During a recent meeting to review projects for an upcoming issue, RECORD’s editors came across a contender that was newly built from salvaged parts of a structure previously occupying the site. Admirable enough. The odd thing was that the architects called the deconstructed pile a temporary building. Yet the “temporary” building—whose marble and sandstone were repurposed for the new one—was over 90 years old!

Often when a building is torn down, the reason given is that it had lasted “beyond its useful lifespan.” I have often wondered about that excuse, since so many buildings around the globe are hundreds of years old. A recent report, Lifetimes of demolished buildings in US and European cities, which looked at close to 15,000 buildings in nine U.S. and four European cities razed in the 21st century, found that a building typically lasts only 71 years. The investigation, published in the academic journal Buildings & Cities, also revealed that, on average, European buildings have similar if not shorter lifetimes than U.S. examples. The data for U.S. cities show that buildings have a mean age of 81 years, while those in European cities have a mean of 65 years. (The eerie correlation to human lifespans seems to imply that steel and concrete don’t necessarily last longer than skin and bones.)