Some famous buildings are awful to use. Meanwhile, cheap, ugly buildings can last 50 years and get better with age.
Trailer for “How Buildings Learn”
There isn’t really a traditional trailer. Stewart Brand put the six-part BBC series on YouTube, starting with Episode 1.
You Can’t Make This Sh!t Up
- MIT’s famous Building 20 was thrown together in 1943 as a temporary World War II building. It lasted 55 years and became a home for major work in radar, computing, acoustics and other fields.
- One of the biggest ideas in the series is that time itself is part of the design process. A building gets tested by decades of actual humans doing things the original designer never predicted.
- The TV series itself was basically hacked together the same way Brand says good buildings should be. Money got tight, so the crew shot digitally with a tiny camera. Brand said people often assumed they were tourists.
Watch “How Buildings Learn”
You can watch the full six-part series free on YouTube here.
The BBC series runs about three hours total.
Ratings:
- My Rating: 90/100
- IMDB Rating: 7/10
Director’s Note: Stewart Brand presents and co-wrote the series. James Muncie directed it, James Runcie produced it, and Brian Eno composed the original music. Brand adapted the series from his 1994 book, “How Buildings Learn: What Happens After They’re Built.”
Release Date: 1997 (BBC)
Other Unique Stuff
- Brand looked at the people who deal with buildings after architects leave: owners, maintenance workers, preservationists, real-estate people and the people who actually occupy them.
- Brand’s 1994 book became popular far outside architecture. People in software and system design adopted many of the same ideas about making things modular, flexible and easy to change.
- Brand has joked that computer people seemed to understand his book faster than architects did.
Wrap Up:
I didn’t expect a 1997 BBC series about architecture to make ugly buildings seem exciting. Now I look at old warehouses, additions and hacked-up buildings wondering whether the ugly one might actually be the smartest building on the block.
Thanks for reading!
Heather Fenty, Guest Writer, Daily Doc