How Buildings Learn: What Happens After They're Built

by Stewart Brand

Alexander elaborated: “Large-lump development is based on the idea of replacement. Piecemeal growth is based on the idea of repair. Since replacement means consumption of resources, while repair means conservation of resources, it is easy to see that piecemeal growth is the sounder of the two from an ecological point of view. But there are even more practical differences. Large-lump development is based on the fallacy that it is possible to build perfect buildings. Piecemeal growth is based on the healthier and more realistic view that mistakes are inevitable…. Unless money is available for repairing these mistakes, every building, once built, is condemned to be, to some extent, unworkable…. Piecemeal growth is based on the assumption that adaptation between buildings and their users is necessarily a slow and continuous business which cannot, under any circumstances, be achieved in a single leap.”