I’d be more likely to advance HTTP and REST as the colloquial architecture of the Web era, and as the software analog to timber framing.

Overall, though, I’m not sure who has the greater claim to maintainability. We’ve yet to see software last more than a few decades let alone thousands of years. Somehow, I find it hard to imagine it doing so.

Another really interesting tidbit from Brand for comparison is the idea of colloquial architecture, i.e. that the best buildings are the ones not built by famous name architects, but built simply for practical use in a way that let their occupants change and improve and finish them so they would gradually coevolve with their use.

When it comes to software, a lot more people seem to live in the equivalent of decaying housing projects that they can’t maintain themselves (i.e. social networks) rather than the simple new england farmhouses and bay area houseboats that they can own and love and improve for generations.

Although if what architects of software and the built environment share in common is involvement in planning and construction, to the exclusion of ongoing evaluation, maintenance, and adaptation, then maybe engineering is the right discipline to affiliate with.

Absolutely! Thanks for mentioning that, I had intended to. I’ve also recently read it for the first time, and it struck all kinds of sparks. Among other things, it prompted me to write this on Twitter:

[Software learned how to use patterns from architecture. It's a shame that architecture hasn't reciprocated by learning how to use tests.]

A couple of times lately, once in conversation with a consulting engineer and once in that book, I encountered the observation that “post-occupancy evaluation” may be to architecture what testing still too often is to software: a custom “more honor’d in the breach than in the observance.”

Brand’s emphasis on separation of concerns — Structure from Skin from Services — is another example of something that architecture mostly hasn’t yet learned from software.

While you’re right about the malleability of software relative to architecture or city planning, I think that difference makes it easy to forget how much of a nightmare it is to change legacy systems to keep them living and flexible through changing use. Even more than architects, maybe, developers love to build something fresh rather than maintain something existing.

Brand did a great documentary presentation of How Buildings Learn that’s fully available on Google video. Kottke linked to all of the episodes here: http://kottke.org/08/08/how-buildings-learn-tv-series

Imagine if developers knew as much about the Romance of Maintenance (one of the chapter titles) as people involved with buildings do…

– Greg