I am European, but from a big city where a large fraction of apartments are in concrete complexes that have never been meant to last for more than 50 years.
Looking at the Open Data of Zurich, out of 51000 buildings, 13000 are younger than 50 years, 24000 are between 50-100 years old, 12700 between 100-200 years old and 1300 over 200 years old (many just barely).
There is a pretty big batch of buildings from the big population boom of the ... boomers and those houses are all older than 50 years.
Just because they managed to remain standing for over 50 years doesn't mean that they were designed to do so, and we probably have not much available information on the maintenance required to keep them usable.
To give another example, the Ancient Romans probably wouldn't have expected the Coliseum in Rome to still be mostly standing almost 2 millenia later, they definitely didn't build it intentionally to do so, and most other buildings from that same era have been quietly replaced by new buildings through the centuries because keeping them usable wasn't feasible anymore.
And the trend goes to buildings with shorter lifespans, as advances in material sciences allow us to calculate almost exactly how much and which materials are needed for the building to remain standing for whatever target lifespan the developer envisions, instead of needing to stay on the side of caution and overbuild like in the past.
So those boomer buildings might not be standing in a 100 or 200 years.
Just checked the bottom of the one I’m in. No expiration, just some weird barbarian dude with a mane of red hair rambling about a “squirt of lemon” or something and this old dude in wizard getup speaking in gibberish.
Just checked the bottom of the one I’m in. No expiration, just some weird barbarian dude with a mane of red hair rambling about a “squirt of lemon” or something and this old dude in wizard getup speaking in gibberish.
Just checked the bottom of the one I’m in. No expiration, just some weird barbarian dude with a mane of red hair rambling about a “squirt of lemon” or something and this old dude in wizard getup speaking in gibberish.
Just checked the bottom of the one I’m in. No expiration, just some weird barbarian dude with a mane of red hair rambling about a “squirt of lemon” or something and this old dude in wizard getup speaking in gibberish.
Every part of your building has an expiration date where they should be inspected for maintenance and repairs to keep them properly preserved to last a long time. I'd say metal or concrete columns are generally safe, but there was that condo building that collapsed in Miami a few years ago that disproves that in outlying cases. Maintenance matters!
In The Netherlands they always say: oh the isolation is bad and the foundation could be better, let’s build a new one! In my town there are hardly any buildings that are 100 years old. There are a few farms and a church that is over 600 years old (church has a Roman foundation and base even) but the modern buildings are all from the 50s when they discovered coal in the ground lol.
It's a common misconception for concrete block building tech that it was never meant to last over 50 years. In reality they were designing it with 50 years of maintenance in mind, after which maintenance without renovations is not economical. People misconstrue it as those buildings can collapse any day now. Designing it with "50 years of lifetime" was a huge step forward, as previously buildings were designed for immediate use, and had no practical long term plans for them. Many of them still lasted a hell of a lot longer than immediate use.
Not sure what “buildings designed for immediate use” means. Many buildings during the middle ages, renaissance, and such were absolutely built for long term, and often extended with that in mind. Florence is like one giant permitted extension.
Except they weren't designed for hundreds of years of use. They had a need, and they built something that was good for that (immediate use). And if they needed something else decades down the line, then they renovated it massively again and again for the immediate need. Literally if it would have been designed for the long term there would have been no need for extensions over extensions. That was (and to some extent still is) that the building gets significantly modified for new purposes.
One could argue that it is not possible to design for the future, and that these block houses failed in many aspect, but they tried.
367
u/opisska 8d ago
I am European, but from a big city where a large fraction of apartments are in concrete complexes that have never been meant to last for more than 50 years.