Week 2: Design that responds and learns

Aadya Krishnaprasad
Sep 5, 2018 · 3 min read

Architecture, although seemingly permanent, almost always reacts to our lives. As backdrops for our lives, they grow with us. Stewart Brand’s How Buildings Learn talks illustrates this through a series of examples of buildings that were identical when built in 1857 but grew to look remarkably different by 1993. The book compares the two opposite views, Louis Sullivan’s “Form ever follows functions” and Winston Churchill’s “We shape our buildings; and afterwards our buildings shape us”. Brand talks about how Sullivan’s form-follows-function is not entirely true as one could never anticipate function. On the other hand, the book describes Churchill’s view as truncating the fuller cycle of reality. Architecture is sensitive to shifting economic opportunities and stresses and adapts accordingly, it also sets a stage for our activities and hence facilitate our daily life

This is clearly illustrated in the evolution of a business card. In the 17th century, business cards were in the form of trade cards and contained information such as the address of a business. They then evolved to become visiting cards which were exchanged with friends and visitors. With the invention of the telephone in the mid 19th century, business cards started including phone numbers on them. In the mid 20th century Xerox Corporation first introduced LDX (Long Distance Xerography), which was considered the first commercial version of today’s fax machine. Following this, in 1985 GammaLink introduced the first computer-based fax board which marked a rise in the use of fax as a form of communication. This meant that people world over started including their fax numbers on their business cards.

Evolution of the business card.

The late 90’s saw a rise of the internet and quickly email started replacing fax machines and email addresses became very popular on business cards. The 21st century however brought with it social media which became popular much quicker than the previous means of communication thanks to the internet. Social media links and handles have become very popular now on business cards. With technology advancing at a much rapid rate than ever, people want faster access to information with very less effort. People want to type lesser. QR (Quick Response) codes, as the name suggests have the answer to this. Want instant access to a piece of information? Just point your camera at the corresponding QR code and that information is now magically in the palm of your hands. As we see with the example of buildings and business cards, design that is a part of our everyday lives and keeps responding and adapting to the need of the hour. They learn our habits and reflect our desires and if they don’t they very quickly become obsolete and perish.

The late 90’s saw a rise of the internet and quickly email started replacing fax machines and email addresses became very popular on business cards. The 21st century however brought with it social media which became popular much quicker than the previous means of communication thanks to the internet. Social media links and handles have become very popular now on business cards. With technology advancing at a much rapid rate than ever, people want faster access to information with very less effort. People want to type lesser. QR (Quick Response) codes, as the name suggests have the answer to this. Want instant access to a piece of information? Just point your camera at the corresponding QR code and that information is now magically in the palm of your hands. As we see with the example of buildings and business cards, design that is a part of our everyday lives and keeps responding and adapting to the need of the hour. They learn our habits and reflect our desires and if they don’t they very quickly become obsolete and perish.

Aadya Krishnaprasad

Written by

Graduate student at the School of Design at CMU | Interaction designer

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