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The Marriage of Stewart and Jesse. Posted on 11/10/2002.

My post on extending Jesse's elements of user experience, and assigning intervals of longevity, fired a connection to Stewart Brand's brilliant How Buildings Learn, wherein he identifies the 6 layers of buildings, all which happen to begin with S:

6S (14k image)

10 comments so far. Add a comment.

Previous entry: "Art They Don't Want You To See."
Next entry: "Essays Worth Reading."

Comments:

COMMENT #1
see also Peter Morville's "The Speed of Information Architecture", which touches on another version of this same idea, once again from Stewart Brand.
Posted by Eric Scheid @ 11/10/2002 05:36 PM PST [link to this comment]


COMMENT #2
Curse you, Merholz! My version of the diagram mapping Jesse to How Buildings Learn is only half-done, and now it's not worth finishing.

Sigh.
Posted by Adam Greenfield @ 11/10/2002 08:30 PM PST [link to this comment]


COMMENT #3
Goddamn it, I hadn't even gotten as far as Adam had. Double sigh. For the record, this doesn't mean Peter's smarter than us, Adam, just faster. Heh.
Posted by Anil @ 11/12/2002 10:36 AM PST [link to this comment]


COMMENT #4
Peter,

He uses a similar diagram for the "pacing of change" in the book "The Clock of the Long Now". From fast to slow:
Fashion/art
Commerce
Infrastructure
Governance
Culture
Nature

Each layer operates at its own pace. The faster layers innovate (top) and the slow layers stabilize.
Posted by Stuart Henshall @ 11/12/2002 10:56 AM PST [link to this comment]


COMMENT #5
Anil:

"Faster": I'd buy *that* for a dollar! Ha!
Posted by Adam Greenfield @ 11/12/2002 05:32 PM PST [link to this comment]


COMMENT #6
Many people apparently are entertained by Mr Brand's observations of the world. Okay, I'm not one, as of yet.

Fandom, however, cannot make these observations operational, prescriptive, or descriptive. HBL is sophistry; yet I am not accusing Stewart of a knowing deception.

In the least the foundation is faulty. If the claim were true, that some buildings learn ... it would remain more appropriate to point out that most buildings, most by looooong odds, do not learn. From which appropriate principles could be derived. However, because several of those principles would apply to each example in the book that approach would put in doubt the learning claim. The best would be, at best, remedial learners.

Now in a very few instances, a tiny few exemplars may reveal a new way forward. The prerequisites are immense, however. One is paramount: the exemplars must be authentic in the principles the propose to reveal.

This is most certainly not the case here. Gone askew are understandings of: the art and practice of architecture, the economic incentives of contracts, the practice of studying comparables (and detecting exception from norm) ... even to a basic misunderstanding of how economics actually unfold in time, and how time and time's agents influence economics.

The shearing layers model is one such arbitrary and non-operational model. If it were labeled as fanciful, then it'd be fine. But it's advanced as operational, and even prescriptive.

A single simple debunking suffices: the most permanent aspect of buildings (occupied, otherwise the model is void of at least two layers, among other defining considerations) is the stuff. Okay, a second, no stuff can exist without a space plan -- explicit or otherwise. And both survive the building, every building; all buildings.

Transfering to IA/etc, this argues full-on that one should, first, invest heavily in creating and endowing value in that which audiences directly perceive value, availing oneself of each opportunity concerning the remainder.

That's the true lesson brought home, btw, to at least one of the tortured occupants of the devilish Fort Cronkhite. And to every corporation that has invested heavily (in time lost, in $ throughout) in the 'idealized' infrastructure. Infrastructure is risk incarnate.

That is, where adaptive architectures are required, more, not fewer, external options with overlapping (and disjoint) returns, timeframes and objective functions are required. Don't make a fetish of the "building," not for your sake, your direct constituenties, or the world at large. You're against odds that you'll be wrong.

Okay, since you insist, a third, and crucial for separating this shearing layer model from any claim to guide IA or related practices: The overriding principle in active design is the avoidance/destruction of this segregation.

Which may sound close to Mr. Brand's viewpoint (briefly: plan for learning) but is rather quite different: spend your really important planning time on other things -- a few simple principles will suffice regarding the infrastructure. For everybody's sake make the building expendible (to exaggerate a bit). Not merely ameniable to change (narrowly) "forseen" (retrospectively in HBL; in IA, the last client's still-persistent initial problems).

Thinking of them (structure, etc) as the building is a fundamental error, one that permits other mistakes ... including opening the opportunity to the swooning apprentice to carry on about how a few buildings could be said to overcome some presumed error or another; more like substituting for that error another (now conveniently overlooked).

Stuart (Henshall), I hope you don't mind that we leave the nonsense of the Long Now and the Fast-to-Slow for another time. Or just leave it. Suffice to say that I believe that something that changes continually yet is inconstant (and reversible) in effect, affect and impact (fashion) -- essentially stuck in a very tiny, narrow, phase loop -- is infinitely slower than something that is changing continually and is constant and practically irreversible in effect, affect and impact (Nature, say). Mr. Brand's error here is a repeat of that of HBL you'll notice -- a surface effect of speed or impermanance hides a more fundamental overriding principle, of opposite import.

Innovation, our favorite common topic Stuart, is another matter, however, and I do look forward to our next discussion on that topic.
Posted by Nick Ragouzis @ 11/12/2002 11:27 PM PST [link to this comment]


COMMENT #7
Alan Newell's "Unified Theories of Cognition" pre-dates the Brand example, and uses powers of 10, from milliseconds (for reaction times) to billion(s) of second (33 years per billion). He marches through the escalating levels of human (and other animal) cognition.
I have been meaning to track Newell's chart down. I will look into doing this
Posted by Paul Whitmore @ 11/13/2002 09:03 AM PST [link to this comment]


COMMENT #8
Nick I should have known!

Be interested in views here. Is the smart room a retrograde concept and thus is a smart building a dumb idea? Ie empowering the buildings with smart dust a dangerous alley of monitoring and observance? Or alternatively is Mann's WearComp cyborg approach more appropriate to how we learn? Should intelligence be programmmed into buildings or decentralised down to the individual? Has wireless already proven the futility of hard wired? Should we be building dependent for learning or building independent, learning wherever we walk?

Seems to me that it is the collective power that can be harnessed within the building and outside anytime that is more important. And yet personal freedoms can be impacted tomorrow regardless of whether the building or the person is enhanced.

I doubt there is a fashion statement in that.
Posted by Stuart Henshall @ 11/14/2002 07:10 PM PST [link to this comment]


COMMENT #9
I am baffled by Nick's comment that "most buildings, most by looooong odds, do not learn". If this were true then most buildings would have furniture installed as permanent fixtures (like the wall benches of Archaic Cretan temples). All buildings that I have ever lived or worked in have learned in small or larger ways while I used them. Beyond rearranging "stuff" this learning includes enhancing functionality with new appliances, upgrading services such as lighting, heating, ventilation, and renovations on small and large scale.

The point of the shearing layers is that features change at different rates depending on the nature of the feature's durability, technology, functionality, fashion. Isolating those things that change frequently from those things that are more stable is essential to the long-term viability of any entity: be it a building, an information system, or a biological organism.
Posted by Doug Orr @ 11/26/2002 09:29 AM PST [link to this comment]


COMMENT #10
I am baffled by Nick's comment that "most buildings, most by looooong odds, do not learn". If this were true then most buildings would have furniture installed as permanent fixtures (like the wall benches of Archaic Cretan temples). All buildings that I have ever lived or worked in have learned in small or larger ways while I used them. Beyond rearranging "stuff" this learning includes enhancing functionality with new appliances, upgrading services such as lighting, heating, ventilation, and renovations on small and large scale.

The point of the shearing layers is that features change at different rates depending on the nature of the feature's durability, technology, functionality, fashion. Isolating those things that change frequently from those things that are more stable is essential to the long-term viability of any entity: be it a building, an information system, or a biological organism.
Posted by Doug Orr @ 11/26/2002 09:31 AM PST [link to this comment]


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