesthetics, but analyzing Building 20 on MIT’s campus and the way it functions for science geniuses is something different than analyzing run-down and vacant warehouse spaces or abandoned row-homes in impoverished neighborhoods and their flexibility for prostitutes, drug sales, or squatting. Yes, it IS fascinating that adultery goes on in storage spaces, but these are paid-for, gated and locked rental properties that must be afforded. Is there the same intrigue for unexpected nooks where an old mattress waits for a trick? I think there is, but it’s absent from Brand’s analysis so far.

The other thing that I’m finding annoying is his strict focus on signature homes and buildings. The patterns are worth noting in the way that corporate, residential, and institutional spaces behave and change, but what about a read on tract development with homogenous aesthetics, strict imposed neighborhood restrictions, limited floorplan choices that have to function broadly for a certain targeted audience (ooh, how does floorplan creation and approval for tract development forecast the kind of people and lifestyles that will reside there? No big cavernous, messable studio space means no sculpture artists working where they live, for one.) Or a look on what Kevin Lynch assesses regarding economic restrictions and site development – that the urge to recoup expenses and work at an industrial, global-economy pace makes places all developed and finished at once instead of over time and with any human touch or authenticity.

His inclusion of weather is an interesting link to place. He talks about weather interacting with low-road buildings and it being interesting and not something to blame on anyone since the building was intended for a different purpose, and new modern magazine architects building high-concept, anti-box shapes that ‘cook the building’s contents – people and books’ or almost always leak.

He also mentions that modernism became the ‘international style’ (because no one wants to claim it, he quotes) and that cities started to look like one another. I think this could also be tied not only to the style but to the global-economic conditions. We’re moving around more than ever, we’re participating in a global economy more than ever. If buildings reflect values and historical contexts, it’s powerful to observe that the places that are participating in this international system are also adapting an international style. It certainly doesn’t relate to the style’s ability to mold to surroundings and situations specific to place, as he goes on and on to say in the ‘magazine architecture’ style – it’s about architect’s egos and art more than place. But it’s important to think about power as this aesthetic spreads, who’s behind it and what it says and whether people are subscribing to it or not. China is a good place to look at this, and the buildings going up in anticipation for the Olympics and Kkskdjf’s wierdy black something building is a good example. It’s overusing materials like crazy in a country with the highest human population in the world and limited resources as it is, in a growing climate of concern for ecology and sustainability – to reflect what? Something about the values and trends of architecture, sure, but situated in a historical, economic and cultural context that must be considered.