4 ms·

How about the cathedrals that are scattered across Europe? Some took centuries. People worked on them their whole lives knowing they’d never see the end result.

• InitialLastName 6y ago
  There was an article about that recently, focusing on St John the Divine in NYC (which has also been under construction for more than 100 years)[0]. The argument is basically that since, by their nature, cathedrals can be functional before their construction is complete, having a long-running construction process allows the design to be more responsive to the populace's changing needs. Also, in a world where leaders lived and died based on the approval of a centralized papal authority, it's just good politics to be known as "that city that's constantly been building that huge cathedral". [0] https://theprepared.org/features/2019/4/28/building-a-cathedral https://theprepared.org/features/2019/4/28/building-a-cathed...
  • amatecha 6y ago
    That's a super interesting point -- today we live in structures that are built in ~weeks and designed in probably similar timeframe. Then you live with it for decades, flaws and all. The idea of decades+ of design input sounds really interesting. I wonder how much those cathedrals would have their design change as construction progressed. Very cool.
• dredmorbius 6y ago
  Sagrada Família, begun in 1882, is not planned to be complete until 2032. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sagrada_Família https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sagrada_Família Washington National Cathedral was completed over 83 years, 1907--1990. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Washington_National_Cathedral https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Washington_National_Cathedral