Hacker Cinema
How Buildings Learn
1997 · TV series · documentary · 30 min episodes · 1 season
Based on his book, American writer Stewart Brand takes a look at the life history of buildings - how they're shaped by their architects, and how they're further shaped by their inhabitants.
9 positivefrom 9 commenters
Where to watch
No streaming data for this title.
Videos commenters linked
From YouTube links in the comments below. Most are clips and trailers; “Full” means the uploader says so.
11 comments on Hacker News
The 2nd episode of Stewart Brand’s BBC series “How Buildings Learn” is called “The Low Road” and also addresses the use of inexpensive or undesirable space.
Ultimately part of making room for innovation means allowing people to take risks, and that mechanism has in recent years shifted from wide availability of low-cost resources to wide availability of speculative capital to obtain high-cost resources.
I fear that another BBC favorite of mine, How Buildings Learn [0], is too modern (90ies) to have been produced on film...
[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AvEqfg2sIH0
Ah, yes, I watched this series a few years ago and just realized that it may have inspired my post above a bit.
PS: I just shamelessly throw in another excellent BBC documentary series here: How Buildings Learn, by Stewart Brand [0]. I sometimes see it mentioned here on HN, but it cannot be mentioned too often. If you haven't seen it, please please do.
[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AvEqfg2sIH0
Stewart Brand's How Buildings Learn: What Happens After They’re Built is another good book about designing for evolution. The book was also adapted into a 1997 BBC TV series (available Stewart Brand's YouTube channel).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/How_Buildings_Learn
There's a great BBC TV series (and book) which covers exactly this topic: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/How_Buildings_Learn https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AvEqfg2sIH0
There's a really good BBC TV series about this topic, which also covers the MIT Radio Lab that Tim mentions:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AvEqfg2sIH0
"How Buildings Learn" (1997)
> Buildings are much more complex in the way they live and breath and the ergonomics they offer than what a lot of people give them credit for.
Too true. Anyone interested in this topic should check out "How Buildings Learn". Well worth reading: https://www.amazon.com/How-Buildings-Learn-Happens-Theyre/dp/0140139966
Also made into a 6-part TV series by the BBC: http://www.openculture.com/2015/07/watch-stewart-brands-6-part-series-how-buildings-learn-with-music-by-brian-eno.html
Strongly reminded of How Buildings Learn's first episode[1], about buildings as statements which turn out to neglect the people who occupy them.
[1] http://youtu.be/AvEqfg2sIH0
Steward Brand has a documentary and book on "How Buildings Learn". A building isn't made for architects, it's for people to use, and people over time are going to use their building for different, often very different things. Even such trivial things like "roof shouldn't leak" can be handwaved around.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AvEqfg2sIH0
The documentary version of How Buildings Learn is also available:
http://video.google.co.uk/videoplay?docid=8639555925486210852
That was in the BBC adaptation of "How Buildings Learn" by Stewart Brand. Both the book and the miniseries (which is on Youtube in segments) are excellent.
I heard about Christopher Alexander from his renown in programming circles. I wonder how he is viewed in the architectural mainstream?