Stewart Brand wrote about how the building is a maintenance nightmare in How Buildings Learn. Guess he was right.
For comparison, please see the buildings in the former Soviet Union or Venzeula or Cuba to see how well they're maintained in a workers' paradise.
Let's stay focused on market-oriented countries since that was the claim here - that the "market" could magically figure out how to maintain any given building cheaply. I'm pointing out that it's far more likely that the market would just give up. Why optimize the crazy building instead of replacing it with a boring easy one? Since you want to be snarky, though: ever wonder why there is such a thing as "historical preservation" status for certain buildings? It's because we know that not every building makes economic sense, but sometimes we want to keep them around anyway, even though if wholly under the control of a profit-motivated organization they'd be gone and replaced with something in the name of efficiency.
There is more to life than monetary efficiency.
There is more to life than monetary efficiency.
Was it because of this? I can see that causing some issues.
Perhaps it was complicated by aesthetic concerns: when you put these internals on the outside, there's some pressure to arrange them in a nice- looking way rather than in the most functional configuration.
Accessibility is improved, but lifespan is sacrificed. When the systems are on the outside they're subjected to much greater swings in environment (humidity, pressure, temperature, thermal expansion, and so on) that don't happen when they're inside the climate-control envelope of the building.
Don’t buildings like these usually have access panels for maintenance? Plus a lot of “fake” paneling, especially on ceilings, that’s easy to remove to access all the piping it hides?
But when these things are outside, now you need a crane instead of just ladders.
Even without access panels, opening and replacing some segments of drywall sounds pretty easy compared to working on a building’s facade.
Would that approach change the original design? Absolutely. But I'd see that as a positive. Not because I don't like the original design (I do) but because it would make a nice teaching example: if architects don't want their designs to be messed with, they'd better start making "how will it look and perform after x decades of use and weather" much more a factor in their decisions than they do now. I'm so tired of seeing new architecture that makes pristineness (while new) it's central design statement and has absolutely nothing to show for once that new car smell is gone.
https://www.architectural-review.com/buildings/pompidou-cann...
Does that all sound familiar to folks building backend systems? That is 'microservices' for architecture, a counter to 'monolithic' structures, using almost precisely the same motivations, and, running into the same exact problems: operational complexity.
To be honest the Japanese have it right. Tear down buildings after 50 years and build something new. Ofcourse they had the luck of frequent earthquakes and fires (buildings made of wood when the Netherlands switched to masonry in the 16th century).
Yes it is cute and adorable that the Dutch Parlement is situated in a building complex that can be traced back 1000 years (I wish I was kidding). The tourists love it. The symbolism is marvelous. And it costs hundreds of millions to keep it from falling down.
Edit: Pantheon, not Parthenon...
Hope you like domes, because that's pretty much the only thing you can build in that fashion. (And even that only works in climates where the temperature never goes below freezing).
Buildings deteriorate. They need maintenance. The only question is how well you engineer in the ability to do that maintenance.
Or you can tear it down every so often: See: https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/this-japanese-shri...
0 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panth%C3%A9on
a mausoleum for the remains of distinguished French citizens, modelled on the Pantheon in Rome which had been used in this way since the 17th century. The first panthéonisé was Honoré Gabriel Riqueti, comte de Mirabeau, although his remains were removed from the building a few years later.
More interesting is that many temples in Japan - which are a lot more attractive than the minecraft rectangles that dominate the streetscapes - are completely torn down and rebuilt periodically.