Designers’ roundtable: What can we learn from 100-year buildings?

Our roundtable includes:

• William Ketcham, architect, based in Chicago, Illinois
• Meagan Erdman, senior structural engineer, based in Seattle, Washington
• Alan Dyck, structural lead, based in Denver, Colorado
• Michael Banman, design director, based in Winnipeg, Manitoba
• Daniel Massaro, designer, based in Chicago, Illinois
• Samira Zare Mohazabieh, building scientist, based in Denver, Colorado

What qualities make a building a good candidate for a long life?

William Ketcham: Building longevity is also adaptability; you need to anticipate what the change might be, and to design buildings that aren’t so rigorously programmed that they can’t be modified—to give them new life every 25 or 50 years.

If you look at context, precedent, and adaptability, you’re going to get those multiple uses over time. It’s also about the resiliency of the envelope relative to the building’s context.

Meagan Erdman: A building that’s going to have a long life needs to get some key things “right.” Those things are hard to change during renovation. Floor-to-floor height, for example, is one of those things where once your building’s designed and built with it, you’re kind of stuck. So, you want to get it right if you’re trying to build a building that’s going to stay and be adaptable for other uses.

Are there certain buildings that are good candidates for reuse in your city?

Meagan Erdman: There are quite a few buildings in Seattle, especially close to the waterfront, that were used to support the shipping industry. They’re some combination of masonry and heavy timber.

Their structures are exposed, and you can see the imperfections. They usually have a tall floor-to-floor height. They’re pleasant spaces to be in.

Alan Dyck: Denver has a lot of old industrial-type facilities in the River North Arts District. The fact that they last a long time makes them valuable.

There’s a story to them.

William Ketcham: Even the most utilitarian building can be one of the nicest spaces you go in.

These buildings from the turn of the century, light industrial in Ravenswood, weren’t expected to last long. And now we take delight in them because they’re beautiful.

The culture of Chicago has moved beyond those industries, but the buildings are big enough to be versatile.

It might not happen often, but when the client says they want a 100-year building, what are the main things you’re thinking about?

Michael Banman: Start with the site—what are you working with? Shape the building to suit the geography and climate, ensure you’ll have solid foundations to build on, and consider your structure—how long will it last?

Precast concrete and panelized systems are typically not as flexible or durable as something built in place. Steel will require more maintenance. Cast-in-place concrete may be a good choice, but you should consider embodied carbon. Mass timber may be an option. Evaluate each material for its structural properties, systems, and spans. Pay close attention to column spacing, floor-to-floor heights, and core locations.

Beyond that, consider the building enclosure. There’s an entire Canadian Standards Association (CSA S478:19) providing guidance on the durability in buildings. Select systems with a service life achieving approximately half the building’s intended lifespan. So, if you expect a 100-year building, your systems should last about 50 years before needing replacement. I’d look at installing a green roof, blue roof, or an inverted roof type—something I know can last that long.

You’d be looking at things like proportion and scale, access to natural light, views, and human comfort, because what’s the most sustainable building in the world? It’s the one everyone loves, right?

William Ketcham: It will be adaptability, certainly, but it’s in the materials. On some of our higher-education projects, we’re building multiple-wythe masonry walls with steel frames, or concrete frames, because there’s an anticipation that they will have a very long life.

There are reasons that we are selecting copper flashings rather than aluminum, for example. We’re depending on technologies that have been proven over hundreds of years, not a mere decade or two.

Daniel Massaro: Think about the materiality.

There’s a reason why people use certain timeless materials, like brick, all the time. It’s being able to choose those materials and elements that have that staying power and that lasting ability—and not always just getting caught up in a fad. Or being able to recognize what’s in the fad that will last.

What kind of projects do you get inspired by?

Samira Zare Mohazabieh: One great project is our Toronto office. It is a great example of adaptive reuse of a post-and-beam structure. The building was the McGregor Sock Company factory, and now it’s our office. It’s beautiful.

Daniel Massaro: Thomas Heatherwick finished Coal Drops Yard in London, UK, a couple years ago. It’s an old rail yard where trains would pull in to pick up coal. Now it’s shopping and food. He kept the original buildings and then added this roof system on top that is very organic and flowing. But it keeps the vibe of the area.

Alan Dyck: The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences building in Los Angeles, California. It was the May Company building, a 1930s Art Deco department store with a historic designation.

It needed a new purpose. It was fun to find ways to upgrade it and bring it up to code for seismic considerations. It’s meant to be this complete juxtaposition of the old versus the new, which is the Renzo Piano sphere next to it. It’s an example of finding ways for the community to protect its own culture.

Michael Banman: When I came out of school, I had my list of heroes, and I can tell you over the course of my career, those are not my heroes anymore. My perception has changed a lot.

I appreciate simple, thoughtful, well-crafted buildings— buildings that are well-proportioned, well-scaled, and well put together, using quality building materials, designed systematically, rigorously, and holistically. Those are sustainable, and something we can all do. I want to see buildings that can be repeated because we need better urban environments, not more icons.

One of my favorite architects is David Chipperfield, and when I go to his buildings, everything’s right—everything is exactly where it should be.

How much does longevity have to do with cultural change and programming?

Daniel Massaro: Our ASHRAE competition project for reusing the Astrodome was about recognizing that the building had to be functional. You can make the most sustainable building ever, but if nobody’s going to use it, they are just going to tear it down.

Which one do you think is more important? The structure, the materiality, the building, the design? It’s all in one. If you nail the structure, but the design is terrible, no one will use it.

Meagan Erdman: The longevity conversation’s tough because if I design an office building today, 100 years from now, it could still be an office building. Granted, some environmental loads are probably going to be updated, and there will be some updates in the building code.

But if it wants to stay an office building, it can do so with minimal changes to the structure. It’s harder to predict how human need changes throughout a building’s life and plan for that future need in present day.

Does a flexible building that can be used for something else have a greater chance at a long life?

Daniel Massaro: I had an architectural theory professor who posed the question, should a building last forever? A lot of my fellow students said, yes, it should last forever because that’s the mark we are making on the planet.

I said, well, no, it shouldn’t last forever in its original form. I think a building should adapt and change based on what’s happening. Maybe we should think, “what if our most significant design projects need to become something totally different in 100 years?” That lends itself to designing for structural adaptability.

Alan Dyck: We worked with folks who wanted a parking garage design to be future proofed. They expected autonomous vehicles to lessen the need for garages.

To do that, they had to calculate the costs for higher floor to floor measures, and more expensive foundations and structures. To design flexibility like that, you need a forward-thinking client.

How can we promote longevity in the industry or our practice?

Alan Dyck: We need to spend more of our effort understanding our markets well and where they’re trending. What the data points to and where it wants to go. And then we need to educate those clients.

They want to have the best thing 20 years from now. The conversation should be long-term. If you have clients who are interested in sustainability, get them thinking beyond LEED and thinking about true embodied carbon.

The embodied carbon numbers are more meaningful if you have a 50-year building or 100-year building or 200-year building. You may have a high embodied carbon now, but if you’re looking at the full life-cycle cost of the structure, you’re expanding the view of what you consider to be sustainable.

Meagan Erdman: Let’s say I’m a building owner and I have that 100-year-old historic building, and I’m trying to turn it into a cool live-work office space. I can choose to do a heavy renovation to the existing structure or tear it down and build new.

There are, of course, cost implications with those two options, but there are also wildly different embodied-carbon implications between the two. We can do a better job as designers of attaching those embodied-carbon implications to those choices and advocating for the lower embodied-carbon choice.

William Ketcham: What is the definition of sustainability? It has to do with culture and the environment in equal measure. People often lose sight of the cultural component.

We talk about being good stewards. Sustainability is good stewardship of the culture of the institution, the financial assets of the institution, and the buildings that still serve the institution. I’ve not had a client say, “oh no, we don’t want to do that.”

Samira Zare Mohazabieh: The buildings industry is focused on operational and embodied carbon, climate resilience, and material health. By communicating both the long-term benefits and the risks of inaction, we can help clients move past resistance, make informed choices, and ultimately extend the life and value of their buildings.

What’s holding back design for building longevity in the design industry? Mindset, budget?

Meagan Erdman: It’s not impossible to make a building last a century. When getting exactly what clients want costs less than the option to renovate, it’s difficult to influence that choice. You’ve got to have an owner who values the history of their building or a design professional who’s good at having that conversation.

William Ketcham: I think it’s an immediate need and short-term budget thinking. The result is buildings that are hard to reuse. We often see residence halls built between 1950 and 1972 that are hard to remodel. That makes them expendable.

If you can bring some idea of longevity versus expendable to the conversation, then you have a chance.

Alan Dyck: I think it’s a culture of how we have a lot of design for replacement. The fashion industry is a perfect example. Maybe 100 years ago, people only had a few suits or a few dresses. You didn’t have 100 outfits.

Those things were more expensive, but they were made to last.

I started my career in Las Vegas. It’s a city built on regurgitating and adjusting. Tear down the old. They tore down the Frontier and the Stardust and they built something new in their place that was taller and more extravagant. It was disappointing because those older buildings were well made at the time.

On the structural side, we see buildings designed to last 50 years, and they’re being torn down in 10 or 15, not even reaching their full life cycle. So, it’s not just how we design or build for longevity. We need our culture to recognize and make use of buildings for that long, too.