Building for the Long Game

Architecture is the slowest of the arts. From the first concept sketch to the moment a building enters the consciousness of a city — is photographed, inhabited, written about, argued over — can be a decade or more. The architects who understand this, who design for a future they may not live to see, are a particular kind of person.

The question of legacy has taken on new dimensions in recent years. Climate, material scarcity, the recognition that buildings consume energy for decades beyond their construction: these factors have introduced a layer of ethical complexity into the long-game calculation that previous generations did not have to reckon with in quite the same way.

"Every decision we make is a decision about what the building will be in fifty years," says one architect, speaking from a studio in which the walls are lined not with renders but with photographs of aging buildings — the patina of concrete, the weathering of timber, the way a brick facade changes colour as pollution levels fluctuate. "We are not designing objects. We are designing time."