How Buildings Learn: What Happens After They're Built

by Stewart Brand

Scenarios can provide a way around some of the major design errors that commonly occur with buildings. The worst mistakes come not from wrong decisions but from not doing the right thing that never occurred to anybody to do. Scenarios attack a design from so many directions that gaps and oversights are likely to show up. Also, scenarios severely test fond notions that might otherwise get by unchallenged. (“We will have the stairs run clear around the periphery of the atrium like a magnificent spiral staircase.”) Grandiose ideas that don’t work are more hated by building occupants than almost anything else. Scenarios are conservative—they keep you from betting the whole building on some potential folly—but they are also innovative. Ingenious design ideas can emerge from the creative process of scenario-crafting and strategizing. (“Both grandkids said they love playing in low-ceilinged rooms, so we’ll save money and bulk with an old-fashioned half-height cottage attic, and they can have a kid heaven up there.”)