05.08.2025
Abstract Contemporary architecture frequently draws on the formal language of Modernism – characterised by reduction, clarity, and the promise of timelessness. However, this aesthetic often poorly conceals an economic logic that prioritises short-term efficiency over long-term cultural and material value. This essay examines how lifecycle considerations, historical misappropriations of Modernist ideals, and post-war reconstruction dynamics have led to architecture that is structurally and socially short-lived. Drawing from historical figures such as Adolf Loos and Le Corbusier, and integrating contemporary discourses such as the New European Bauhaus and the Davos Declaration, the essay advocates for a paradigm shift toward a socially and materially durable transformative reuse of existing building stock, arguing for a cultural and ethical approach to architecture that redefines aesthetics through sociocultural continuity and material stewardship.
From Ornament to Reduction – Modernism and the Rise of Economic Austerity
Timeless elegance, formal clarity, and reduction to essentials – these are the terms often used to describe contemporary architectural practice. But what appears as an aesthetic ideal frequently serves as a rhetorical veil for radical cost reduction. References to Modernist figures such as Adolf Loos and Le Corbusier, although common, are often superficial.
Adolf Loos’s famous dictum, “Ornament is a crime,” was not an endorsement of stylistic minimalism for its own sake but a culturally grounded ethical stance against excessive decoration (Loos 1931). His architectural work, such as the house on Michaelerplatz in Vienna, includes capitals, bases, and fluting – elements that would hardly qualify as ornament-free by today’s standards. Loos sought not aesthetic asceticism, but rather cultural and material honesty in construction (Forty 2000, 212).
Similarly, Le Corbusier’s concept of the “house as a machine for living” is misinterpreted in the name of reduction. Far from promoting soulless design, Le Corbusier envisioned a synthesis of function, technology, and beauty – an architecture in service of the modern human condition (Le Corbusier 1923). In today’s practice, this vision has been flattened into justification for purely functionalist buildings, shaped less by use efficiency than by economic efficiency.
A Post-war Shift – How Economic Crisis Became Lifecycle Policy
What is today often presented as a design principle originated largely in post-war necessity. The reconstruction of Europe in the 1950s and 60s demanded rapid, inexpensive, and industrialised building methods (Meuser and Pogade 2012). Mass housing developments – particularly in East and Central Europe – were not expressions of a social utopia but pragmatic compromises. Concepts like flexibility, reusability, or user maintenance were largely absent.
Beginning in the mid-20th century, many European nations began planning building lifespans intentionally around 30 to 50 years. This was less a matter of architectural logic than of economic expediency and political imperative. Research by Brand (1994) and later Salomon (2016) highlights how lifecycle budgeting became a systemic tool: industrial prefabrication, centralised planning, and calculable returns on investment led to an architecture that treated buildings as consumable infrastructure rather than cultural assets.
Crucially, the involvement of third-party actors – financial institutions, project managers, risk analysts – distanced architectural production from both users and site. These stakeholders seldom share the vision of architects or clients; instead, they reduce quality to predefined standards, time and costs, pursuing models that minimise risk and maximise short-term financial predictability. The result is the aesthetic of compliance and calculability which dominates our cities.
In response, recent initiatives such as the “Davos Declaration – Towards a High Quality Baukultur for Europe” and the “New European Bauhaus” call for a reintegration of cultural, social, and environmental values into the built environment. Both promote architecture not only as a technical discipline but as a vehicle for cultural identity and resilience – emphasising durability, adaptability, and beauty as public goods (Davos Declaration 2018; New European Bauhaus 2021).
Commodification and Disposability – Structural and Cultural Consequences
Within a cost-driven construction economy – particularly one under pressure from labour costs and tight delivery schedules – the notion of “low-maintenance” has become a dominant planning principle. While this appears rational from a facility management perspective, it effectively eliminates opportunities for user participation, technical empowerment, and long-term material continuity. Architecture is no longer designed to be repaired, but to be replaced. Even seemingly mundane failures – such as a broken hinge on a window – can lead to the disposal of the entire unit if spare parts are no longer available. In most cases, component warranties and spare part availability extend for only 10 to 15 years after product discontinuation, creating a technical obsolescence that cascades into systemic waste.
David Salomon (2016) draws attention to the ideological framing behind these practices. He argues that the modern discipline of architecture has internalised the economic assumption that buildings are transient commodities. Rather than responding to physical aging or technical failure, buildings are planned around financial models that treat depreciation, obsolescence, and risk as more real than the physical durability of the structure itself. This produces what Salomon calls a “lifespan imaginary” – a concept of temporality not grounded in material reality but in economic abstraction.
In parallel, Stewart Brand’s influential “Shearing Layers” model helps clarify the consequences of these imaginaries. He distinguishes between various subsystems of a building – site, structure, skin (envelope), services, space plan (infill), and stuff (furniture and fit-out) – each with its own natural lifespan (Brand 1994). Yet, under contemporary procurement systems, these layers are frequently collapsed into a uniform lifespan estimate, typically 30 to 50 years. This convergence leads to an aesthetic logic where materials, finishes, and assemblies are visually homogenised and technically over-integrated. A structure capable of lasting a century is enveloped in membranes or finishes expected to last only decades – producing a mismatch that undermines both durability and beauty.
This is not merely a technical failure but a cultural one. When procurement and lifecycle planning treat a building as a single, monolithic product, the resulting architecture becomes visually mute, materially insubstantial, and symbolically empty. What emerges is a disposable aesthetic – an architecture that signals, even in its appearance, that it is not meant to be maintained or remembered.
Moreover, these logics are compounded by systemic procurement conditions. Public and institutional clients often operate under funding cycles or EU tender laws that require full performance within narrow timeframes. Lifecycle costs are calculated into feasibility assessments, but only within the parameters of limited planning horizons. Investment strategies assume replacement, not stewardship.
The cultural impact is profound. Architecture that lacks symbolic, material, or narrative value cannot foster identification or care. The user becomes a tenant in a space, not a participant in a place. As Habraken (1999) asserts, true appropriation – emotional, material, and communal – requires legibility, accessibility, and shared authorship. The erosion of these qualities leads to disengagement and alienation. If nothing is meant to last, nothing is meant to matter.
Thus, the apparent rationality of short-lifespan planning masks a deeper dysfunction. Buildings are not designed to die – they are calculated out of relevance. What we face is not a “natural end of life” but a strategic closure, engineered through accounting and abstraction, often decades before physical failure becomes inevitable.
Towards Transformation – From Obsolescence to Continuity
The real estate and AEC industry has already realised that the momentum lies not in radical new construction but in thoughtful transformation. The question that we have to pose is whether the retrofitting we – architects, clients, policy makers, educators – think of is the same retrofitting society can afford? The 20th century has bequeathed a building stock with a truly complex ongoing impact on cities, society and users. Dismissing it on the grounds of outdated aesthetics or inefficiency ignores not only its potential as a living cultural asset but the sheer mass that has to be adapted while in continuous use.
A critical implication of current lifecycle-based planning is the assumption of a standardised service life of 30 to 50 years for entire buildings. While this model might align with accounting frameworks or funding cycles, it fails to reflect the lived reality of Europe’s architectural legacy. If we were to apply such narrow lifecycle expectations universally, a substantial portion of Europe’s post-war building stock would already be classified as expired. However, these buildings – flawed as they may be in terms of energy performance, environmental health, or ease of repair – remain essential to housing millions and sustaining local economies. Wholesale replacement or comprehensive refurbishment of this scale is not only economically unfeasible but socially and logistically untenable in the foreseeable future. As a result, we must shift our focus from the notion of lifecycle termination to lifecycle extension, addressing material, technical, and cultural deficiencies incrementally and intelligently.
In this context, planning for transformation cannot mean generous gestures and upgrades for fictive users – an approach reminiscent of easily calculable real estate development. The planning process has to become more elastic, considering at the same time different levels of detail and temporal horizons. It has to integrate the whole spectrum from targeted remedies for acute or imminent technical failures to extensive creative incentives for long-term fixing of sociocultural deficits – such as anonymity, lack of identity, and collective amnesia. Aligning with growing European policy frameworks and responding to pressing ecological, economic, and social imperatives, the instruments of transformation are neither wrecking balls nor masterplans, but scalpels: case-by-case, knowledge-based, and embedded. In a culture based on stewardship of place – as contrast to the commodification of space – architecture must be allowed – and expected – to change and outlive its calculated end of life.
References
Brand, Stewart. How Buildings Learn: What Happens After They’re Built. New York: Viking, 1994.
Davos Declaration. “Towards a High-Quality Baukultur for Europe.” Davos, 2018. https://davosdeclaration2018.ch.
Forty, Adrian. Words and Buildings: A Vocabulary of Modern Architecture. London: Thames & Hudson, 2000.
Habraken, N.J. The Structure of the Ordinary: Form and Control in the Built Environment. Cambridge: MIT Press, 1999.
Le Corbusier. Vers une architecture. Paris: G. Crès et Cie, 1923.
Loos, Adolf. “Ornament and Crime.” In Ornament and Crime: Selected Essays, translated by Adolf Opel. Riverside: Ariadne Press, 1998 [original essay 1931].
Meuser, Philipp, and Adil Y. Pogade. Towards a Typology of Soviet Mass Housing: Prefabrication in the USSR 1955–1991. Berlin: DOM Publishers, 2012.
New European Bauhaus. “Shaping More Beautiful, Sustainable and Inclusive Forms of Living Together.” European Commission, 2021. https://new-european-bauhaus.europa.eu
Salomon, David. “Lifespan and the Problem of Obsolescence.” Log 37 (2016): 36–43.