Thinking Space

Winchester mystery house is mansion in San Jose which is known for its one of worst architecture work in the history.

Sarah Winchester, the widow of gun magnate William Winchester commenced the work on the mansion in 1884 with no master plan in place. She put an army of more than dozen of of carpenters to work on the project and this continued for 38 years (Wow !) . The house having 160 rooms, three elevators, forty seven fireplaces had all sort of architectural oddities e.g. rooms built around rooms, staircases leading to nowhere, doors opening
to blank walls, doors opening to steep drops.

After the death of her infant daughter and husband, someone advised her that she must build a home for herself and spirits of people fallen victims to Winchester rifles.

While the Winchester mystery house was an intentional piece of architectural mess, many a times we can notice such an architectural mess in our enterprise due to poor architectural choices over the years, working in silos and ignoring efforts needed for enterprise architecture.