What are the different life cycles of the layers of a building?
Buildings are usually constructed in a monolithic way which doesn't allow the different layers to function independently or be reapired/ fixed when the time has come.
We could group the different life cycles in these categories:
- Furniture 0,5/2 years
- Installations 7-15 years
- Inner walls 7-10 years
- Performance (Insulation / Window frames) 20-40 years
- Facade 20-60 years
- Structure 30-150 years
- Wood 70-100 years
- Site ∞
This concept views buildings as a set of components that evolve in different timescales. The idea is that there are processes in nature, which operate in different time cycles and as a result there is little or no exchange of energy/mass/information between them. Stewart Brand in his book, How Buildings Learn: What Happens After They’re Built, transferred this intuition to buildings and noticed that traditional buildings were able to adapt because they allowed “slippage” of layers: i.e. faster layers (services) were not obstructed by slower ones (structure). The concept of shearing layers leads to an architectural design principle, known as pace-layering, which arranges the layers to allow for maximum adaptability.