7 ms·

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/wi

by 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.
- Fiahil 5y ago
  Plastic breaks down in tiny pieces and is almost impossible to repair when broken. It's also very difficult to reuse or recycle when you want to. If your house is still standing after a thousand years, it's also because its habitants were able to remodel it without destroying its materials. As a matter of fact, the amazing carpentry I was talking about previously is made from "fresh" oak, but a significant part of it was also taken from a previous building (church, farm, stable or monastery). It's doing just fine, apart from a few out-of-place mortises. I tried reusing plastic pipes, once, but that wasn't a great idea. It's fine for a few DIY, though. Stones, bricks, wood are great mostly because they can be reused, but also because they will continue to look great afterwards. (Note: You might argue that "your" wood is not easy to reuse as well. This happens because we put nails and screws everywhere and we prefer less-dense wood over heavier ones (pines vs oak))
specialist 5y ago
Ya. I'm very curious about this kind of stuff. And now especially "activhaus" ideas. Being a software guy, probably from envy. Ages ago, I started remodeling while my Belgian coworker (working from Belgian) started his new home construction. My house in the USA Pacific Northwest is timber framed with tar shingle roof. Coworker's house, IIRC, was block walls and ceramic roof. My house so temporary, their house built for the centuries. A real home. In North America, I now find the homesteading and packed earth style homes most compelling. Basically, latest tech Arcosanti. (But with better finances.)
- Baeocystin 5y ago
  Timber frame and a lightweight roof is superior to block walls and ceramic in any scenario that includes seismic activity, which includes the entire American west coast.
- _Adam 5y ago
  If wood stays dry it will last for centuries. Of course given the climate here you'll need to maintain and eventually re-shingle your roof (In the same region and my 34 year old tar shingle roof sprung a leak a few days ago) but if you do that your house will likely last just as long as your coworker's.
  - funcDropShadow 5y ago
    Ceramic shingles are replaced after 40-50 years as well. At least in Germany.
- polymerist 5y ago
  Rammed earth you definitely need to be careful of the humidity and mitigation internal humidity is going to be important. Good technique though for arid/desert climates. Timber Frame + external insulation with anairtight building envelope is a really good construction method that will be energy efficient and last a long time.
  - robbedpeter 5y ago
tinco 5y ago
The fact that there's still a lot of buildings still standing doesn't mean they were built perfect, it just means their construction has the possibility of lasting a 1000 years. For each of those buildings I bet there were 10 more with the exact same building techniques that are no longer standing. A 1000 years is a lot of time to go without a fire. I think just because of the fire risk wood is simply out of the question. Well unless you can protect the wood against fire like the OP is doing with the steel. Considering modern times, I think you would have to go one step further and also consider gas explosions and possibly being bombed as well. Just imagine how many 1000+ yr old buildings must have been in Germany before WW2.
- AlanSE 5y ago
  There's another bias here that available materials were very different 1000 years ago. Designing with WW2 in mind is preparing for the next conflict based on the last one. Climate change will have implications, which tend to come out as fire and flooding. This will impact siting.
- distances 5y ago
  There are more old buildings left in Germany than one might first assume. The devastation of WW2 was most concentrated in the major cities, and minor cities and villages often have old centers that survived fully intact. This was a bit surprising at least for me when touring the smaller places.
SkeuomorphicBee 5y ago
> We can, however, apply modern technics and materials when they make sense : insulation, windows, waterways... The article raises an important point that could be a problem when trying to mix old and new build techniques. When talking about brick walls it says: > One tricky thing with this type of assembly is that while it has performed well historically, it doesn’t necessarily play nice with more modern, energy efficient construction. A solid brick wall was traditionally designed to be exposed on the inside, exposing it to interior heat and allowing it to dry. 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. You can't simply build something following the examples of a castle or a cathedral, but then add modern insulation, because the insulation won't allow the masonry to breath and dry to both sides, leading to water damage, mold, rot, ... At the end of the day, a badly insulated building can be made to last for ages passively by just making it breath, so the temperature and humidity vary with the weather but are kept in check by passive external factors (e.g. the sun shining on a external wall dries it from the outside). While a well insulated building absolutely needs constant mechanical HVAC with fine tuned control. You can have a well insulated building or a passive building, you can't have both (by the way, the "Passive House TM" insulation standard is a complete misnomer, being that mechanical ventilation is its second biggest tenet).
- rebuilder 5y ago
  Well yes, but the example house doesn't seem to be all that optimized for energy efficiency. Look at the illustration showing a fireplace located at the end of the house. That's going to waste so much heat compared to a centrally located one. So I'm not sure how much attention was paid to energy efficiency here.
  - daydream 5y ago
    I came here looking for a comment like this. A fireplace partially exposed to the exterior (as is common nowadays) is essentially entirely decorative and can actually be a net negative in terms of heating the space. seeing that made me question the practicality of the authors other design choices that I know little about.
djrogers 5y ago
> 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. This is an easy place to run in to a survivorship bias problem - pick a random 1000 year old farmhouse. How many farmhouses built exactly the same way didn't last for various reasons? Is the fact that one is still standing due to luck, or was it destined to last 1000 years the day it was built?
- JAlexoid 5y ago
  It doesn't matter that the others fell, we now know what definitely didn't fall - which is all we need to get to.
  - sedatk 5y ago
    It matters if you want 99% of the buildings that you build last 1000 years, rather than 0.001%.
  - nashashmi 5y ago
    Survivorship bias says to look at all the buildings that failed and why they failed rather than looking at the building that survived. You might imitate build but you will not imitate the environment that allowed this one to survive.
- ashtonkem 5y ago
  It’s not clear how many of the no longer extant old homes and farms fell down due to design issues, due to neglect, or were pulled down for economic or aesthetic reasons. Most architectural styles go through a process where they stop being made, start getting neglected, most of them get pulled down, and the few remaining ones get lovingly restored as they get old and rare enough to become retro rather than just outdated. This tells us very little about how well they were built, even with survivorship bias in mind, because very few buildings will survive an utter lack of maintenance, and less still if many were torn down for not being stylish enough to command the level of rent that the owner is hoping for.
JAlexoid 5y ago
I mean.... Cheap Old Houses had a 1000 year old house for sale not long ago. There's also plenty of timber buildings that last for millenia.
thehappypm 5y ago
Wood is flammable, and so it’s kind of out of the question. I’d build out of stone or brick, single story but larger footprint. Then of course ground source heat pump and all electric appliances, and solar nearby..
- anchpop 5y ago
  modern wood construction is more resistant to fire than steel, steel loses its structural strength when it gets hot while wood chars on the outside (becoming fire resistant) and doesn’t lose its strength
  - frosted-flakes 5y ago
    I've seen the aftermaths of a few barn fires over the past few years. These were old structures, pre-1950s based on appearance, framed with heavy timbers and clad with wood planks and a steel roof. After the fires, the timber frames were still standing on their stone foundations, charred and black, but there was nothing to be seen of the rest of the structure.

by Fiahil 5y ago

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.
Fiahil 5y ago
Plastic breaks down in tiny pieces and is almost impossible to repair when broken. It's also very difficult to reuse or recycle when you want to. If your house is still standing after a thousand years, it's also because its habitants were able to remodel it without destroying its materials. As a matter of fact, the amazing carpentry I was talking about previously is made from "fresh" oak, but a significant part of it was also taken from a previous building (church, farm, stable or monastery). It's doing just fine, apart from a few out-of-place mortises. I tried reusing plastic pipes, once, but that wasn't a great idea. It's fine for a few DIY, though. Stones, bricks, wood are great mostly because they can be reused, but also because they will continue to look great afterwards. (Note: You might argue that "your" wood is not easy to reuse as well. This happens because we put nails and screws everywhere and we prefer less-dense wood over heavier ones (pines vs oak))

specialist 5y ago

Ya. I'm very curious about this kind of stuff. And now especially "activhaus" ideas. Being a software guy, probably from envy. Ages ago, I started remodeling while my Belgian coworker (working from Belgian) started his new home construction. My house in the USA Pacific Northwest is timber framed with tar shingle roof. Coworker's house, IIRC, was block walls and ceramic roof. My house so temporary, their house built for the centuries. A real home. In North America, I now find the homesteading and packed earth style homes most compelling. Basically, latest tech Arcosanti. (But with better finances.)

Baeocystin 5y ago
Timber frame and a lightweight roof is superior to block walls and ceramic in any scenario that includes seismic activity, which includes the entire American west coast.
_Adam 5y ago
If wood stays dry it will last for centuries. Of course given the climate here you'll need to maintain and eventually re-shingle your roof (In the same region and my 34 year old tar shingle roof sprung a leak a few days ago) but if you do that your house will likely last just as long as your coworker's.
- funcDropShadow 5y ago
  Ceramic shingles are replaced after 40-50 years as well. At least in Germany.
polymerist 5y ago
Rammed earth you definitely need to be careful of the humidity and mitigation internal humidity is going to be important. Good technique though for arid/desert climates. Timber Frame + external insulation with anairtight building envelope is a really good construction method that will be energy efficient and last a long time.
- robbedpeter 5y ago

tinco 5y ago

The fact that there's still a lot of buildings still standing doesn't mean they were built perfect, it just means their construction has the possibility of lasting a 1000 years. For each of those buildings I bet there were 10 more with the exact same building techniques that are no longer standing. A 1000 years is a lot of time to go without a fire. I think just because of the fire risk wood is simply out of the question. Well unless you can protect the wood against fire like the OP is doing with the steel. Considering modern times, I think you would have to go one step further and also consider gas explosions and possibly being bombed as well. Just imagine how many 1000+ yr old buildings must have been in Germany before WW2.

AlanSE 5y ago
There's another bias here that available materials were very different 1000 years ago. Designing with WW2 in mind is preparing for the next conflict based on the last one. Climate change will have implications, which tend to come out as fire and flooding. This will impact siting.
distances 5y ago
There are more old buildings left in Germany than one might first assume. The devastation of WW2 was most concentrated in the major cities, and minor cities and villages often have old centers that survived fully intact. This was a bit surprising at least for me when touring the smaller places.

SkeuomorphicBee 5y ago

> We can, however, apply modern technics and materials when they make sense : insulation, windows, waterways... The article raises an important point that could be a problem when trying to mix old and new build techniques. When talking about brick walls it says: > One tricky thing with this type of assembly is that while it has performed well historically, it doesn’t necessarily play nice with more modern, energy efficient construction. A solid brick wall was traditionally designed to be exposed on the inside, exposing it to interior heat and allowing it to dry. 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. You can't simply build something following the examples of a castle or a cathedral, but then add modern insulation, because the insulation won't allow the masonry to breath and dry to both sides, leading to water damage, mold, rot, ... At the end of the day, a badly insulated building can be made to last for ages passively by just making it breath, so the temperature and humidity vary with the weather but are kept in check by passive external factors (e.g. the sun shining on a external wall dries it from the outside). While a well insulated building absolutely needs constant mechanical HVAC with fine tuned control. You can have a well insulated building or a passive building, you can't have both (by the way, the "Passive House TM" insulation standard is a complete misnomer, being that mechanical ventilation is its second biggest tenet).

rebuilder 5y ago
Well yes, but the example house doesn't seem to be all that optimized for energy efficiency. Look at the illustration showing a fireplace located at the end of the house. That's going to waste so much heat compared to a centrally located one. So I'm not sure how much attention was paid to energy efficiency here.
- daydream 5y ago
  I came here looking for a comment like this. A fireplace partially exposed to the exterior (as is common nowadays) is essentially entirely decorative and can actually be a net negative in terms of heating the space. seeing that made me question the practicality of the authors other design choices that I know little about.

djrogers 5y ago

> 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. This is an easy place to run in to a survivorship bias problem - pick a random 1000 year old farmhouse. How many farmhouses built exactly the same way didn't last for various reasons? Is the fact that one is still standing due to luck, or was it destined to last 1000 years the day it was built?

JAlexoid 5y ago
It doesn't matter that the others fell, we now know what definitely didn't fall - which is all we need to get to.
- sedatk 5y ago
  It matters if you want 99% of the buildings that you build last 1000 years, rather than 0.001%.
- nashashmi 5y ago
  Survivorship bias says to look at all the buildings that failed and why they failed rather than looking at the building that survived. You might imitate build but you will not imitate the environment that allowed this one to survive.
ashtonkem 5y ago
It’s not clear how many of the no longer extant old homes and farms fell down due to design issues, due to neglect, or were pulled down for economic or aesthetic reasons. Most architectural styles go through a process where they stop being made, start getting neglected, most of them get pulled down, and the few remaining ones get lovingly restored as they get old and rare enough to become retro rather than just outdated. This tells us very little about how well they were built, even with survivorship bias in mind, because very few buildings will survive an utter lack of maintenance, and less still if many were torn down for not being stylish enough to command the level of rent that the owner is hoping for.

JAlexoid 5y ago

I mean.... Cheap Old Houses had a 1000 year old house for sale not long ago. There's also plenty of timber buildings that last for millenia.

thehappypm 5y ago

Wood is flammable, and so it’s kind of out of the question. I’d build out of stone or brick, single story but larger footprint. Then of course ground source heat pump and all electric appliances, and solar nearby..

anchpop 5y ago
modern wood construction is more resistant to fire than steel, steel loses its structural strength when it gets hot while wood chars on the outside (becoming fire resistant) and doesn’t lose its strength
- frosted-flakes 5y ago
  I've seen the aftermaths of a few barn fires over the past few years. These were old structures, pre-1950s based on appearance, framed with heavy timbers and clad with wood planks and a steel roof. After the fires, the timber frames were still standing on their stone foundations, charred and black, but there was nothing to be seen of the rest of the structure.