How Buildings Learn

Excellent post at Crooked Timber by Chris Bertram to whom I have linked here previously.

He writes today on Stewart Brand's How Buildings Learn: What happens after they're built.

Brand's book really gripped me when I first read it, and looking back over its pages is still both informative and fun. We've given copies to a number of friends and relatives over the years and I'd recommend it to anyone. Aside from the intrinsic interest of the subject matter, Brand had a biggish effect on my political and philosophical outlook. To caricature what I believed before somewhat, I moved from being somone who thought that smart people applying the right principles could make the world right to someone inclined to be much more sceptical about what we know or can know in politics, who takes much more seriously people's lived experience of institutions, plans, projects and buildings (devised by "experts") and who has more of a focus on rules of thumb, practice, "knowing how", tacit knowledge, "satisficing", skill, craft and so on.

I think I took that trip, too.