Visualizing the Next Stage
This is from the beginning of Stewart Brand’s How Buildings Learn:
“Porches fill in by stages, not all at once, you know.” The architect [whose name Brand didn’t get] was responding to a talk I gave at a builders’ conference. “The family puts screens on the porch one summer because of the bugs. Then they see they could glass it in and make it part of the house. But it’s cold, so they add a duct from the furnace and some insulation, and now they realize they’re going to have to beef up the foundation and the roof. It happens that way because they can always visualize the next stage based on what’s already there.”
That’s how structure matters.