No Road Architecture

In HowBuildingsLearn, StewartBrand is pretty sniffy about what he calls Magazine Architecture - buildings (allegedly) designed to photograph well and win awards rather than performing well for users.

NoRoad? is Brand's term for architecture that is neither HighRoad (slowly changing, guided by a conservator) or LowRoad (amenable to easy change, e.g. a warehouse which becomes a garage which becomes a store). NoRoad? architecture resists change due to its emphasis on looking good, rather than being functional. ("Add a new wing? That would destroy the symmetry!")

The RAC Control Centre on the M5/M6 motorway interchange (UK) is a striking example of this. The extension has the same mirrored glass, but the shape just doesn't fit. Can't find a picture, even on rac.co.uk.

An example: the University at Albany, NY (formerly the State University of New York, Albany, formerly the New York Teacher's College) was designed in the 1960s by the noted architect Edward Durrell Stone. The academic buildings, performing arts center, lecture halls, commons, and library were symmetrically laid out on one long concrete platform (a.k.a the podium). The dormitories were symmetrically arranged around the podium. There really was a joke on campus that if a tree was cut down on one side, the groundskeepers would remove the matching tree as well.

The plan of the campus looked very neat, at least until the library ran out of space around 1990. There was no way to expand it, so the university built a new library near the podium.

That's NoRoadArchitecture.

Sounds like an interesting combination of BigDesignUpFront and YouArentGonnaNeedIt.

More like YouAreGonnaNeedIt... and YouDidntLeaveRoom?. An example of SoftwareIsDifferent; with software, we could add new things in and move things around to preserve symmetry, if we want to. In theory, the University of Albany can do the same thing physically, but there's something of a difference in the expense.

The difference is such that software analogies to NoRoadArchitecture and LowRoad don't apply well; XP accomplishes the changability of LowRoadArchitecture? with the extreme concern for certain principles of aesthetics (OnceAndOnlyOnce, etc.) that characterizes NoRoadArchitecture. Since the domain is so different, aesthetics and practicality can overlap much more and much more easily then they can in the physical world.

CategoryArchitecture