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How to design a house to last 1000 years

• pagekicker 5y ago
  Key issues with longevity is property rights, land use, and architectural quality. If you build on a parcel that is purchasable,someone will buy it and redevelop. If you choose a spot that is suitable for many uses, one of them will trump residential. If it is ugly or costly to maintain , it will be torn down.
• mikestaub 5y ago
  https://www.earthshipglobal.com https://www.earthshipglobal.com is very interesting to me
• throwaway0a5e 5y ago
  This might work in a universe with spherical cows but they seem to hand wave away all human elements. My eyes rolled a loop in my head when they advised an urban location. That's a great way to ensure it gets demolished when a marginally better use for the land comes along. If it were me I'd just build some monstrosity of a palace in somewhere that nobody wants such a thing and I'd build it out of stuff that's highly inefficient to repurpose, not steel beams. The best way to keep something around is to make its continued use better than any other option so that people take care of it and give it the capacity to withstand a couple generations of neglect without falling in on itself. A castle (metaphorical or literal) on some cheap land along the highway in North Dakota should suffice.
  • bpodgursky 5y ago
    I would expect a southwest desert to be better than North Dakota. Fewer freeze/thaw cycles while wet, and milder weather. But yes.
    • deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
• criddell 5y ago
  If I were to design a house with the idea that it should serve future generations, I'd design it to be reconfigured, recycled, or torn down easily. After reading some of Stewart Brand's writing, I've learned to love ugly buildings.
  • boringg 5y ago
    I think the reconfigured / recycled easily makes sense. Tough to build a product in 2000s for life in the 2900s. That said the cost to make homes reconfigured/recycled easily is probably quite high and who knows if there will be people with knowledge to be able to perform that work in 400 years. Whereas a shelter can always be used by humans...
    • FinnKuhn 5y ago
      I personally believe that you need to find a compromise between a framework that lasts very long and party that can be recycled so you can adopt the house depending on your needs without needing to redo everything (for example foundation and some integral supports could probably be designed as a framework that can be adapted while walls, windows, room configuration, doors, etc. need to be changed eventually and therefore should be recyclable).
      • jethro_tell 5y ago
        We already do this with commercial construction. Every floor is just a big box that can be sectioned off as the new owner sees fit. The key is that the structure is basically self standing with nothing but the outer walls, and if it's a tower, the center core instead. Add a vertical chase way too to bottom for easy reconfiguring of cables and pipes and you can basically do anything you want until the structure fails. Modern residential doesn't build like this because it would be expensive and probably pretty ugly. It's a lot cheaper to get your structure in bits and pieces by stacking walls on walls on the foundation then have just an outside structure and then have the floors and roof spanning outside to outside. But it could easily be done with the materials we have. Another major thing is the drop ceiling. It's designed to make access easy so that you can run cables and new plumbing anywhere you want. It's ugly so you'd want to find a way to have a modular ceiling that isn't a drop ceiling, but maybe that works for you. Last, for residential, you may butt up against height issues as to be modular like that you're want to have a couple feet extra between floors so you have room to move things around without opening things up.
• jandrese 5y ago
  Stainless steel girders? I see this is a no costs spared build. At one point the author even considered Inconel girders, but practical considerations on builder experience with exotic alloys made that a bridge too far. Even so he is planning to have builders come in an brick up the entire frame before the rest of the house is built. I did like that he realized one of the most important aspects of keeping a house around is to make people want to keep it around. Make sure it doesn't age poorly because then even if the structure is sound people will tear it down because "it is an eyesore".
  • rootsudo 5y ago
    "Eyesore" also depends on the community. Lots of places will keep an eyesore place gladly because they can't infringe on the property owners rights. Many places in Asia are like this in general.
    • michaelt 5y ago
      Sure, but over the course of 1000 years presumably the property will be brought and sold many times. So you need a building at least desirable enough that the subsequent owners won't opt to demolish it. Of course, designing widely beloved buildings is easier said than done.
    • HWR_14 5y ago
      > Lots of places will keep an eyesore place gladly because they can't infringe on the property owners rights. This is some fun new meaning of the word "gladly"
  • tomthe 5y ago
    Stainless steel is also much more brittle than construction steel. And this matters a lot. Not only in case of earthquakes but also just in construction where you have large tolerances. Construction steel will bend plastically, while a more brittle steel can just crack. Welding stainless steel is also inviting issues, but possible in principle.
    • 5y ago
• boringg 5y ago
  This is interesting. About to do a major reno on an old home (early 1900s) and definitely had questions about making upgrades that would last a long time. One of the greenest things that you can do to a home is not build a new one as I understand it. Another one would be to build it so it lasts ... not like this throwaway society we live in. That said I don't think I can do steel girders to extend the life of the house -- that would be tough ask. Any thoughts anyone? Thanks. Other green benefits -- electrify as much as reasonable, thermal regulate, insulate etc.
  • lastofthemojito 5y ago
    But on the other hand, it's probably greener to build a house to last 50-100 years and then tear it down in 75 years when housing preferences change rather than build a house to last 1000 years and then tear it down in 75 years when housing preferences change. On the one hand I think this is a worthwhile experiment, on the other hand I can see why most houses are not built this way.
  • johne20 5y ago
    Look into Passive House designs, and videos by Joseph Lstiburek if you are interested in energy efficiency and building structures to last with modern materials.
  • jakeinspace 5y ago
    At this moment in history, building a cheaper 50-100 year house now and letting a future developer rebuild it with hopefully carbon-neutral materials might be more sustainable, assuming that building it to last now would cost more in dollars and carbon and immediate environmental impact. If we haven't figured out how to build in a more sustainable way 100 years from now, then there might not even be any developers around anyway, so it's a win-win (sort of).
    • timeon 5y ago
      You can build with straw bale and wood today.
  • 5y ago
• politician 5y ago
  Buckingham Slate shingles are currently not available. [1] https://www.buckinghamslate.com/roofing/ https://www.buckinghamslate.com/roofing/
• DiffEq 5y ago
  You should still use reinforcement in the concrete: Use basalt rebar instead of steel; it will not corrode. Use a nylon fiber in the mix to protect against impact and spalling from fire. Use 5000 psi concrete instead of 2500. This is much stronger and will be less likely to break down under any environment. Use a vapor barrier underneath to help prevent moisture and gas from coming up into the house. Put the foundation on 8 to 10 inches of 1" rock. This will help protect against soil expansion and allow water to quickly flow underneath or out of underneath the house. It will also prevent critters from digging into any possible underground utilities, etc. Any cracks after the concrete sets, fill and then seal the entire pad. Be sure to keep the concrete wet and covered for 30 days to aid in maximum strength. Instead of a steel frame, use insulated concrete forms, again using basalt rebar. This makes a concrete walled house. Use stainless steel trusses (or onsite galvanized steel) for the roof or build a concrete roof with similar construction methods as the insulated concrete forms. The siding of the house should be concrete board or other non combustible material (brick or stone)..or both where it makes sense. But be careful on the mortar used..seal it at least if you expose any of it to the weather. Make sure the eaves are at least two feet out and the eaves over doors more than that. This keeps water away from those areas and the house as a whole. Make sure you have gutters...good ones. Make sure your land around the house moves water around it - even in flash flood events. Have real shutters for your windows. Where it makes sense, especially those areas exposed to weather, do not use wood. Instead of slate..use aluminum shingles. Forget the fireplace...too many potential issues with fire, leaking, etc. They are hard to build for 20 years let alone 1000. Use Fiberglass windows. The best ones will outlast any hardwood.
  • boringg 5y ago
    Why do you need shudders for your windows? Is that for hurricane/storm protection?
    • arethuza 5y ago
      Out flat in Edinburgh New Town had built in shutters on the inside of sash windows - these were actually really effective at helping to keep the place warm - far better and easier to care for than curtains. Edit: I should point out that the Edinburgh New Town is quite old, but not as old as the Old Town, obviously.
• t_minus_4 5y ago
  Build a pyramid and call it a day ...
• dahfizz 5y ago
  Constructing a building that would last 1000 years is not particularly hard with modern engineering and materials. The hard part is, first and foremost, getting someone to pay for it. I'm not going to live 1000 years. My great grandkids likely won't even live to see the year 3022. Why would I spend orders of magnitude more for a house if a structure meant to last ~100 years serves my needs perfectly? My friend just needed to redo the foundation on his house. He could have spent 10-100x what he needed to and installed a reinforced concrete foundation with deep steel pylons. But that would have been a waste of his money when wooden peirs works just as well for all his intents & purposes. The second problem is making sure people want to maintain the structure for 1000 years, or at least not tear it down. I don't think this is as hard as the other comentors are saying, though. Just don't build the house in a city. The house will be torn down if it's in a city. The house has a good chance of staying a house if it's built out in the countryside on a decent plot of land. Nobody will ever want anything from that structure but to live in it, so it will be maintained.
  • hnthrowaway0315 5y ago
    Yeah, unless I' rich and thinking about building my family somewhere, I wouldn't even touch this idea. And even I do, I'll probably purchase an old, but good-standing building and heavily renovate it. Modern technology also provides means to strengthen the foundation and weight-bearing part of the building.
  • ghaff 5y ago
    >The second problem is making sure people want to maintain the structure for 1000 years, or at least not tear it down. I don't think this is as hard as the other comentors are saying, though. Just don't build the house in a city. I live in about a 200 year old house but it has been extensively reworked over its lifetime including by me. And given that it's on a nice piece of exurban property it's hardly a stretch to imagine someone in that time deciding a teardown just made more sense than all the upgrades that have taken place over that period. Just as one example it presumably didn't have indoor plumbing when the first part of the house was built.
    • 5y ago
• peanut_worm 5y ago
  Putting it in London (or any other giant city) seems like a good way to have it demolished as soon as possible
• Gravityloss 5y ago
  Why have the chimney outside? It's very inefficient... https://www.quora.com/Why-do-American-houses-often-have-the-chimney-outside-and-not-in-the-middle-where-it-would-help-to-keep-the-house-warm?share=1 https://www.quora.com/Why-do-American-houses-often-have-the-...
  • bigyellow 5y ago
    Not to mention wood fireplaces in the home and the noxious byproducts they produce is likely to shorten your lifespan considerably.
    • wing-_-nuts 5y ago
      Bah. Freezing to death in an ice storm can also 'shorten your lifespan considerably'. There's damned good reason to want a simple, off grid means of heating your home if you lose power.
    • johtso 5y ago
      This is not the case when using modern wood burning stoves though right?
      • stevekemp 5y ago
        Apparently they're not as great as people have been thinking https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/dec/18/wood-burners-triple-harmful-indoor-air-pollution-study-finds https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/dec/18/wood-bur...
      • mikeyouse 5y ago
        Or wood burning fireplace inserts that draw combustion air from outside and expel the fumes/combustion byproducts outside as well. Not ideal for local air quality, but essentially eliminates indoor pollution from them.
        • sidewndr46 5y ago
• bigyellow 5y ago
  Having built my own house, I can definitely say this article is for intellectual stimulation only, and won't result in the construction of an actual home. Not only will you never find contractors and subs that give a shit about this level of detail, but you will struggle explaining these things to permit approvers, county bureaucrats and other people who want to make your life hell because you know more than they do, have more money than them, and are doing something different. Fun article, great information, but won't result in an adobe as planned.
  • EricE 5y ago
    Hehe - you are very right! Never underestimate the ability of the "code enforcers" to stifle innovation. However occasionally you do see examples of excellence managing to push through the bureaucracy - I would love to build a house like this someday: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WuYvDuOQ-5M https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WuYvDuOQ-5M
  • jethro_tell 5y ago
    I would absolutely disagree. My guess is that you have less money than you think you do. I've worked on buildings that were coming in around $2500/sq foot and if the owner didn't like a knot in the board we'd pull it and try again. My other guess is you don't know as much as you think you do and your probably not the building savant you think you are. If you hire an engineer, county bureaucracy doesn't care. If they have to put their stamp on it, and they don't understand it, they care, because they are liable. If you know so much more then them, why didn't you put your stamp on it? I've also built a lot of really odd structures and you do spend a lot of time making sure that everyone agrees that you are doing it in a safe and sane way. Not entirely unlike building consensus in a enterprise setting. There are people that are pros at doing these things. And they know how to get things done. And I've worked with them to build all sorts of crazy stuff.
• RedBeetDeadpool 5y ago
  Also don't build the house in Florida.
  • klaussilveira 5y ago
    I know this is a joke, but there are several advancements in coastal engineering that are quite interesting: https://www.fema.gov/sites/default/files/2020-07/fema_tb_2_flood_damage-resistant_materials_requirements.pdf https://www.fema.gov/sites/default/files/2020-07/fema_tb_2_f...
    • RedBeetDeadpool 5y ago
      Hmm... very interesting.
• alecst 5y ago
  I stayed at a farm in South Tyrol, Italy this fall. (South Tyrol is actually in northern Italy, near the Austrian border.) The oldest property record for the place dated it back to the year 1200. It's a large, normal looking house, and the walls are made out of irregular stone blocks mortared together. For what it's worth, buildings like this aren't that uncommon in Italy.
  • bruce343434 5y ago
    Do you have a picture?
    • alecst 5y ago
      This is the only one I have of the exterior: https://imgur.com/a/q1Y4nlL https://imgur.com/a/q1Y4nlL
• berkeleynerd 5y ago
  Build with stone blocks. Even if it gets knocked over the blocks just need to be reassembled to be useful whether as a wall, a tower, a road, or another house.
  • jacquesm 5y ago
    Add some mortar and before you know it you'll just be building a house in the traditional way.
    • arethuza 5y ago
      I actually went on a course a couple of years ago to be trained in how to prepare and use traditional lime mortars - the course had us building a wall that was going to be knocked down and the stones re-used for the next class: https://www.scotlime.org/ https://www.scotlime.org/ NB I did this because our house is an old Scottish farm building that was converted to a house ~12 years ago - I wanted to be able to do proper wall repairs and build garden walls in the same style.
      • jacquesm 5y ago
        Neat! I just added a very small section to an existing brick wall and I'm super frustrated with the result because the original wall had it's bricks in the weirdest lines and I had the choice of following them or trying to improve it. I tried the latter and ended up with something that was less bad than it could have been but it still isn't perfectly level at the top so I'll have to do some improvisation to make the connection to the ceiling. If you see experienced bricklayers at work, the speed with which they go and the perfection of the result then that's always a good reminder that plenty of the 'trades' that IT people tend to look down on are actually highly skilled professions that can take the better part of a lifetime to master.
• yourusername 5y ago
  I doubt this house would make it to 50 years in places with a moderate climate. The lack of insulation makes it way too expensive to use as a dwelling or office (ignoring that you could not get a building permit in many places because it would not be able to meet energy efficiency guidelines). It is mentioned as a detail to be worked out but it is a critical detail. Around here not being able to be made energy efficient in a cost effective way is one of the main reasons old houses are torn down. It will be torn down long before it has a chance to become historical.
  • dr_orpheus 5y ago
    > Adding interior insulation makes the house much more comfortable, but also changes the thermal dynamics, potentially causing freeze/thaw damage in the brick, and allowing moisture to accumulate between the brick and the insulation. This is one of the many details that would need to be worked out for the complete design of the home. Yeah, this comment struck me as a more major detail to be worked out compared to the other many details listed. Most of the others had multiple options with different drawbacks and benefits but either would work. This seems like we still haven't reached a solution for the exterior walls.
    • EricE 5y ago
      Yup, that's when I stopped reading. It's clear the author has little practical, real world experience with building. In another comment I pointed out if he started watching Matt Risinger's YouTube channel he would see that things like his concern about bricks and moisture have been solved problems, with even better solutions that handle the issue better while decreasing construction time and cost. Also is 1000 years really necessary for the vast majority of housing? There has to be a balance to these things and that seems like way overshooting for most needs. Rather than shooting for something silly like 1000 years, how about focusing on building to climate of the area the home is in? I'm thinking of the picture from about 4 or five years ago of the major hurricane in Florida where an entire area is wiped out except for one house that looked practically untouched. The home owner spent about 20% more and got something that survived a major hurricane. 20% more is far more feasible and will get at least some people's attention - but what this person is advocating is a complete non starter for any kind of broad adoption. The costs are just too great. Another example is all the above ground housing in tornado prone areas. We should be building partially buried houses with domed earthen roofs - no sharp edges sticking above the ground for wind to get under or drive debris into at high speed. Would be simple to implement - partial in ground houses have been a thing since the 70's and had their share of problems but as time and experience builds, we have techniques and new materials to make their construction pretty routine (and they can still be light and airy inside despite being partially underground). The real problem is people - a major culture change is required to drive acceptance of different home styles. Good luck with that. Maybe if the government stopped handing out disaster relief funds unless the funds required people to take steps like the above to prevent future disasters on the same scale - might be the only way to get people to think more of long term consequences. The tales of the grasshopper and ant (and the cultural analogs) are thousands of years old for a reason. It's far easier, short term, to be a grasshopper :p
• micromacrofoot 5y ago
  The first step to design a house that will last 1,000 years is to destroy humanity.
• ortusdux 5y ago
  Stainless steel rebar is an often overlooked option. In theory, solid SS rebar should outlast the concrete, but it is a difficult thing to accurately study. In favorable conditions, regular rebar reinforced concrete starts to need major repairs after ~40 years due to corrosion. The Progresso Pier in Mexico was build over 80 years ago with SS rebar, and reportedly has not needed any renovations. A pier built 20 years later using mild steel rebar has been almost completely destroyed by the ocean. I wish more large infrastructure projects would use it. The up-front costs can be 2x higher, but the lifetime savings win out in many situations. https://www.amusingplanet.com/2015/10/progreso-pier-worlds-longest.html https://www.amusingplanet.com/2015/10/progreso-pier-worlds-l...
  • rsync 5y ago
    I came here to mention that. SS rebar is, indeed, a thing and would be an interesting combination with long lasting (fly ash) concrete, etc.
    • yosito 5y ago
      How long lasting is fly ash concrete?
      • rsync 5y ago
        "How long lasting is fly ash concrete?" We don't know. Existing structures that use "Roman Concrete[1]" are (roughly) 2000 years old and counting ... [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roman_concrete https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roman_concrete
  • prox 5y ago
    How does the Pantheon in Rome keep its structure? Is it just concrete? Since it’s 2000 years old now.
    • brixon 5y ago
      Roman concrete is not like modern concrete. The process in modern concrete does not stop and eventually makes it too brittle and falls apart, Roman concrete does not do this and can last a very long time. https://science.howstuffworks.com/why-ancient-roman-concrete-stronger-than-modern.htm https://science.howstuffworks.com/why-ancient-roman-concrete...
• chrisseaton 5y ago
  Look around you at the houses which are still standing after 1000 years. Copy their design.
  • jethro_tell 5y ago
    1. Be rich 2. Don't not be rich 3. Make sure your kids marry in a way that keeps the money in the family 4. Build a castle/house of stone. Congratulations, you own a castle
    • franch 5y ago
      Not all stone houses are castles or luxury residences. My family's house (northern Italy in the Alps) is at least 600 years old (there is a painting on the outside that has been dated to around 1420) but it is a working-class home. The interior has been repurposed many times over the centuries, but it is still there and inhabited. edit: spelling
      • arethuza 5y ago
        Entire cities in the UK are famous for the kind of stone they are largely built from e.g. Aberdeen and its granite, Edinburgh and sandstone: http://earthwise.bgs.ac.uk/index.php/Building_stones_of_Edinburgh_-_introduction http://earthwise.bgs.ac.uk/index.php/Building_stones_of_Edin...
    • chrisseaton 5y ago
      4 is the only really relevant one. Plus just 'don't knock it down'. Stone is far more durable than the wood and plaster they use in the US.
  • arethuza 5y ago
    You could also look at houses that are still mostly standing after ~5000 years, complete with some furniture: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skara_Brae https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skara_Brae
• EricE 5y ago
  Wow - when I got to the comment about brick and moisture... it's a solved problem. In fact there are even better solutions like https://youtu.be/WuYvDuOQ-5M?t=375 https://youtu.be/WuYvDuOQ-5M?t=375 Indeed if the author would just follow Matt Risinger's channel they would get quite a few far more practical ways to address their concerns. Expert in a vacuum vs. experience in the field. Also a prime example of "no plan survives contact with the enemy".
• ravedave5 5y ago
  Did he just make a castle with more steps and not as good?
• dekhn 5y ago
  What's more important? Building a house that lasts a thousand years, or building a culture that lasts 1000 years and can build houses on demand?
• throwaway879080 5y ago
• FuriouslyAdrift 5y ago
  There's an entire field and organizations that study and develop contstruction technologies... https://www.buildingscience.com/documents/insights/bsi-001-the-perfect-wall https://www.buildingscience.com/documents/insights/bsi-001-t...
• deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
• ramshanker 5y ago
  The moment I saw the diagram text "Seismic moment connection with Fuses", I knew it was not meant to last 1000 year. The moment you introduce seismic fuses, you need active Repair post a large earthquake. This is like expecting to keep repairing every few years and claim Life. My first though reading the title was, you need to build it with STONE. So was "Taj Mahal" and many other religious structure lasting LONG years.
  • robocat 5y ago
    Stone is heavy: can you design a stone structure to withstand an earthquake? In my magnitude 6.2 experience, stone structures without massive steel framing fail in an earthquake.
    • kansface 5y ago
      Doesn't Italy have stone masonry construction that has lasted centuries? Maybe you need a really good foundation to pull it off?
      • dpark 5y ago
        I think you just need a lot more stone than people think. Ancient structures still standing had massive construction. 3-4 foot thick walls. If I recall correctly, the Roman coliseum has arches that are more like 6-8 feet thick. But most structures standing for that long have also been maintained to some degree. Unmaintained millennium-old structures are generally referred to as ruins.
      • jccooper 5y ago
        Rome and its environs are fairly quiet. Italy elsewhere has quite a lot of masonry construction that was destroyed by earthquakes.
    • dpark 5y ago
      Were there no earthquakes in the ancient world? Lots of ancient stone buildings are still standing.
• rsync 5y ago
  This is a very odd design document and it makes me think this author has thought a lot about materials and buildings but not actually built anything. The steel moment frame, to someone with shallow knowledge, sounds so strong and resilient. But in fact, a rigid steel structure is more vulnerable to seismic (and even wind) loads than wooden framing which can flex and move and dampen those loads naturally. The stainless spec for the frame is just pure silliness. Looking at my notes now, for steel beams buried in the ground: 200 microns of rust per year in very aggressive soils, but it rusts on both sides, so make that 400 microns. ... which means that it takes ~25 years to rust through naked 3/8 steel buried in the most aggressive soils. ... which also means that unburied steel, protected from elements, up in the air, is going to last more than 1000 years. Oh, and also, the SS is more brittle so you've made your seismic issues even worse. ... If I had an unlimited budget and was aiming for >1000 years I would pour the piles to bedrock with stainless rebar inside fly-ash concrete and top those pilings with plate connectors into which you could socket large wooden columns (perhaps 8x8) and build the structure with large wooden members connected with steel connectors and column caps, etc. I would only use steel members if the span called for wood that was too big (like a 24' span needing a 8x14 or whatever).
  • Animats 5y ago
    "rigid steel structure" Steel is springy. Tall steel-framed buildings and bridges routinely sway in wind, which is usually harmless to the structure but annoying to occupants. Unless you get harmonic oscillation, where the energy stored in the motion builds up, which can be a problem and has destroyed bridges. Much of seismic design involves connections which raise the resonant frequency of the structure so it can't oscillate at a low frequency with high amplitude. That's what those triangular reinforcement beams one sees in San Francisco really do. It's also what all those rectangular trusses under the Golden Gate Bridge do. Those were a retrofit. Wood's flexibility usually causes problems at joints. Nailed joints are not very strong in tension. Most construction today in areas with earthquakes or high winds involves metal reinforcement of joints. There's a collection of galvanized sheet metal parts for that at any Home Depot. Tension joints for wood are seen in classic Japanese construction, in boats, and in cabinetry. Not so much in modern houses, partly because they work better in hardwood. I wonder if, in the next installment, the author will discuss those.
• KaiserPro 5y ago
  I hate to be a stuck in the mud, but a concrete pad, with unreinforced piles is not going to last a 1000 years. those piles are going to be impossible to repair without breaking the slab, or undermining, which means it's expensive to maintain. (yes Roman concrete has lasted 1k years, but thats a different type to the cement they use now.) The other thing that they've not managed to control is moisture. You can't mix and match steel with lime mortar (I mean you can, but its not wise) You can just put a moisture barrier in there, but you need a way to maintain that (its not like a damp proof course, its far more extensive). Personally if you want to make a house last 1k years, just make a clay lump house. It'll be far cheaper to build, look more realistic and much more well understood how to repair it.
  • tibbydudeza 5y ago
    Have they ever figured out how the Romans made concrete and got away with not using rebar ???.
    • hguant 5y ago
      Yes - basically, high quantities of volcanic ash act as a much stronger binder than is currently used/available now, and the chemistry of the cement they used meant that as it aged it got stronger. Tangentially - it's not that we can't make concrete that way, it's that for many structures we're building of concrete, building to last 100+ years is over kill, and would increase costs drastically for a building or structure that will most likely be torn down before it reaches its life expectancy.
    • joatmon-snoo 5y ago
      Yes, the research came out a few years ago: https://pubs.geoscienceworld.org/msa/ammin/article/102/7/1435/353606/Phillipsite-and-Al-tobermorite-mineral-cements https://pubs.geoscienceworld.org/msa/ammin/article/102/7/143... tl;dr: we took a long time to realize that the Romans didn't use potable water, they used saltwater; the volcanic ash they had access to was also very important
    • jandrese 5y ago
      My making the walls incredibly thick, not having large overhangs, and having the foresight to build an empire in a seismically dead area.
• fumblebee 5y ago
  The author cites London as being a desirable city given the historical lack of disasters, steady government, and cultural preference for preservation etc. London was also my first thought as a safe haven for a long lasting build. On the other hand, I can't help but feel London would be an obvious target for nuclear annihilation in some future conflict; UK commerce / industry / power / wealth is deeply centralised in London. A better option would be to stick to the UK, but maybe a 100 miles outside of London proper.
  • surfingdino 5y ago
    Please build it somewhere else. We have enough eyesores in London, don't need another one. Also, based on evidence, houses that last ~1000 years are typically built from stone (see Italy, South of France, Spain, Greece, Portugal) with easily replaceable wooden roof, ceilings.
  • notahacker 5y ago
    Never mind the small possibility of nukes (think my house surviving would be the least of my concerns for humanity then), London has the highest value land in the country and most of 1000 year old London is buried several feet below much newer and bigger buildings. Pretty much any smaller UK town that isn't threatened by coastal erosion, flooding or mining subsidence offers better survival prospects.
• tibbydudeza 5y ago
  Venice has been around for ages and it is just brick houses build on top of a lot of tree trunks driven into a lake and wooden platforms with stone on top - no complex engineering here. I think the biggest issue having a house lasting is doing constant preventative maintenance or swapping out bits with more modern longer lasting bits e.g replaced all wooden window frames with aluminum.
• akeck 5y ago
  Building Science Fight Club (I follow on IG. There's also a website.) has made me skeptical about these kinds of articles. There's a ton of nuance to doing construction correctly for the particular environment one is building in.
• m_ke 5y ago
  For people interested in construction I really recommend checking out Passive House Accelerator on youtube (https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCFsq1de6hTZOuwQd46pRUQg https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCFsq1de6hTZOuwQd46pRUQg). Building energy efficient homes from regenerative and recyclable materials makes more sense than a stone and steel bunker. A good intro to Passive House Design: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZxeuRByPpeM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZxeuRByPpeM
• 0xbadcafebee 5y ago
  > but reinforced concrete is a poor choice for a long lifespan building due to its susceptibility to corrosion You can reinforce concrete with materials other than rebar. The theory behind reinforcement is a great idea, we shouldn't abandon it. If you don't reinforce it, it needs to be much much thicker and the ground needs to be much more resistant to uneven settling. The most durable construction is solid stone, period. Go to a quarry, quarry some gigantic boulders, carve them into giant walls and pillars. It will be very difficult to install but it's been done before by ancient peoples. It will be a very cold house, but it will last thousands of years. Some rich dudes in Egypt made some pretty big ones a while back, but I imagine we could make them more efficient today. Barring that, just pour the entire house out of a slow-cure concrete. The foundation doesn't actually have to last 1,000 years, it just needs to be modifiable with jackscrews into the main load-bearing members of the house.
• Fiahil 5y ago
  I expected something much simpler : bricks, stones, and wood. It's not like we are running low on examples of 1000+ years buildings (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/11th_century_in_architecture https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/11th_century_in_architecture). These castles, cathedrals, farms, were built to last, so it's appropriate to use them as examples. We can, however, apply modern technics and materials when they make sense : insulation, windows, waterways... Prefer wood, wool and steel over plastics or composite materials and you're good to go. On a side note, I'm currently buying a house (old farm) with over 200 years old plain oak carpentry. The thing is absolutely massive and would be unimaginably expensive to build today. With the proper care, it might last another 200 years without issue. Remember, Notre-Dame de Paris used 300 years old trees cut in ~1150 for its roof -before the 2019 fire-. With the proper care it would have still be standing today. I find that to be deeply humbling.
  • twobitshifter 5y ago
    What is behind your thinking that plastic won’t last? Plastic is estimated to take 1000 years to decompose in landfills. Obviously it did not exist millennia ago, but I wouldn’t write it off as not future proof. I too have a 200 year old house and the sagging mentioned in the article seems inevitable in wood.
    • leoedin 5y ago
      Plastics break down in sunlight, becoming brittle and easily broken. They're also basically impossible to repair if they do break. They can also been eaten by rodents. However plastic is a great material for dark, rodent free places.
    • ctdonath 5y ago
      “Decompose” being the tail end of the deterioration process, with the usable period being far shorter.
    • ruined 5y ago
      plastic becomes very brittle very quickly (years), and falls apart into tiny bits. it's these tiny bits that (we expect) take forever to decompose. even if we understood plastic to retain its original qualities over time, it is impossible to speculate about a thousand-year lifetime. it's unusual to come across any plastic a hundred years old, intact or not.
• samwillis 5y ago
  My parents house in Lincolnshire England was built in the early 1500s, so about 500 years old. Have no doubt it will still be there in another 500. Obviously many changes have been made over the years but the core of the house is the same. Solid, 3ft thick, limestone walls. Lime mortar. Probably no foundations, there has been quite a bit of movement previously but none recently. In one room upstairs the floor slopes by nearly a foot from one end to the other. As far as we know the majority of the roofing/floor timbers are original. Limestone slate roof, this needs replacing about every 70years. Stays cool in the summer and relatively easy to keep warm in the winter. Not efficient in the modern sense though. The way we live changes, trying to build a house for how people will live in the future is impossible. All we can do is build something that’s maintainable, solid and hope for the best. I think the danger is that if you aim to design something that will last 1000 years you will over engineer it and it will be difficult to maintain and modify.
• freeopinion 5y ago
  Solved problem: https://www.nps.gov/meve/index.htm https://www.nps.gov/meve/index.htm
• postalrat 5y ago
  How to build a house that lasts 1000 years: tunnel into stable hard rock.
• jcadam 5y ago
  Centuries-old wooden buildings have the advantage of being made from old-growth wood, which isn't available to modern builders. My current house is made out of logs. We'll see how long it lasts, though I suppose I won't be around to see it in 1000 years.
• giantg2 5y ago
  "you’ll still be able to chop your own firewood." Assuming you own enough forested land and regulations permit cutting.
• daneel_w 5y ago
  The construction presented uses modern design elements that are barely 50 years old. While surely sturdy, it's still speculative. Europe has loads of original construction from the 11th and 12th century, offering valid and proven examples to study.
• 6510 5y ago
  Nice but no cigar. You start bij looking at structures that lasted thousands of years. So you start with a giant blob of rock (mountain) then carve your cave out of it. Have a reliable source of water nearby and carve out a trompe for compressed air. You cant beat a solid state megalithic generator. For heating you carve out a chicken coop with a thin wall bordering the living room. Use finger paint on the walls to explain how everything works and for decoration.
• jandrese 5y ago
  One thing he didn't mention in the location section: Make sure your spot is at least 20 meters above sea level. Not only do you need to account for the ground subsisting, but you also need to account for sea level rise. I wouldn't put it near moving water larger than a creek at all, riverbanks can shift over time and so can coastlines. His suggestion to build in New York City is a bit dubious in a future where we may be forced to abandon the city due to flooding.
  • saalweachter 5y ago
    The elevation of Manhattan varies from 10 to 80 meters.
• stephencanon 5y ago
  A friend grew up in an actual 1000 year-old house in Italy. It's made of stone. It's still there. None of this fancy nonsense.
• westcort 5y ago
  I think the only way that is proven is to build a passage tomb, like Newgrange.
• ummonk 5y ago
  If you're gonna use stainless steel frame, might as well use reinforced concrete with stainless steel rebar too, no? Of course, if you want true longevity, carve out a cave in a hard rocky hillside. That'll last thousands of years.
• JoeAltmaier 5y ago
  On a similar note, I've wondered at construction of a million year time capsule. Layered I imagine, with the artifact cargo in some neutral gel, inside a gold envelope, inside a steel envelope, inside a ceramic shell, buried in an ablative material like cement or resin, sunk in a deep oceanic trench?
  • addaon 5y ago
    You're at a time frame where you have to worry about subduction. There's areas of the ocean floor that are candidates, but I'd seriously consider a high orbit or lunar placement if you're going for that time period. Also saves a lot of environmental challenges.
    • JoeAltmaier 5y ago
      That's true. I suspect the major risk in such a timeframe isn't tectonics, corrosion or environmental weathering. It's likely 'human interference'. Maybe a million-year orbit? So it's safely out of range of meddling for the duration.
• yob89 5y ago
• ctdonath 5y ago
  Related resource: https://twitter.com/1000yearhouse https://twitter.com/1000yearhouse
• bendbro 5y ago
  > It should be legible - it should be easy to understand what it is and how it works in the absence of drawings or other information I like this use of "legible"
• CapitalistCartr 5y ago
  I live in Florida. That factors substantially in how I'd build for longevity. No concern for earthquakes, or snow, great concern for termites, hurricanes, flooding. Pick land near Winter Haven, Lake Wales. I'd build a wood frame style house with steel studs, and steel roof trusses, aluminum roofing. Pour a concrete slab on grade, be excessive with the dimensions, perhaps 10"-12" thick (25-30cm). Bedrock is limerock 40' down (12m), brutally porous, lots of sinkholes. Would it last one thousand years? I don't know, it might, but it would last for centuries at least, or until the next developer decided to bulldoze it.
• supperburg 5y ago
  Yuck, colonial. Here’s the best way to build a 1000 year house or a 10,000 year house: build a giant in-place concrete form with the following features: deep waffle grid foundation slab, rounded corners and arches everywhere, thick walls and of course tasteful layout of rooms and embossings. Lay out tons of carbon-fiber reinforcement and then fill the entire form in one monolithic pour with ultra high performance concrete. Attach a thick layer of rock wool to the outside with masonry screws.
• tigerlily 5y ago
  Living in a coastal area and having lived through a couple of big earthquakes, what you want is housing that can be recycled or composted after a lifetime of around 60 years. Long enough for a generation or two and probably 3-4 renovation cycles. Hurricane Katrina and the Christchurch earthquakes created a lot of green spaces afterwards. It was amazing to see a house disappear and be replaced by grass before long. Or sometimes just an empty section with a letterbox. In my experience it's better to work with entropy when it comes down to it.
  • Brendinooo 5y ago
    Eh, I'm somewhere in between the article and your reply. You need to work with entropy, but you can do that AND have 1000 year houses by trying to optimize for cheap, locally-sourced materials that regular people can work with, and tailoring your architecture to the challenges of your region. I saw a thread on Twitter once about how some old Japanese homes are built on stilts that sit on flat rocks. When earthquakes happen, at worst the house shifts off the rocks. That kind of thing. Don't force a style on a place that can't accommodate it. If a stainless steel beam goes out in 500 years, the people living in the area might not be able to replace it. But if it's made of wood, you've got a better shot at finding a tree and someone who can work with it.
• polymerist 5y ago
  My only issue with this was the steel potentially rusting over 1000 years. There is a lot of water vapor that moves in and out of a house and mitigation of that water is important. Stainless steel will rust given enough time/water too. Anti-corrosion coating on the steel and waterproofing of the foundation slab with a self adhered membrane are two overlooked points imo. Easy enough to tie in waterproofing of the slab with a water/vapor barrier on the walls and the roofing underlayments too. Unsealed brick is also relatively weak if there is a significant amount of water vapor and prolonged years of freeze/thaw will eat away at the brick/mortar and reduce structural integrity of the facade. I may be biased since waterproofing product development is my day job. As for the other comments on the cost of steel being obscene, I'd counter that volumetric steel modular construction is a growing market. Steel is also more easily recycled than wood and lumber costs in 2021 were really high. Probably part of the reason Katerra went bankrupt too (mismanagement played a role too I'm sure). I agree on the steel in the ground with corrosion, I'm guessing the author implies there is an anti-corrosion coating on there already (since not having one seems idiotic), but I suspect it wouldn't last that long and honestly it seems a little excessive since slab on grade is pretty common and I've seen 200+ year old homes sitting on big rocks that are sitting on compacted soil. Fun article though.
• xondono 5y ago
  Why would you want a house to last 1000 years? 150 year houses are already a PITA to adapt to modern standards.
• irrational 5y ago
  Step 1. Build it on solid bedrock in a location not prone to earthquakes, floods, hurricanes, tornadoes, wildfires, rising ocean levels, volcanoes, etc. Build it in a location unlikely to be bombed or otherwise involved in human conflict.
  • HeyLaughingBoy 5y ago
    so... Mars?
    • irrational 5y ago
      I’m thinking some places in central Canada. Currently you would have to deal with lots of snow, but climate change will shortly sort that out.
• pharke 5y ago
  They forgot the most important part about making a structure last 1000 years: it cannot be made of materials that people would conceivably want to repurpose in times of duress or those materials should be in such a form that it is extremely difficult to remove them from the structure. This is how many historical buildings were lost, they were mined for stone to use in other structures. It's also how many modern buildings get ruined by people looking to sell the copper wiring or pipe, and that's in a politically stable era. A better strategy would be to build the house from massive blocks of the most common stone in the area. The blocks should be large enough that they would require significant effort to move or demolish. I wouldn't recommend using any metal in the structure of the house at all. Even wood could be conceivably stripped in times of need.
  • jerf 5y ago
    "We’re also taking something of a risk using something as valuable as stainless steel - a common failure mode for buildings is for valuable material to be ripped out and repurposed. This can range from looters ripping the copper piping out of a house to sell for scrap, to Londoners reusing the stones from ruined Roman buildings, to countries at war melting down building components to make munitions. I don’t see an obvious way of addressing this problem - the risks of corrosion we’re avoiding with stainless steel seems like it’s worth the tradeoff, and covering it with masonry or concrete seems like it would make it less likely on the margin. But this is another reason not to use something as durable as Inconel - the value of the material would likely exceed the value of the building, which is inherently risky for long-term survival."
    • pharke 5y ago
      Missed it, thanks. I still take issue with the design. I think over 1000 years the risk is much higher than they imagine.
      • jerf 5y ago
        All you can really do is minimize it. You can't eliminate it. I mean, you can't even tell me whether humans will exist in 500 years, or whether intelligent non-humans will be running around (doesn't even have to be "aliens", humans will create them), or what. Trying to second guess how people will valuate things in 900 years is a joke.
• biztos 5y ago
  Apologies if someone already made this comment, but if you want your house to last 1000 years I think you ought to start with giving your fellow humans a reason to want that too. Your future self, revived from a frozen brain in your Auckland compound, is unlikely to find the house still available regardless of how you built it. Because laws, incentives, needs and desires change. This could work to your advantage, with future generations valuing your project-house for reasons you can’t predict, but it’s more likely to go the other way. Even if your sarcophagus is good for eternity, you need folks to leave it alone. Maybe start by founding a religion.
• bdamm 5y ago
  A building to last a thousand years, but it has no eaves at all? Good luck with that. The building might last, but only if each successive owners can afford all the maintenance costs of replacing windows, flashings, sidings, sealants, etc, and all the other exterior materials that will rot quickly due to no eaves to protect them.
• holoduke 5y ago
  I would build my house with carbon ceramic blocks. Those will last for at least 100 billion years and will even survive when earth gets swallowed by a swollen sun.
• almog 5y ago
  Not sure about 1000 years but I've been following Dylan Iwakuni (Instagram and Youtube) in his process of relocating an entire Kominka (a traditional Japanese house) which will turn into a chairs-museum. The beams that make the structure are held together using some clever wooden joints that I've never seen before, some of which only reveal their secrets when taken apart and reassembled, all of which is done almost exclusively using hand tools: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q_geUQSlnbQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q_geUQSlnbQ https://www.instagram.com/dylaniwakuni/ https://www.instagram.com/dylaniwakuni/
• 0000011111 5y ago
  It is fun to think about how you could build something to last for 10 generations or 1000 years. I personal would look to the subsurface. In the right location unground dwellings could last longer that human civilization the earth. https://www.atlassurvivalshelters.com/ https://www.atlassurvivalshelters.com/
• danans 5y ago
  > But this cycle of replacement is relatively modern - medieval houses would often last for centuries, Most people in medieval times lived much cheaper structures made of fast degrading materials like wood, mud, and thatch, not stone houses. Therefore most medieval houses did not last centuries. People reused the much rarer stone structures for centuries because without the aid of machines, it was extremely labor intensive to build stone structures. Obviously, they were more valuable since they were more durable. Populations and technological advancement exploded during the centuries afterward - especially after the industrial revolution - so it's not a useful comparison. > and there are examples from around the world of buildings that have lasted for many hundreds or even thousands of years while remaining in use - The Pantheon, Aula Palatina, Brihadeeswarar Temple, Verona Area, Chartres Cathedral are a few examples. Those are mostly houses for god[s], not people. Their function is primarily ritual, not to enable the functions of human life. Then as now, for human existence, you need facilities to heat and cool, provide water, prepare food, and remove waste for a large number of people per square meter of building. Modern buildings perform better at those things due to the quantum leap in precision manufactured materials, which are able to keep the elements at bay - but time and nature are constantly attacking man-made square corners and tight fitting joints and seams. Caulk fails. At some point that stuff all needs to be replaced and it represents the majority (materials and labor) of building/maintaining a house. What might be original after 1000 years of the author's house (assuming it survives cultural change, which the author addresses), is only the structure. And a house structure that lasts 1000 years is interesting in the same way that a fossilized dinosaur skeleton is interesting - but the dinosaur's actual plumbing was lost eons ago. The author seems to understand this because they discuss that a goal is for it to survive until the point where people want to maintain it just because it is old. That's great, but it's not a kind of prescription for building housing at scale sustainably today.
• oh_sigh 5y ago
  If you want a house to be able to exist for 1000 years without human contact, you should look at neolithic burial chambers, e.g. long barrows[0], and copy their construction. If you want a house to be able to exist for 1000 years with human contact, then the only thing you need is for the humans to care and to proactively fix problems as they happen. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long_barrow#/media/File:Wayland_Smithy_Long_barrow.jpg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long_barrow#/media/File:Waylan...
• londons_explore 5y ago
  The biggest risk to a house built today for the next 1000 years is regulatory. Eg. The government coming round and saying "this isn't up to spec for [energy efficiency, fire safety, future housing requirements], it needs to be torn down and rebuilt". The way to defend against that is to make it a building of historical importance, so that rules or exceptions are written specifically for it. So my 1000 year building will be a massive artpiece, cathedral, or something along those lines. As soon as you get famous enough, it doesn't matter what materials your building is made of, it will end up being maintained.
• Robotbeat 5y ago
  One problem is that stainless is valuable. So is aluminum. Even regular steel has scrap value. The Great Pyramid lost its nice smooth exterior simply because the rock it was made of was nice and not easily available in that area. Build it out of basalt blocks in an area with lots of basalt. Low seismic activity, ideally no freeze/thaw cycle, little to no water, and no humans.
• WhompingWindows 5y ago
  Pressure treated wood: I see this as an essential material in modern building. Our own house used non-pressure-treated, regular boards for the sill (the walls attach to these sill boards, which are directly on top of the poured foundation, which had moisture seeping in). We got ants and termites who loved this damp wood, and they turned it to shreds in just 40 years. Will pressure treated wood last for 1000 years? I have no idea, but regular ole' wood didn't last 50 in our case.
• lqet 5y ago
  Judging from the old towns where I grew up in in Europe, the problem isn't building a house that won't collapse for a 1000 years (a classic half-timbered house [0] will get you through most of the earthquakes to expect here for centuries). The problem is getting it through town fires [1], floods [2], and wars [3, 4]. [0] https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/8/8b/Markgroeningen-rathaus2.jpg/800px-Markgroeningen-rathaus2.jpg https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/8/8b/Ma... [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Fire_of_London https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Fire_of_London [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/St._Mary_Magdalene%27s_flood https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/St._Mary_Magdalene%27s_flood [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sack_of_Magdeburg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sack_of_Magdeburg [4] https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/e/ec/Luftbild_Freiburg_1944.jpg/800px-Luftbild_Freiburg_1944.jpg https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/e/ec/Lu...
• sebben 5y ago
  For those interested this project has been built with longevity in mind. The MiniCO2 Houses: The Maintenance-Free House https://www.realdaniabyogbyg.org/projects/the-minico2-houses-the-maintenance-free-house-tradition https://www.realdaniabyogbyg.org/projects/the-minico2-houses...
• melenaboija 5y ago
  1 meter wide stone walls, mortar, no foundations and wooden beams is what my family house in Spain is made of. It has been there for several hundred years with absolutely 0 structural remodeling, some cosmetic work has been done. Seeing the house will be there for few more years, not sure 1000 though. If I am correct some of the Romanesque constructions don’t need wood and those have been there for 1000 years. The seismic activity in Spain is almost null, which I guess matters for this structures.
• culi 5y ago
  If you really want to build a house that will last, you need to build with decay not against it. The reason Japanese architectures are some of the oldest in the world is because they're built to be modular. The prioritize form over material. If one part breaks, you can replace it without having to destroy the entire building. This is also true with Kath Kuni architecture in India. Not only are these building forms extremely resistant to earthquakes and other disasters, but they can also be continuously rebuilt piecemeal https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=58O7SRy46DM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=58O7SRy46DM
• mvaliente2001 5y ago
  Thank you very much for sharing this. In more of one occasion I've asked myself this exact question, even if for only as a thought experiment.
• peter303 5y ago
  Lets see, Bill Gate's 1990s house had ethernet ports and a 512K screen on every wall. Perhaps he should have consulted Gordon Moore (still alive) first.
• sfx77 5y ago
  I live in the midwest. Would this hold up against a tornado?
• contingencies 5y ago
  Use a cave. You get shelter and a water supply. Costs nothing, zero effort up front. Great view. 10k years guaranteed: a million potentially!
• peter303 5y ago
  The 1800s era core buildings at MIT (1906) and Stanford (1892) are made out of bulk sandstone/limestone and are still standing. Post WWII concrete crap are crumbling and being replaced by fake-stone cladding buildings. One gem ironically called the Terman Engineering Building had to be torn down after only 30 years because of severe deterioration. The core buildings might last a half millennium.
• S_A_P 5y ago
  As someone who is living in a generational home this article brings several questions to mind. (But it’s a fun thought experiment) 1) presumably this home isn’t going to be built by someone in their 20s and will likely be built by someone who has accumulated some wealth. That puts them at 30-60 years old. Is the 1000 year benchmark because you want to pass the home down to your kids? 2) if so, do you think they will like your design choices? Will your kids kids? 3) since this is likely to be built by someone who is affluent it will likely be built somewhere with a high land value. Do you think that there is a good chance that the land won’t be cleared and something else built in its place in the next 100 years? This being the case it seems that the target of 1000 years is probably 10x too long. A home built to last 100 years is likely to be the better investment. You’re bound to save big on material cost and building codes are likely going to dictate the correct wind/seismic strength anyway. If you pass it down to your kids they will be able to level and rebuild or refurbish the home to meet their needs more easily as well. I live in a home that was passed down to us and we are going to remodel it as it was built for very different circumstances. Having to do this with some overbuilt fortress would likely triple the cost to remodel and severely limit the labor pool to artisans and craftsmen. I could see a building that wasn’t a home shooting for 1000 year lifespans (say a library or school or maybe high rise) but even that seems overkill to me.
  • frosted-flakes 5y ago
    The proposed building in the article is essentially a open rectangle, with no interior load-bearing walls. Floor joists are wood (across the steel beams), and partition walls are also wood. Seems like it'd be easy to renovate.
• deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
• everyone 5y ago
  Roman concrete isn't around cus it was unreinfoced. It's a different mix than what is used in modern times (portland cement usually). Modern concrete wont last 1000 years reinforcing or no.
• glennvtx 5y ago
  Concrete dome reinforced with basalt of fiberglass rebar. WAY cheaper, stronger. Like Monolithic.org in TX
• thewileyone 5y ago
  For a house to last 1000 years, it has to be lived in for 1000 years. As anyone has seen, any structure left uninhabited for a number of years just degrades.
• 867-5309 5y ago
  he bangs on about earthquakes and then builds a two-storey house.. also, a hollow cuboid doesn't strike me as being the strongest shape show me a thick hexagonal prism bungalow!
• pacaro 5y ago
  I'm sceptical about the slate roof too. Houses with slate roofs routinely lose slates in high winds which is dangerous. I narrowly missed being decapitated waking around Brighton in a big storm in '90. I assume that this is a maintenance issue, the fixtures use to hold the slate tend to have a shorter lifespan than the slate itself. Many buildings in the UK that were originally slate roofed been converted to conventional ceramic or concrete tile. I'm surprised that there wasn't any discussion about thatch for the roof. It has a multi-thousand year history in the UK. So while it goes in and out of fashion, there's always someone around who knows how to do it. I had friends who lived in 500 year old cottage with an oak frame and a thatched roof. It has several very long maintenance cycles, annual, decennial, and semicentennial, but even those can be occasionally missed. It's a flexible form of construction in more ways than one
• hujni 5y ago
  ..or build to last a long time like Andrew Camarata.
• leecommamichael 5y ago
  Very few people here construct buildings, yet the majority of posts aim to critique the article-- which itself seems a bit theoretical. I hope that's not a microcosm for our industry.
• bagels 5y ago
  There is a lot of discussion about how to do it, but not why to do it? Why would you want to overbuild a house like this? Why would one think this structure would even be desired that far in to the future?
• SagelyGuru 5y ago
  Granite blocks that slot together.
• jeena 5y ago
  Somehow I find it weird that it doesn't reference previous art which has shown that it really could survive 1000 years like the Bamberg Cathedral for example https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bamberg_Cathedral https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bamberg_Cathedral which was founded 1002 and has been used since then on a daily basis.
  • Tepix 5y ago
    "After the first two cathedrals burned down in the 11th and 12th centuries, the current structure, a late Romanesque building with four large towers, was built in the 13th century."
• jacknews 5y ago
  1000 years, huh? Where is the grav-drone delivery pad? You know the satelite microwave energy beam receiver needs to be aligned, and have at least an 8m opening to the sky right? And are all other openings properly sealed or filtered? You don't want any of the radioactive atmosphere seeping in. Speaking of which, you do have at least 1m double walls to house water radidion shielding, or are you using lead? Only kidding, but it's impossible to know what needs will be in 1000 years, so it's much better to make something modular, reconfigurable, etc.
• Pephers 5y ago
  Slate roofs are a solid choice. Our 1875 house in Denmark still has the original roof with Port Madoc slates. It's in good condition, and the few slates that have broken can easily be replaced. Slate has a higher upfront cost than other roofing materials, but it's a shame that so many houses are built with concrete roof tiles or fibercement roofing which only last 25-35 years before needing a complete replacement. In comparison, the typical life span for roofs with clay tiles are 75+ years and slate roofs 100+ years.
• amai 5y ago
  Given the danger of a nuclear war, you might want to design your house like the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cheyenne_Mountain_Complex https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cheyenne_Mountain_Complex "The complex was built under 2,000 feet (610 m) of granite on 2 hectares (5 acres). Fifteen three-story buildings are protected from movement, e.g. earthquake or explosion, by a system of giant springs that the buildings sit on and flexible pipe connectors to limit the operational effect of movement.... The bunker is built to deflect a 30 megaton nuclear explosion as close as 2 kilometers. Within a mountain tunnel are sets of 25-ton blast doors and another for the civil engineering department...The complex has its own power plant, heating and cooling system, and water supply"
• Hex-3-En 5y ago
  Tbh just look at houses in e.g. Luebeck, Germany or other old european cities. Some houses still in use have their foundation over 700 years ago and even survived 2 WWs. So, there you go -> thats how to build.