Yeah, there’s a good argument to be made that right now, we shouldn’t be optimizing our homes to last for centuries. Think about how much life has changed in the last century or two. Think of just how differently people live now compared to then. The only way anyone today is living in a 200 year old house is if that home has been extensively renovated, likely gutted down to the bare stone walls, just to make it livable. Ultra durable architecture makes a lot of sense if population and tech levels are stable over many centuries. If a community is going to look reasonably similar 200 years from now as it does today, then designing buildings to last centuries is rational. But in times of rapid change, there’s no point in making a building last forever, if it’s going to be hopelessly obsolete in just a century or two.
Yeah, there’s a good argument to be made that right now, we shouldn’t be optimizing our homes to last for centuries. Think about how much life has changed in the last century or two. Think of just how differently people live now compared to then. The only way anyone today is living in a 200 year old house is if that home has been extensively renovated, likely gutted down to the bare stone walls, just to make it livable. Ultra durable architecture makes a lot of sense if population and tech levels are stable over many centuries. If a community is going to look reasonably similar 200 years from now as it does today, then designing buildings to last centuries is rational. But in times of rapid change, there’s no point in making a building last forever, if it’s going to be hopelessly obsolete in just a century or two.