1. How Buildings Learn - Stewart Brand - 1 of 6 - “Flow”
Why Hacker News recommends it
HN recommends it as a view of buildings as dynamic systems, with lessons for software architecture and long-term maintenance.
What it is
The first episode of Stewart Brand's 1997 BBC series based on his book How Buildings Learn, covering how buildings change after they are built. Brand presents and the series has music by Brian Eno.
Recommended by 8 HN commenters across 8 different months, 2013 to 2020.
What Hacker News said
Strong rec asplake · 2018-09 · on “Ask HN: What are some of the best documentaries you've seen?”
How Buildings Learn, based on (and in some ways better than) the Stewart Brand book. Definite takeaways for software architecture, and includes appearances by Christopher Alexander, a key instigator of the patterns movement. Produced by the BBC in the 90's, now on Youtube - [this video] Turns out that many architects of the built environment are just as prone as those of the software kind to not caring about the usability and maintainability of their systems, let alone how how they will evolve over extended periods of time.
Strong rec lqet · 2019-04 · on “Paint Is Colored Glue”
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] [this video]
Strong rec monkeypizza · 2020-07 · on “Whole Earth Software Catalog (1984)”
Stewart Brand has done lots of good stuff. My favorite is the 6 part BBC series on "How Buildings Learn". It really opened my eyes to the importance of buildings. Very relevant to the frequent discussions here about zoning, design, etc. But also just an amazing, clear, well-informed amateur analysis of how the US has been doing in this field over the last 100 years. [this video]
Recommends shavenwarthog2 · 2013-09 · on “Glare from London 'fryscraper' blamed for melting cars”
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. [this video]
Recommends rwmj · 2017-02 · on “What makes the perfect office?”
There's a really good BBC TV series about this topic, which also covers the MIT Radio Lab that Tim mentions: [this video] "How Buildings Learn" (1997)
Recommends wpietri · 2018-03 · on “Structural engineers are unsung heroes”
Ooh, that reminds me of another excellent book on failure, Sidney Dekker's "Field Guide to Understanding Human Error": [LINK] It's about investigating airplane crashes, and in particular two different paradigms for understanding failure. It deeply changed how I think and talk about software bugs, and especially how I do retrospectives. I strongly recommend it. And the article made me think of Stewart Brand's "How Buildings Learn": [LINK] It changed my view of a building from a static thing to a dynamic system, changing over time. The BBC later turned it into a 6-part series, which I haven't seen, but which the author put up on YouTube, starting here: [this video] I especially like that in the com
Recommends steveeq1 · 2018-05 · on “Stewart Brand Changed the World, Twice”
video documentary of the book with Stewart Brand hosting for anyone that's interested: [this video] Saw the documentary and now reading the book, it's good.
Recommends paloaltokid · 2019-08 · on “Japanese architects who treated buildings like living organisms”
That's a SUPER book. Everyone in software should read it. The primary expense in software is long-term maintenance, not initial construction. Stewart Brand also made a video series: [this video]