Success through Failure: The Paradox of Design (Hardcover)

~ (Author) "Desire, not necessity, is the mother of invention..." (more)
Key Phrases: stay cables, optic projection, bridge type, New York, World Trade Center, Tacoma Narrows Bridge (more...)

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

From the clumsy packaging of Aleve pain reliever to the space shuttle Columbia disaster, this engrossing study mourns and celebrates failed designs that spur further improvement. Civil engineer Petroski, author of The Evolution of Useful Things and other meditations on manufactured objects, reminds us that setbacks teach us more than triumphs. The principle is easy to see in gargantuan construction projects; the art of bridge building, he notes, advances over the rubble of collapsed spans. But the essence of engineering, he contends, is to construe every limiting aspect of existence as a remediable malfunction; even the elemental wooden pointer is an underperforming contraption with a bug—finite length—corrected in the next generation of laser pointers. The moral Petroski draws—success breeds hubris and catastrophe, failure nurtures humility and insight—is worth pondering, but his conceit mainly furnishes a peg for his trademark historical sketches of the world of objects, full of evocative observations of, say, those interludes during the glitch-prone dawn of PowerPoint presentations when "everyone just stood around or sat by and watched in silence as the bashful new technology was coaxed out of its black box." He delivers a lesson in the price of progress and another perceptive look at the relationship between man and his stuff. Photos. B&w illus. (Apr.)
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From Booklist

Civil engineer and historian Petroski interprets the 1940 collapse of the Tacoma Narrows Bridge as a cautionary tale for designers. That bridge failed because engineers made it by enlarging a previously successful idea. Wise designers, Petroski insists, must always contemplate the possibility of failure. Indeed, it is usually failure that spurs designers on toward improved blueprints. Failure-induced improvement may mean merely that lecturers can use a laser pointer in place of a yardstick, but it may also mean that physicians can turn to lifesaving diagnostic software far superior to fallible human protocols. The potential for failure manifests itself before the event to those designers blessed with prescience, but often improvements are only implemented in the wake of actual failures. From ancient Roman engineers dismayed at the failure of stone-arch bridges to twenty-first-century American architects stunned by the collapse of the Twin Towers, designers have frequently learned valuable principles through hard tutelage. Lucid and concise, this study invites nonspecialists to share in the challenge of trial-and-error engineering. Bryce Christensen
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 256 pages
• Publisher: Princeton University Press (February 27, 2006)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0691122253
• ISBN-13: 978-0691122250
• Product Dimensions: 8.5 x 5.6 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 13.6 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #509,028 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

1 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Good book but a little slow in places, June 10, 2007

By	Ben - See all my reviews

Fact-based analysis of how we can learn from past failures. A good lesson with good examples but the book is a little slow in places.