Building Lifespan Debate

There are buildings that have stood for hundreds of years, meanwhile you have to re-paint your own house every 10 year... new/modern is not always better.

Everything has a lifetime. Individual bricks just have a pretty long one. Your building overall probably has a much, much shorter lifetime than you think, and likely has received updates and substantial maintenance over the decades, if anything at least to keep it up to code.Maintenance is one way of extending the lifetime of things. Otherwise, your building would regularly be torn down and rebuilt. This is often the case, when maintenance is no longer enough. That's the best case scenar

There is a good argument that buildings shouldn't last so long.Buildings a mere 50 years ago probably have very poor insulation (and hence high heating/cooling environmental + monetary costs), have electrics that aren't considered safe today, have plumbing probably containing lots of lead, and are lacking amenities considered standard today (electrical outlet next to the bed for phone charging, mixer taps, etc). Those buildings probably won't resist fire for long,

There are houses that last for hundreds of years. You can make them last if you're willing to keep repairing things.

Good point.What hubris for a landowner to assume there will be a need for a building 1000 years hence.Buildings aren’t usually demolished and replaced because they are dilapidated; rather, it’s because the new owner has a different need (and a different aesthetic.)A building that takes 1000 to crumble is just as a much a blight — maybe more — as a plastic bottle that takes 10,000 years to crumble.

Nobody lives in those 100's years old buildings; those that live in buildings say 200 years old do so at great cost, because they love the history. Functions change, tech changes, living patterns change, and retrofitting is much more expensive than rebuilding after some point. Especially for commercial buildings and downtown areas, it makes little sense to use buildings beyond 100 years, save for some of historical significance.

No building stands for 100 years without maintenance. 100 years ago heating and light by coal or gas were still common, so every single old building has had upgrades to electricity (or first gas, then electric). The roof leaked, the wood rotted, a bunch of people died in a fire and now all buildings in a similar style need to add a fire escape...

Wooden houses - if maintained properly - can last very long indeed.The problem nowadays is that we don't maintain stuff. It's sexier to rebuild it (at a much greater expense in resources). I don't see this changing unless we're getting too poor (not just in money, also in resources) to rebuild and have to repair.

We build most houses to last for centuries when properly maintained. We also know from experience that few houses go more than 50 years without a major remodel so we don't overbuild making that impossible.

Not sure whether it can apply to this context.The concretes building are fairly recent. Not sure there was enough time to have a sort of "return on investment". And breaking down something of that scale is quite an undertaking.