Stewart Brand's 'How Buildings Learn' Series Now Online with Brian Eno Score

Stewart Brand, the 1960s counterculture figure who staged the Acid Tests with Ken Kesey and the Merry Pranksters and later founded the Whole Earth Catalog, has made his 1997 BBC television series 'How Buildings Learn' freely available on his YouTube channel. The six-part series, with music by Brian Eno, critiques modernist architecture—citing Buckminster Fuller, Frank Gehry, and Le Corbusier—and advocates for an organic, adaptable building form based on simple four-walled structures that can evolve over time. Brand notes that the production was one of the first entirely digital television productions, shot and edited digitally. He encourages anyone to use the series in any way, crediting the BBC for their investment. The series is based on his illustrated book of the same name. Parts 1-3 are embedded in the article, with links to all six parts: Flow, The Low Road, Built for Change, Unreal Estate, The Romance of Maintenance, and Shearing Layers. The series is also added to Open Culture's Free Documentaries collection. Brand's career includes founding CoEvolution Quarterly, the WELL online community, and The Long Now Foundation. The article also references related content, including Brand's list of 76 books for rebuilding civilization and an online archive of Whole Earth publications.