3007: Designing buildings to last 1000 years

How long does your building last? Longevity and adaptability are key ideas when thinking through sustainability in the built environment. The challenge for designers is to not only design buildings for the present and short-term future but to also think in the long term. To explore and consider how long buildings will last and how the programmes (activities) inside these buildings will also change in time. What was once a school maybe housing, what was once commercial high-rise may become something completely different.
Students will imagine two time scales -25 years into the future (2032) and 1000 years into the future (3007). One is strongly tied to current realities, the other impossible to imagine perhaps, yet realistic in the life of a building. Students will imagine what might be constant, and what might change frequently. They will ask, how do we design for an unknown future, as well as one we can intelligently speculate on?

Designer: Tom Morgan, RMIT Architecture Student

Partner:
Victorian Eco-Innovation Lab (VEIL)
Director: Prof. Chris Ryan.
Cross-institutional project funded by the Victorian Government Sustainability Statement and Sustainability Fund, and hosted by the Australian Centre for Science, Innovation and Society, Melbourne University.
RMIT Architecture is offering two VEIL affiliated Architecture Design Studios in semester 1, 2007 as part of a cross-institutional initiative to commission research-led teaching projects addressing innovative sustainable architecture and design practices in architecture and design schools and programs across Victoria.