1. ⁘  ⁘  ⁘
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  3. Abo, Akinori 9
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  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
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  18. Asimov, Isaac 5
  19. attention 17
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  21. Aurelius, Marcus 14
  22. Bachelard, Gaston 12
  23. Baker, Nicholson 10
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  25. Behrensmeyer, Anna K. 7
  26. Bjarnason, Baldur 8
  27. Blake, William 5
  28. blogging 23
  29. body 11
  30. Boeing, Geoff 7
  31. books 6
  32. boredom 9
  33. Botton, Alain de 38
  34. Brand, Stewart 4
  35. Bringhurst, Robert 16
  36. Brooks, Frederick P. 22
  37. Broskoski, Charles 6
  38. brutalism 7
  39. building 16
  40. bureaucracy 12
  41. Burnham, Bo 9
  42. business 15
  43. Byron, Lord 14
  44. Cagan, Marty 8
  45. Calvino, Italo 21
  46. Camus, Albert 13
  47. Carruth, Shane 15
  48. Cegłowski, Maciej 6
  49. Cervantes, Miguel de 7
  50. chance 11
  51. change 17
  52. Chiang, Ted 4
  53. childhood 6
  54. Chimero, Frank 17
  55. choice 8
  56. cities 51
  57. Cleary, Thomas 8
  58. Cleary, J.C. 8
  59. code 20
  60. Coelho, Paulo 31
  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 67
  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
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  93. desire 6
  94. destiny 6
  95. details 31
  96. Dickinson, Emily 9
  97. Dieste, Eladio 4
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  100. Dorn, Brandon 11
  101. drawing 23
  102. dreams 8
  103. Drucker, Peter F. 15
  104. Duany, Andres 18
  105. Eatock, Daniel 4
  106. economics 13
  107. efficiency 7
  108. Eisenman, Peter 8
  109. Eliot, T.S. 14
  110. emotion 8
  111. ending 14
  112. engineering 12
  113. Eno, Brian 4
  114. ethics 14
  115. euphony 38
  116. Evans, Benedict 4
  117. evolution 9
  118. experience 14
  119. exploration 6
  120. farming 8
  121. fashion 11
  122. fear 7
  123. features 25
  124. flaws 10
  125. Flexner, Abraham 8
  126. food 16
  127. form 19
  128. Fowler, Martin 4
  129. Franklin, Ursula M. 30
  130. fun 7
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  132. games 13
  133. gardens 26
  134. Garfield, Emily 4
  135. Garfunkel, Art 6
  136. geography 8
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  138. goals 9
  139. Gombrich, E. H. 4
  140. goodness 13
  141. Graham, Paul 37
  142. graphics 13
  143. Greene, Erick 6
  144. Hamming, Richard 45
  145. happiness 18
  146. Harford, Tim 4
  147. Harper, Thomas J. 15
  148. Hayes, Brian 28
  149. heat 7
  150. Heinrich, Bernd 7
  151. Herbert, Frank 4
  152. Heschong, Lisa 27
  153. Hesse, Herman 6
  154. history 14
  155. Hoffman, Yoel 10
  156. Hofstadter, Douglas 6
  157. home 15
  158. Hoy, Amy 4
  159. Hoyt, Ben 5
  160. html 11
  161. Hudlow, Gandalf 4
  162. humanity 16
  163. Huxley, Aldous 7
  164. hypermedia 22
  165. i 18
  166. ideas 21
  167. identity 33
  168. images 10
  169. industry 9
  170. information 42
  171. infrastructure 17
  172. innovation 15
  173. interaction 10
  174. interest 10
  175. interfaces 37
  176. intuition 9
  177. invention 10
  178. Irwin, Robert 65
  179. Isaacson, Walter 28
  180. Ishikawa, Sara 33
  181. iteration 13
  182. Ive, Jonathan 6
  183. Jackson, Steven J. 14
  184. Jacobs, Jane 54
  185. Jacobs, Alan 5
  186. Jobs, Steve 20
  187. Jones, Nick 5
  188. Kahn, Louis 4
  189. Kakuzō, Okakura 23
  190. Kaufman, Kenn 4
  191. Keith, Jeremy 6
  192. Keller, Jenny 10
  193. Keqin, Yuanwu 8
  194. Ketheswaran, Pirijan 6
  195. Kingdon, Jonathan 5
  196. Kitching, Roger 7
  197. Klein, Laura 4
  198. Kleon, Austin 13
  199. Klinkenborg, Verlyn 24
  200. Klyn, Dan 20
  201. knowledge 29
  202. Kohlstedt, Kurt 12
  203. Kramer, Karen L. 10
  204. Krishna, Golden 10
  205. Kuma, Kengo 18
  206. language 21
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  208. life 60
  209. light 32
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  211. love 29
  212. Lovell, Sophie 16
  213. Lupton, Ellen 11
  214. Luu, Dan 8
  215. Lynch, Kevin 12
  216. MacIver, David R. 8
  217. MacWright, Tom 5
  218. Magnus, Margaret 12
  219. making 77
  220. management 14
  221. Manaugh, Geoff 27
  222. Markson, David 16
  223. Mars, Roman 13
  224. material 39
  225. math 16
  226. McCarter, Robert 21
  227. meaning 33
  228. media 16
  229. melancholy 53
  230. memory 29
  231. metaphor 10
  232. metrics 19
  233. microsites 49
  234. Miller, J. Abbott 10
  235. Mills, C. Wright 9
  236. minimalism 10
  237. Miyazaki, Hayao 30
  238. Mod, Craig 15
  239. modularity 6
  240. Mollison, Bill 31
  241. morality 8
  242. Murakami, Haruki 21
  243. music 16
  244. Müller, Boris 7
  245. Naka, Toshiharu 8
  246. names 11
  247. Naskrecki, Piotr 5
  248. nature 51
  249. networks 15
  250. Neustadter, Scott 3
  251. Noessel, Christopher 7
  252. notetaking 35
  253. novelty 11
  254. objects 16
  255. order 10
  256. ornament 9
  257. Orwell, George 7
  258. Ott, Matthias 4
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  262. patterns 11
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  268. Perrine, John D. 9
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  278. practice 10
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  297. repair 28
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  319. Silverstein, Murray 33
  320. Simms, Matthew 19
  321. Simon, Paul 6
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  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 69
  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
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  348. Sōseki, Natsume 8
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  350. Tanizaki, Jun'ichirō 15
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  360. Tolkien, J.R.R. 6
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  365. truth 15
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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