On How Buildings Grow…

tags: information-architecture, digital-evolution

I’d like to start a list of “books for digital professionals that have nothing to do with the internet.”

This is the one I would start with: “How Buildings Learn: What Happens After They’re Built,” by Stewart Brand. It’s about how physical buildings evolve over time to adapt to how humans interact with them and need to use them.

(I have it in hardcover, which is handy because it’s weirdly-sized. And I just noticed my copy is autographed, which I didn’t realize. That’s kinda neat since Brand was pretty influential in the early days of the internet. If the notation is accurate, I paid $20 for it at some used bookstore.)

The book is probably most known for Brand’s discussion of “shearing layers” (not his concept – he borrowed it from someone else). This is the idea that the different “layers” of a building move at different speeds.

Here they are from the fastest/easiest to change, to the slowest/hardest to change:

The same thing is undeniably true for digital properties. Some things are easy to swap out (CSS), and some things are harder (the content model, or the CMS itself). How these layers interact is a key determinant of how your digital property can evolve (true for all software, really).

(I’ve often used the “load bearing walls” metaphor to describe things that are harder to change.)

The entire book is a lovely, contemplative look at how buildings change over time, and how their current configuration has an inextricable relationship to humans. It drills down to the fundamental question: why do buildings exist, if not to serve people?

And I love that same idea if/when it’s applied to digital. Our properties should grow and evolve based on how humans relate to them. That’s their entire purpose.

So, that’s my first entry in “Books for Digital Professionals that have Nothing to do with the Internet™”. I’ll post more as I think of them.

If you have a recommendation, let me know.

This is item #19 in a sequence of 58 items.

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