Japanese architects who treated buildings like living organisms | Hacker News Reader

Japanese architects who treated buildings like living organisms

artsy.net

103 points80mph25 comments

The title immediately reminded me of Alexander's "Nature of Order" [1]; HN audience might know him as the proto-father of software patterns who, allegedly, inspired GoF (although he himself is an architect).

First part of Gabriel's book [2] offers an interesting perspective on that matter, from software engineering point of view.

[1]: http://www.natureoforder.com/overview.htm

[2]: http://dreamsongs.com/Files/PatternsOfSoftware.pdf

First thing I thought of as well as I know one of the projects that Alexander wrote an entire book chronicling was the Eishin campus (http://www.livingneighborhoods.org/ht-0/eishincampus.htm). These architects don't seem to have the same values as Alexander, though, for anyone hoping to find similar work.

He covers Eishin campus at great length in 2nd volume IIRC. And indeed, metabolists are on the opposite side of the spectrum.

Frank Lloyd Wright kinda-sorta has similar values. But for sure in a much different way than Alexander.

For anyone interested, Christopher Alexander was a huge influence on Ward Cunningham and Kent Beck. You can draw a fairly straight line from Alexander's ideas to new stuff like wiki, Extreme Programming, design patterns, refactoring, etc.

For a very prescient talk by Alexander in 1996 to a bunch of ACM folks, see this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=98LdFA-_zfA

I talked with an architect years ago, as they photographed a newly completed space for their portfolio. They said they didn't like visiting their work once it was in use, because people were never using it the way they had envisioned. Architecture as sculptural staged photography.

I've put together a few hardware lab spaces, and in doing so have realized that one can never predict how people are going to use a space. Features you though were useful, layouts that are clean and efficient, a lot goes out the window when the designed space evolves into a space-in-use.

I'm sure professional designers get things closer to "correct" than I do, but I can see why they might chafe at seeing their creations "misused."

To quote one of Akin's Laws of Spacecraft Design: "Your best design efforts will inevitably wind up being useless in the final design. Learn to live with the disappointment."

This is a problem that architects are aware of. It's bad to build with photography and media exposure in mind. But I'm not sure the architect you met was guilty of that. New buildings tend to be documented and published in an unoccupied state. It's the same for most products like cars or furnishings, and you could also argue that the way clothes are advertised has nothing to do with "use".

There's not much architects can do about what happens to buildings after completion. They no longer have a role in the life of the building. I don't think it's necessarily a very bad sign that they sometimes express disappointment or frustration or indifference about the way the building actually ends up being used. They aren't responsible for maintaining it, unlike the authors of software. It is out of their hands.

Every sane architect is OK with the fact that users will adapt their work.

"You know, it is life that is right and the architect who is wrong"—Le Corbusier.

That seems like the best approach.

I recall reading about some large business that commissioned an office tower on a large plaza. The architect (and presumably someone with approval power) instead went with two office towers at opposite corners of the plaza, which meant visiting a coworker often meant a long journey down to the ground, across the plaza, and back up. The surrounding structures funneled powerful winds across the plaza, and this was in a cold climate.

People were unhappy, obviously. When informed, the architect was angry that they didn't appreciate his vision. I was irrationally annoyed about that. I love beautiful architecture, but if you put anything above functionality, you have no business designing functional buildings.

Stewart Brand's book seems related: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/How_Buildings_Learn

That's a SUPER book. Everyone in software should read it. The primary expense in software is long-term maintenance, not initial construction.

Stewart Brand also made a video series: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AvEqfg2sIH0

We need to genetically engineer trees and the like to produce houses. We should be living with life rather than a cancer against it.

All for it if you can sterilize it and get rid of insects etc.

I agree with you to an extent but genetically engineering life to suit us doesn’t strike me as any less cancerous.

To provide what I feel is a more accurate analogy than the one given by GP:

We currently have a destructive parasitic relationship with our ecosystem in which we consume resources without replenishing them, whereas the goal GP described is to pursue a more symbiotic parasitic relationship in which we give back resources that allow for the continuation of the ecosystem, even if in an altered form.

Depending on your interpretation of 'symbiotic' the proposal by the GP may better be described as 'disadvantageous' as by engineering our environment we put it in a relatively inferior state compared to its' natural one.

For more on this topic, I can't recommend this book more highly: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cradle_to_Cradle:_Remaking_t...

> more symbiotic parasitic relationship

This may properly be called commensalism, if the benefitting species avoids harming its host.

We need to genetically engineer humans into forms that don't need houses anymore.

Alternate back lore for Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles

Imagine seeds that grow into a house. This is dream stuff!

I rent one of the capsules in Nakagin Capsule Tower. I love it. Perfect size for focusing (10m2).

If not too personal, can you show us the interior in a 360 or wide angle? Feel free to censor anything, just interested in the structure, eg. ceiling height, built-in features, position of window relative to floor, any window sill, etc. Are they all the same? I admit to feeling reviled when reading about the presumed artifice of using a Japanese teahouse dimension as an arbitrarily attested design aesthetic.

Sure, will do on Monday when I'm there. Ceiling height is maybe 7.5 feet? There’s only one unit left with the original paneling and features (e.g. TV built into the wall, tape deck, dial phone) and it’s sadly not mine. There is a window sill. The window doesn’t open. Original blind was fish-eye, opened like a camera aperture.

Not going into Nakagin today after all so will share these images, which give a sense of the interior space.

https://duckduckgo.com/?q=nakagin+capsule+tower+interior&iar...

Super cool

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