..A c1ass1c and probabl y a worl< ot gem us " - JANE JACOBS , author of Th e Deat h an d U (e of Great A m erican Ci ties 1 H OW BUILDINGS LEARN What happens after they're built CHAPTER 1 Flow YEAR AFTER YEAR, the cultural elite of San Francisco is treated to for is compromise with the fait accompli of the building. The the sight of its pre-eminent lac!ies, resplenc!ently gowned, lined up who le idea of architecture is permanence. University donors in ptJblic waiting to pe e. The occas ion is intermission at the invest in "bricks and morrar " rather than professorial cha irs annual ga la ope ning of the ope ra. The grounc!-floor ladies ' room because of the lure of a lasting monument. In wider use, the term at the Opera Hous e is too sma ll (the men 's isn't). This has been "architecture" always means "unchanging deep structure. " the case since the place was built in 1932. As the women are lined It is an illusion . New usages persistently retire or reshape up right next to the lobby bar , their plight has become a buildings. The old church is torn clown, lovely as it is, because traditional topic of discussion. The complaints and jokes never the parishioners have gone and no other use can be found for it. change. Neither does the laclies' room. The old factory, the plainest of buildings , keeps being revived: Betw ee n the world and our iclea of the worlcl is a fascinating kink. first for a collection of light industries , then for artists ' studios, then Architecture, we imagine , is permanent. And so our builclings for offices (with boutiques anda restaurant on the ground floor), thwart us. Because they discount time, they misuse time. and someth ing else is bound to follow. From the first drawings to the final demolition, buildings are shaped and reshap ed by Almost no buildings adapt well. They 're designed not to adapt; changing cultural currents , changing real-estate value , and also budget ed and financed not to, constructed not to, changing usage. adm inistered not to, maint ained not to, regulated and taxed not to, even remodeled not to . But all buildings (except monuments) The word "building" contains the double reality. It means both adapt anyway , how eve r poo rly, because the usages in and around "the action of the verb BUILD" and "that which is built "- both verb them are changing co nstantly. and noun, both the action and the result. Whereas "architecture " may strive to be permanent , a "building" is always building and The problem is world -scale-th e building industry is the second ­ rebuilding . The idea is crystalline , the fact fluid. Could the idea large st in the wo rld (after agricultur e). Builclings con tain our lives be revised to match the fact? and all civilization . The probl em is also intensely personal. If you look up from this book , what you almost certainly see is the inside That's the intent of this book. My approach is to examine of a builcling. Glance out a window and the rnain thing you buildin gs as a who le- not just whole in space, but whole in time . notice is the outsid e of other buildings. They look so static. Some bu ildings are designed and managed as a spatial whole, none as a temporal whole. In the absence of theor y or standard Buildings loom over us and persi st beyond us . They have the practice in the matter , we can begin by investigating : What perfect memory of materialit y. When we deal with buildings we happens anyway in buildings over time 1 dea l with decisions taken long ago for remote reasons. We argue with anonymous prede cesso rs and lose . The best we can hope Two quotes are most often cited as emblems of the way to FLOW 3 were rented out. Cars came, grew in size and num be r, then shrank in size , and garage s and car parks tried to kee p pace. "Family rooms" expanded aroun d the television . In the 1960s, women joined the work force, transformin g bot h the wo rkpla ce and the home. With shifting economic opp ortuniti es and stresses, families fragmented so much that the conventional nucl ea r family has become a rarity, and the design of housing is still catching up with that. Office buildings are now the larges t cap ita! asse t of deve loped nations and emplo y over half of their workforces . At the office , 1981 - THE TRUE NATURE OF BUILDINGS-that they can't hold still-is betrayed by a brick mansion management theories come and go , eac h with a different physical on the move in Raleigh, North Carolina . The Capehart-Crocker house (1898) was moved to make room for a state government comp lex. The house is now used for offices . layout. Unremitting revolutions in communi cation techn ology require rewiring of wh ole buildin gs eve 1y seve n years on ave rage. After the 1973 oil crisis, the energy budget of a buildin g sudd enly und erstand how buildings and their use interact. The first, became a major issue, and windows , insulation, and heat ing and echoin g the whole length of the 20th century , is "Form ever followsfu nction ." Written in 1896 by Louis Sullivan , the Chicago highrise des igner, it was the founding idea of Modernist 1 1 Louis Sullivan, ''The Tall Build ing Anistically Consiclere:,cl.'' Lippincott '.,( March 1896J, pp. architecture. The very opposite conc ept is Winston Churchill' s 403-409. This muc h-antho logized , bea utifully bombastic e.-;say climaxe, with: ..Il is the "We shap e our huild ings, and aftenuards our huildings shape pe rvading law of all things orga nic, and ino rganic. of all thing s physical and metap hysic:.li, of all things hum an and all things sup erhuman, of all true rnanifesrations of rhe heacl, of the 2 us." These were clairvoyant insights , pointing in the right he art, of the soul, that the life is reco gn izab le in ils exp ressio ns, that form ever follows direction, but they stopp ed short. fun ction ." But when Sullivan app lies rhe law to builclings, he adels a proviso that has bee n little no ticed and never qu oted: "Is il really then ... so near a thin g to us that we ca nnOl perceive that the shape , form , oucward expr ess ion , des ign or wha teve r we may choose, of Sullivan's form-follows -fun ction misled a century of architects into the tall office buildin g shoulcl in the very mt ure of things follow the fun ctions of the believing that they could really anticipate function. Churchill's buildi ng, and that where the funct io n cloes not chang e, the form is not to chang e?" Mark that. "Where function does not cha nge, form cloes not d un ge .·· What abo ut wh en ringin g and-then-they-shap e-us trunc ated the fuller cycle of fun ction changes? realiW First we shape our buildings , then they shape us , then we 2 Churchill liked the statement so much he usecl it rw ice , first in 1924 lO an aw:1rcls ce remo ny for the Architectu ral Assoc iation , then befo re a nationa l audience in 1943 o n 1he shape them aga in-ad infinitum . Function reform s form , occasion of requ esting that the bornb-clamagecl Parliamem be reh uilt exactly ;is it was perpetually. befor e. To the architects he said , ..Th ere is no doubl what eve r abou 1 the influence of architec ture and structure up o n hu man character and action. We make our buildings an d "Flow , continu al flow , continu al change , cont inu al transformation " afterwards they make us. They reg ulate the co urse of our lives." In Parliamem, he restared it, "We shape our buildin gs, and afte1wa rds our builclings sha pe us." Both rimes his is how a Pueb lo Indian architectural histori an named Rina exa mpl e was the cramped , oblo ng Chamber o f the House of Cornmo ns. It was w the Swentzel describes her cultur e and her home village .3 That goo d , he insisted, that the Chamber was too smal l lo sea t all the members (so grea t occas ions we re standing-room occasions), and tha t its shape forcecl rnembers to sil on desc ribes everyo ne's cultur e and village . either one side or the other, unambiguously of one party or the other. 'T he pa rty system, incleecl, clepencls on the shape of the Ho use of Comm ons," he co nclude d in 1924. [I am In this century the houses of America and Europ e have bee n inclebted to Marvin Nicely and Richa rd Langwo rth of the fnternational Chur chill Socie ry for track ing clown the quotes .] altered utterly. When servants disapp eared from them, kitchens 3 Quoted by Jane Brown Gilette, '·O n I-ler Own Terms," Historie ?reservation ( ov . 1992). sudde nly grew , and servant's roo ms beca me sup erfluous and p. 84. 4 u."' <J) s=> g g, z 1941 · RICH TO POOR? It looks at first glance like the prospects of this Coxsackie, New York, farm 1972 - POOR TO RICH? No, stranger than that.