1000 YEARS ARCHITECTURE

Sammanfattning: Today most architecture being built has a lifespan somewhere between 60 to 120 years. In some cases less, in a few cases more. Construction of buildings is a huge consumer of both energy and resources. In the architectural field environmental sustainability are keywords in the design process. Yet, the lifespans of buildings are not being discussed to any great length. The average human life expectancy is 72,6 years. Is it sustainable to put that much resources into the construction of buildings for it to last roughly one human lifetime? Architecture designed by architects only makes up a small part of the total of what is being built but architects do have the potential of being influential and setting examples. I will suggest that architects should set their aim high and strive for at least a 1000 year lifespan of their projects. The figure is set high on purpose, a figure close to the limit of what is tangible for us to grasp, to activate our imagination and create suggestive images of the future. The more we learn about our past, the more we can understand about our present, which in turn can help us gaze into our possible futures. This implies choices for us to make. Time is the real architect in architecture. New archeological discoveries give us an ever expanding knowledge of the past—and its influence on the present— which in its turn expands our understanding of what’s to come. The modernist perspective on architecture as an ever changing progression may need a shift where the focal length is set closer to infinity.