Reddit reviews How Buildings Learn: What Happens After They're Built

I just finished reading How Buildings Learn: What Happens After They're Built which talks a lot about a building be good or not in terms of how it functions over its life.

It looks so unlike what it looked like in the late 70s.

Not surprisingly, everything at Flag has been re-done since then. It would have had to be by now anyway; buildings need to be renovated, especially hotels and others with living quarters. (There's a great book on this topic, in case you care: How Buildings Learn, by Stewart Brand.)

But once, the Flag buildings were relatively typical for Florida hotels. Palm tree themes, light-and-airy colors. They were very worn, at the time; I remember the carpets in the Fort Harrison being a bit threadbare. It's one reason the CofS got a bargain in buying the property. (Paying cash was another.)

Back in the 70s, the non-public areas used as offices were pretty typical for an overcrowded growing concern. My husband worked in the FB (previously a bank) and it was what we'd now call "an open floor plan" with ugly metal desks shoved next to one another. All very functional, nothing given over to beauty, but then that's true for a lot of startups. (The situation with adequate working supplies was another matter. Get me started sometime on what it took to get a new ink pen to write with.)

Staff, as you know, were in "dorms." That is, imagine your basic okay-sized hotel room that's meant for two people. Now put 6 women into that room, or 6 men, with three bunk beds. All I gotta say is that 6 women sharing one bathroom and closet, when everyone has to be at work at the same time... it isn't pretty.

But there was a sense that the property could be improved. And cynically or no, there was plenty of labor to do it: both the RPF (much discussed here) and the FRU. The Flag Readiness Unit was (and I assume is) people who had just joined the Sea Org, were going through basic training, and weren't yet trusted/qualified for "important" things. So you might be on training half the day, and spend the other half cleaning rooms, or acting as a page running folders from one area of the building to the other. (That's what my husband did.) Or, I think, you might be given "MEST work" like gardening or other stuff to beautify the place.

I'm told that the public auditing rooms were "nice" (I don't think I ever saw one). Most of the paying-public's hotel rooms were... just-okay hotel rooms, for which I was told they charged a lot. (You weren't allowed to stay off the Flag grounds unless you were a Florida resident.) God knows I cleaned plenty of those rooms, as I was put on room-cleaning part-time while I was ostensibly sent to Flag for full-time study. Sometimes, if the auditing rooms were full (and they often were), auditing would be done in the public person's hotel room. But there was nothing special done to make this more comfortable for the purpose; I think there were a few folding card tables for auditors to haul around.

The only room that had been "done" was the chapel and, I think, the FH ballroom.

But as it's been re-done, the architectural design and interior design sense has changed. The gold-and-white-marble look seems more appropriate for parts of Europe than for Florida. I suspect they were going for the aesthetic of soaring majesty that historically was adopted by so many European churches. It's one reason that cathedrals were built as they were: The eye lifts up, to contemplate God and to make oneself feel smaller.

However, I don't think it works well for the CofS. First, whatever one's belief system, 95% of an Org or even of Flag is a chapel where one is supposed to think about the 8th dynamic. It's a public space.

...and I find it a bit... baroque. Very conspicuous-consumpion visually (look at how much we spent!). To my eye, it looks more like a casino. But I should also point out that this is emphatically not my personal taste; it shrieks "new money" to me.

(Have I mentioned that I'm a little bit of an architecture geek?)

Wow, the Kirkus review is a tour de force!

Not sure if this is taught conceptually, but I regularly return to Stewart Brands "How Building's Learn." He argues for buildings that are adaptable and profiles those that succeed and those that don't.

Reasonably a home should be a turnkey affair for those who are indifferent to actively adapting their environment to their needs, and it should still have the capacity to be adapted when it's sold to the next owner ten years down the road who will clearly have different environmental needs.

http://www.amazon.com/How-Buildings-Learn-Happens-Theyre/dp/0140139966

Not CS at all but How Buildings Learn teaches you what Software Architecture can learn from regular Architecture.