building
It leaves no sign of its past self behind
Anasazi dwellings
If you want to build an outrageous building
The grid and its difficulties
A timeless space
Quaker Square Inn
The Timeless Way of Building
A Book by Christopher Alexander- Mind of no mind
- The quality without a name
- An objective matter
- Bitterness
- The most precious thing we ever have
How Buildings Learn
A Book by Stewart BrandBuilder Brain
An Essay by Charlie WarzelThe 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.
A time to build and a time to repair
An Article by Elizabeth M. RenierisThere 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.
The joy of the humble brick
An Article by Tim HarfordThe 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.
The Maintainers
A WebsiteThe 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.
Are We Really Engineers?
An Essay by Hillel WayneFollies
A DefinitionFolly 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.
On the "Building" of Software and Websites
An Essay by Dorian TaylorI’m beginning to suspect that software, and more conspicuously the Web, is fundamentally the wrong shape for the archetype of the construction project.
Nobody gives a hoot about groupthink
Two relatively common ‘fashions’ today are real-time collaboration and shared data repositories of one kind or another.
Both increase productivity in the naive sense. We work more; everybody is more active; the group feels more cohesive.
The downside is that they also both tend to reduce the quality of the work and increase busywork.
On that of the highest authority
The consequences of this design should be obvious. The group’s opinion will converge on that of the highest authority present.
As soon as an authority of any kind makes their opinion known, the group will shift in that direction. Even the most rational will tweak their responses after that. After all, who wants to risk going up against an authority? Interns will hesitate to comment. All objections will be a little bit more qualified or toned down.
Generally speaking, if you are writing a document and want to get the most out of a group’s feedback, each contributor should be able to form their opinions independently and give their responses without fear of social or community repercussions.
Personal Information Management (PIM)
Organising information so that it’s easy for a group of people to find the documents they need is very hard.
The alternative is to solve it the same way we did with email: shared data, individual organisation.
You don’t need to know how your colleagues organise their email. You only need to know that they get it and respond. The same applies to most work documents. In Personal Information Management (PIM) this is often called “the user-subjective approach”.