1. ⁘  ⁘  ⁘
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  3. Abo, Akinori 9
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  5. agile 30
  6. Albers, Josef 17
  7. Alexander, Christopher 135
  8. Alexander, Scott 5
  9. Allsopp, John 4
  10. Ammer, Ralph 6
  11. Anderson, Gretchen 7
  12. anxiety 9
  13. Appleton, Maggie 5
  14. Aptekar-Cassels, Wesley 5
  15. Arango, Jorge 4
  16. architecture 110
  17. art 86
  18. Asimov, Isaac 5
  19. attention 17
  20. Auping, Michael 6
  21. Aurelius, Marcus 14
  22. Bachelard, Gaston 12
  23. Baker, Nicholson 10
  24. beauty 58
  25. Behrensmeyer, Anna K. 7
  26. Bjarnason, Baldur 8
  27. Blake, William 5
  28. blogging 22
  29. body 11
  30. Boeing, Geoff 7
  31. boredom 9
  32. Botton, Alain de 38
  33. Brand, Stewart 4
  34. Bringhurst, Robert 16
  35. Brooks, Frederick P. 22
  36. Broskoski, Charles 6
  37. brutalism 7
  38. building 16
  39. bureaucracy 12
  40. Burnham, Bo 9
  41. business 15
  42. Byron, Lord 14
  43. Cagan, Marty 8
  44. Calvino, Italo 21
  45. Camus, Albert 13
  46. care 6
  47. Carruth, Shane 15
  48. Cegłowski, Maciej 6
  49. Cervantes, Miguel de 7
  50. chance 11
  51. change 16
  52. Chiang, Ted 4
  53. childhood 6
  54. Chimero, Frank 17
  55. choice 8
  56. cities 51
  57. Clark, Robin 3
  58. Cleary, Thomas 8
  59. Cleary, J.C. 8
  60. code 20
  61. collaboration 18
  62. collections 31
  63. color 23
  64. commonplace 11
  65. communication 31
  66. community 7
  67. complexity 11
  68. connection 24
  69. constraints 25
  70. construction 9
  71. content 9
  72. Corbusier, Le 13
  73. Coyier, Chris 4
  74. craft 66
  75. creativity 59
  76. crime 9
  77. Critchlow, Tom 5
  78. critique 10
  79. Cross, Nigel 12
  80. Cross, Anita Clayburn 10
  81. css 11
  82. culture 13
  83. curiosity 11
  84. cycles 7
  85. Danielewski, Mark Z. 4
  86. darkness 28
  87. Darwin, Will 10
  88. data 8
  89. death 38
  90. Debord, Guy 6
  91. decisions 10
  92. design 131
  93. details 31
  94. Dickinson, Emily 9
  95. Dieste, Eladio 4
  96. discovery 9
  97. doors 7
  98. Dorn, Brandon 11
  99. drawing 23
  100. Drucker, Peter F. 15
  101. Duany, Andres 18
  102. Eatock, Daniel 4
  103. economics 13
  104. efficiency 7
  105. Eisenman, Peter 8
  106. Eliot, T.S. 14
  107. emotion 8
  108. ending 14
  109. engineering 11
  110. Eno, Brian 4
  111. ethics 14
  112. euphony 38
  113. Evans, Benedict 4
  114. evolution 9
  115. experience 14
  116. farming 8
  117. fashion 11
  118. features 25
  119. feedback 6
  120. flaws 10
  121. Flexner, Abraham 8
  122. food 16
  123. form 19
  124. Fowler, Martin 4
  125. Franklin, Ursula M. 30
  126. friendship 6
  127. fun 7
  128. function 31
  129. games 13
  130. gardens 26
  131. Garfield, Emily 4
  132. Garfunkel, Art 6
  133. geography 8
  134. geometry 18
  135. goals 9
  136. Gombrich, E. H. 4
  137. goodness 12
  138. Graham, Paul 37
  139. graphics 13
  140. Greene, Erick 6
  141. Hamming, Richard 45
  142. happiness 17
  143. Harford, Tim 4
  144. Harper, Thomas J. 15
  145. Hayes, Brian 28
  146. heat 7
  147. Heinrich, Bernd 7
  148. Herbert, Frank 4
  149. Heschong, Lisa 27
  150. Hesse, Herman 6
  151. history 13
  152. Hoffman, Yoel 10
  153. Hofstadter, Douglas 6
  154. home 15
  155. Hoy, Amy 4
  156. Hoyt, Ben 5
  157. html 11
  158. Hudlow, Gandalf 4
  159. humanity 16
  160. humor 6
  161. Huxley, Aldous 7
  162. hypermedia 22
  163. i 18
  164. ideas 21
  165. identity 33
  166. images 10
  167. industry 9
  168. information 42
  169. infrastructure 17
  170. innovation 15
  171. interaction 10
  172. interest 10
  173. interfaces 37
  174. intuition 8
  175. invention 10
  176. Irwin, Robert 65
  177. Isaacson, Walter 28
  178. Ishikawa, Sara 33
  179. iteration 13
  180. Ive, Jonathan 6
  181. Jackson, Steven J. 14
  182. Jacobs, Jane 54
  183. Jacobs, Alan 5
  184. Jobs, Steve 20
  185. Jones, Nick 5
  186. Kahn, Louis 4
  187. Kakuzō, Okakura 23
  188. Kaufman, Kenn 4
  189. Keith, Jeremy 6
  190. Keller, Jenny 10
  191. Keqin, Yuanwu 8
  192. Ketheswaran, Pirijan 6
  193. Kingdon, Jonathan 5
  194. Kitching, Roger 7
  195. Klein, Laura 4
  196. Kleon, Austin 13
  197. Klinkenborg, Verlyn 24
  198. Klyn, Dan 20
  199. knowledge 29
  200. Kohlstedt, Kurt 12
  201. Kramer, Karen L. 10
  202. Krishna, Golden 10
  203. Kuma, Kengo 18
  204. language 20
  205. learning 30
  206. life 59
  207. light 31
  208. loneliness 12
  209. love 26
  210. Lovell, Sophie 16
  211. Lupton, Ellen 11
  212. Luu, Dan 8
  213. Lynch, Kevin 12
  214. MacIver, David R. 8
  215. MacWright, Tom 5
  216. Magnus, Margaret 12
  217. making 77
  218. management 14
  219. Manaugh, Geoff 27
  220. Markson, David 16
  221. Mars, Roman 13
  222. material 39
  223. math 16
  224. McCarter, Robert 21
  225. meaning 33
  226. media 16
  227. melancholy 52
  228. memory 29
  229. metaphor 10
  230. metrics 19
  231. microsites 49
  232. Miller, J. Abbott 10
  233. Mills, C. Wright 9
  234. minimalism 10
  235. Miyazaki, Hayao 30
  236. Mod, Craig 15
  237. modularity 6
  238. Mollison, Bill 31
  239. morality 8
  240. Murakami, Haruki 21
  241. music 16
  242. Müller, Boris 7
  243. Naka, Toshiharu 8
  244. names 11
  245. Naskrecki, Piotr 5
  246. nature 51
  247. networks 15
  248. Neustadter, Scott 3
  249. Noessel, Christopher 7
  250. notetaking 35
  251. novelty 11
  252. objects 16
  253. order 10
  254. ornament 9
  255. Orwell, George 7
  256. Ott, Matthias 4
  257. ownership 6
  258. Pallasmaa, Juhani 41
  259. Palmer, John 8
  260. patterns 11
  261. Patton, James L. 9
  262. Pawson, John 21
  263. perception 22
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  275. poetry 13
  276. politics 9
  277. Pollan, Michael 6
  278. practice 10
  279. problems 31
  280. process 22
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  285. progress 16
  286. Pye, David 42
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  288. questions 8
  289. Radić, Smiljan 20
  290. Rams, Dieter 16
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  292. reading 16
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  296. Rendle, Robin 12
  297. repair 28
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  299. Reveal, James L. 4
  300. Richards, Melanie 3
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  302. Rougeux, Nicholas 4
  303. Rowe, Peter G. 10
  304. Rupert, Dave 4
  305. Ruskin, John 5
  306. Satyal, Parimal 9
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  309. Schaller, George B. 7
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  313. Sennett, Richard 45
  314. senses 11
  315. Seuss, Dr. 14
  316. Shakespeare, William 4
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  318. silence 9
  319. Silverstein, Murray 33
  320. Simms, Matthew 19
  321. Simon, Paul 6
  322. simplicity 14
  323. Singer, Ryan 12
  324. skill 17
  325. Sloan, Robin 5
  326. Smith, Cyril Stanley 29
  327. Smith, Justin E. H. 6
  328. Smith, Rach 4
  329. socializing 7
  330. society 23
  331. software 68
  332. solitude 12
  333. Somers, James 8
  334. Sorkin, Michael 56
  335. sound 14
  336. space 20
  337. Speck, Jeff 18
  338. spirit 10
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  341. Strunk, William 15
  342. Ström, Matthew 13
  343. style 30
  344. Sun, Chuánqí 15
  345. symbols 12
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  347. Sōetsu, Yanagi 34
  348. Sōseki, Natsume 8
  349. Tanaka, Tomoyuki 9
  350. Tanizaki, Jun'ichirō 15
  351. taste 10
  352. Taylor, Dorian 16
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  358. Thoreau, Henry David 8
  359. time 54
  360. Tolkien, J.R.R. 6
  361. tools 32
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  364. Trombley, Nick 44
  365. truth 15
  366. Tufte, Edward 31
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building

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  • 104. Site Repair

    Problem

    Buildings must always be built on those parts of the land which are in the worst condition, not the best.

    Solution

    On no account place buildings in the places which are more beautiful. In fact, do the opposite. Consider the site and its buildings as a single living ecosystem. Leave those areas that are the most precious, beautiful, comfortable, and healthy as they are, and build new structures in those parts of the site which are least pleasant now.

    Christopher Alexander, Murray Silverstein & Sara Ishikawa, A Pattern Language
    1. ​​Einmal Ist Keinmal​​
    2. ​​Repair​​
    3. ​​But then the knoll was gone​​
    4. ​​Composition and revision​​
    5. ​​Rethinking Repair​​
    • building
    • making
    • design
    • repair
  • It leaves no sign of its past self behind

    When buildings are torn down and rebuilt, the ghost of the old building is often visible in the new one — strangely angled walls and rooms, which make sense only in the context of the space as a living organism. On the web, there are no such restrictions: when a website dies, it leaves no sign of its past self behind.

    Wesley Aptekar-Cassels, How Websites Die
    • death
    • www
    • architecture
    • building
  • Anasazi dwellings

    The Anasazi Indians of the southwestern United States were remarkably clever in choosing the sites for their cliff dwellings. They invariably chose locations shaded in the summer by an overhanging ledge of the cliff, but exposed to full sun all winter long. With their backs to the cliff, the dwellings were protected from the winter winds and also took advantage of the thermal mass of the earth to moderate the temperature flux.

    Lisa Heschong, Thermal Delight in Architecture
    1. ​​Eaves and sun​​
    • building
  • If you want to build an outrageous building

    If you want to build a bad building, hire a good architect, and If you want to build an outrageous building, hire a distinguished one.

    Michael Sorkin, 20 Minutes in Manhattan
    • building
  • The grid and its difficulties

    Criticism of the grid and its difficulties was voiced from the start. Olmsted himself noted several problems that arose from the fixed dimensions of the city’s blocks: the impossibility of producing sites for very large buildings and campuses; issues of daylighting; the difficulty of creating systems of formal and symbolic hierarchy within the field of uniformity.

    Michael Sorkin, 20 Minutes in Manhattan
    1. ​​Urban Street Network Orientation​​
    • grids
    • building

    I've always preferred irregular, more organic-looking cities to strict grids: Boston, Tokyo, and London over New York, Chicago, or Barcelona.

  • A timeless space

    Our culture reveres youth, aspires to agelessness and is frightened by signs of age, wear and decay. As a consequence of this obsession, and the qualities of our man-made materials, contemporary environments have lost their capacity to contain and communicate traces of time. Our buildings often seem to exist in a timeless space without contact with the past or confidence for the future.

    Robert McCarter & Juhani Pallasmaa, Understanding Architecture
    • time
    • building
    • age
  • Quaker Square Inn

    IMG_3414.jpeg

    The modernist architect Le Corbusier was an admirer of American grain elevators, suggesting that their regularity and modularity could serve as a model for other kinds of buildings. At least one later architect took the suggestion seriously. The Quaker Square Inn in Akron, Ohio, occupies the shell of a former elevator. If you're in town for the night, you can rent a round room in one of the silos.

    Brian Hayes, Infrastructure: A Guide to the Industrial Landscape
    • architecture
    • modernism
    • modularity
    • building
    • farming
  • The Timeless Way of Building

    A Book by Christopher Alexander
    www.patternlanguage.com
    1. ​​Mind of no mind​​
    2. ​​The quality without a name​​
    3. ​​An objective matter​​
    4. ​​Bitterness​​
    5. ​​The most precious thing we ever have​​
    1. ​​Some emptiness in us​​
    2. ​​Deliberate acts​​
    3. ​​No kind​​
    4. ​​patternsof.design​​
    5. ​​A Pattern Language​​
    6. ​​Non-architects​​
    7. ​​The Side View #17: Susan Ingham & Chris Andrews​​
    8. ​​The usages of life​​
    • architecture
    • making
    • building
    • urbanism
    • beauty
    • construction
    • zen
  • How Buildings Learn

    A Book by Stewart Brand
    1. ​​Shearing layers of change​​
    1. ​​State of the Windows​​
    2. ​​The modern infrastructural ideal​​
    3. ​​The Metabolist philosophy​​
    • time
    • architecture
    • building
    • change
  • Builder Brain

    An Essay by Charlie Warzel
    newsletters.theatlantic.com

    The Builder mindset often eschews policy completely and focuses on the macro issues, rather than the micro complexities. It is a mindset that seeks to find very elaborate, hypothetical-but-definitely-paradigm-shifting, futuristic technology to fix current problems, instead of focusing on a series of boring-sounding and modest reforms that might help people now.

    …The worst version of Builder mentality is that their dreams become reality, but instead of maintaining their creations, they simply move onto the next Big Thing, leaving others to deal with the mess they’ve made.

    1. ​​A time to build and a time to repair​​
    • technology
    • building
    • society
    • repair
  • A time to build and a time to repair

    An Article by Elizabeth M. Renieris
    www.cigionline.org

    There is a time to build and a time to repair. Repairing what is broken is difficult and important work that requires contextualizing technology and working within creative constraints…If we just keep building without repairing what exists or applying lessons learned along the way, we will continue to spin our wheels as the same problems accumulate and amplify. In this way, our technology may evolve, but our relationship to it (and to each other) can only degrade.

    1. ​​Builder Brain​​
    • repair
    • building
    • technology
  • The joy of the humble brick

    An Article by Tim Harford
    timharford.com

    The brick is one of those old technologies, like the wheel or paper, that seem to be basically unimprovable. ‘The shapes and sizes of bricks do not differ greatly wherever they are made,’ writes Edward Dobson in the fourteenth edition of his Rudimentary Treatise on the Manufacture of Bricks and Tiles. There’s a simple reason for the size: it has to fit in a human hand. As for the shape, building is much more straightforward if the width is half the length.

    1. ​​I am here​​
    2. ​​What the material wants to be​​
    3. ​​What the brick really wants.​​
    • material
    • building
    • modularity
    • geometry
  • The Maintainers

    A Website
    themaintainers.org

    The Maintainers, a global research network interested in the concepts of maintenance, infrastructure, repair, and the myriad forms of labor and expertise that sustain our human-built world. Our members come from a variety of backgrounds, including engineers and business leaders, academic historians and social scientists, government and non-profit agencies, artists, activists, coders, and more.

    • repair
    • infrastructure
    • building
  • Are We Really Engineers?

    An Essay by Hillel Wayne
    www.hillelwayne.com
    • engineering
    • programming
    • making
    • building

    Are software engineers "real" engineers? Wayne talks to a number of crossovers – ex-engineers turned developers – to explore the hotly debated question.

  • Follies

    A Definition
    www.britannica.com
    Image from www.britannica.com on 2020-08-25 at 3.36.45 PM.jpeg

    Folly at Hagley Hall, Hereford and Worcester, built by Sanderson Miller, 1749–50

    In architecture, a folly is a costly, generally nonfunctional building that was erected to enhance a natural landscape. Follies first gained popularity in England, and they were particularly in vogue during the 18th and early 19th centuries, when landscape design was dominated by the tenets of Romanticism. Thus, depending on the designer’s or owner’s tastes, a folly might be constructed to resemble a medieval tower, a ruined castle overgrown with vines, or a crumbling Classical temple complete with fallen, eroded columns.

    1. ​​To build a folly​​
    2. ​​Thermal aediculae​​
    3. ​​There it is again​​
    • architecture
    • building
  • On the "Building" of Software and Websites

    An Essay by Dorian Taylor
    doriantaylor.com

    I’m beginning to suspect that software, and more conspicuously the Web, is fundamentally the wrong shape for the archetype of the construction project.

    1. ​​You are agreeing to make a Thing​​
    2. ​​The Thing-deadline calculus​​
    3. ​​Trees and graphs​​
    4. ​​Content as value​​
    1. ​​The Battle for the Life and Beauty of the Earth​​
    2. ​​Hofstadter's Law​​
    • software
    • building
    • www
    • construction

See also:
  1. architecture
  2. repair
  3. making
  4. time
  5. modularity
  6. construction
  7. www
  8. technology
  9. age
  10. modernism
  11. farming
  12. urbanism
  13. beauty
  14. zen
  15. design
  16. software
  17. change
  18. grids
  19. engineering
  20. programming
  21. infrastructure
  22. material
  23. geometry
  24. death
  25. society
  1. Christopher Alexander
  2. Michael Sorkin
  3. Robert McCarter
  4. Juhani Pallasmaa
  5. Brian Hayes
  6. Murray Silverstein
  7. Sara Ishikawa
  8. Dorian Taylor
  9. Stewart Brand
  10. Lisa Heschong
  11. Hillel Wayne
  12. Tim Harford
  13. Wesley Aptekar-Cassels
  14. Charlie Warzel
  15. Elizabeth M. Renieris