Architecture

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... See more

But I also love the way that buildings are — they’re these huge structures that we have accepted as the places we go in to get what we need, or to sleep, or to work, or whatever. They’re also these huge towering structures. I think of them as if they’re creatures; they’re other kinds of beings. Sometimes we don’t even touch them. I’m interested in... See more

What keeps you returning to architecture?

I’ve talked about architecture for a long time. I feel like it emerged out of questions I used to have — or answers I used to find — in the city. I used to want to write about the city all the time and a lot of my books take place in cities. Then I used to talk about the sentence as a city, as a space to... See more