ABSTRACT
Buildings are usually exclusively thought about in terms of design intention, the ideas brought into play by architects and others involved in their production. Given that usage and function are the central realities of architecture, this insistence on privileging the act of creation over the subsequent ‘life’ of a building is perverse; but it is often only when architecture is witnessed under unexpected or accidental conditions that the complex relationships between the physical fabric of buildings and the shapes and patterns of human life are suddenly exposed and revealed.
