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When approaching building design, architects consider only the elements of the present time. However, like humans, each building has a unique, undetermined life span. Despite the efforts of governments to quantify and generalize the life spans of structures, it is in fact a complex task to determine the expected duration of a building’s life span, as many factors impact its resulting life span. The type of construction methods that were established to meet the steep increases in urban populations during the post war period resulted in a decreased life expectancy for buildings. As the growth reach its limits, methods that were designed to keep pace with growth periods create collisions within the changing environments. This tension is especially pronounced in structures designed quickly to meet an urgent population need, but with minimal forethought given to the building’s duration and the ensuing environmental ramification at the end of its brief lifespan. Replacing these structure is expensive: if we continue the present convention of developing new cities with method of construction that only meets its short term needs, we will be both financially and ecologically bankrupt due to the high environmental toll of such short-life span buildings. Therefore, developing a proactive set of city planning which takes account of its long-term impact of increasing the duration the building’s life span from its early city planning stage will be a critical strategy for preventing the ensuing crisis of large scale building obsolescence as urban areas progress proceeds through the future era of growth stabilization. For better articulation of the ecological impact of the short-term obsolescence of the typology driven mainly by distributor driven by economic/ political motives, this study performs emergy (spelled with an “m”) synthesis study of the Jam-sil district development plan in Seoul.
Vyta Baselice: Concrete Breakdown: Maintaining the Material of Permanence
The Portland Cement Association, the concrete industry's principal trade organization, marketed its product since the early decades of the twentieth century with the motto, “Concrete for Permanence.” It imagined that since this new medium was manufactured using scientific principles, including their application in distribution, merchandising, standardization, engineering, and even sack handling, concrete environments would not have to be maintained. We now know this advertising was terribly misleading as concrete infrastructure in the United States and abroad continues to crumble and demand extensive investment. Using several historical case studies, this paper examines the concrete industry's changing attitudes toward maintenance throughout the long twentieth century and its contemporary takes on the longevity of its material.
