Shearing Layers & Pace Layers

There is a great story about Hunter S. Thompson typing out all of The Great Gatsby and Farewell to Arms in order of what it felt like to write a masterpiece. It might be a myth. But there is something that speaks to us in the idea, which is why it persists.

I am reminded of this today as I sit here finishing off a chapter on Zenko Mapping for a forthcoming book, where I have been told I can’t have pictures of the layer diagrams from Stewart Brand’s How Buildings Learn and Clock of The Long Now.

Fine then, I thought. I’ll remake them.

The Shearing Layers and Pace Layers diagrams, redrawn by me, are here, in PDF form, should you ever need something similar.