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Comment by WeylandYutani | Hacker News Reader

All old buildings are maintenance nightmares.

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.

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Or learn to build well. There are still standing roman buildings much older than that, that only require sporadic maintenance after earthquakes and such. The Pantheon in Rome is a brilliant example, as is Hagia Sophia in Istanbul. The latter being built in all of 5 years!

Edit: Pantheon, not Parthenon...

Pantheon in Rome, Parthenon in athens

Ooops...

There is also a Panthéon in Paris, "not to be confused with Pantheon, Rome." [0]

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.

The Pantheon has had lots of maintenance done to it over the years. Even the Hagia Sophia is currently being renovated.

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...

> Or learn to build well. There are still standing roman buildings much older than that, that only require sporadic maintenance after earthquakes and such.

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).

Most buildings in Japan are very ugly because nobody invests that much in them, because of this mentality that they're all temporary.

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.

No, that's just the Ise Grand Shrine, and the cost of doing that is stratospheric.

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