Time Matters: architectural practices of accepting, avoiding, adjusting and future-proofing

We live in “liquid times,” in spaces without permanent bonds, in a “patchy world” of simultaneously fragile and robust relations among human and nonhuman actors. The rationales of these interconnected networks unfold around a multiplicity of dependencies, locations, velocities, and viewpoints, creating complicated timelines that require poly-temporal worldviews. The buildings and their elements are not only what they are now but also what they were before and what they can become in the future, and everything in between, at the same time. It is obvious that we are no longer designing forever buildings. A lot has already been constructed. Discussions around the current climate crisis suggest that we should rather stop building and proceed in a more resource-conscious manner. Suddenly, diagrammatic, tabula-rasa concepts seem outdated. The ecological approach values what is already there, carefully examining transcalar enmeshment and accepting embedded ambiguities. More humble design practices take time to observe and notice, developing strategies that avoid unnecessary resource expenditures while adjusting the existing matter to current climatic and socio-cultural demands. New-built extensions are developed, accounting for entangled impacts, and favouring local and reversible building systems. My talk follows building life cycles and material flows, jumping between timelines, geolocations and scales to explore the ecological complexities of maintenance, repair and reuse practices. The narrative unfolds around a subjective selection of projects that navigate between the craving for architectural endurance and resource-conscious design while tuning into environmental and socio-economic uncertainties to imagine sufficient, porous and future-proofed buildings.