Structures of Hope: When Grand Designs Meet Grim Realities
summary
A comparison of mid‑20th century public housing and software architecture shows concrete specifics: Pruitt‑Igoe (33 buildings, 11 stories, ~9,500 residents) ships with skip-stop elevators, central heating and running water yet falls from ~95% occupancy to single‑digits and is fully demolished by 1976. Root causes are underfunded maintenance, designs optimized for a moment, and narrow cavities that prevent retrofits, so favor wider walls, durable patterns and stable platforms over brittle new tech; also consider MX zoning tradeoffs.
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chapters (8)
- 0:00Introduction
- 1:32Public housing history
- 6:51Public housing examples
- 11:04Public housing challenges
- 16:00Pruitt-Igoe failure
- 25:37Lessons from Pruitt-Igoe
- 29:57Future-proof software design
- 38:15Q&A
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