MIT's Building 20: a Masterpiece of Utility

I find an interesting parallel here to the ideas James Scott proposes in Seeing Like a State (which we covered back in RE #4): a top-down, central planning-style of design can't effectively predict the diversity of user needs. It turns out, contra to the "expert architect", that the users know best what they need from their space. And often even th... See more

The flat layout of the building made for constant chance encounters in the hallways. Vertical buildings create rigid boundaries, since floors and stairs are harder barriers, so the horizontal footprint caused people to run into dozens of others throughout a typical day. From the air, it looked like an oblique letter E (with a little extra E), and t... See more