That's so beautiful. I hope I could go to Europe in the future. It's just too expensive.

Me (Germany) looking out the window: oh, a massive church from 1200ad and a whole historic town centre built in the years around and after.... We had luck with the bombs here, nothing significant was around to bomb in WW2...

Pretty much every cathedral in Europe?

@@omniyambot9876 Most of Europe is considerably cheaper than the USA.

@@eduardof7322 oh interesting, unfortunately, I live in SEA 3rd world.. The day will come I will see you nice European people and your masterpieces.

A simple brick row house is more reliable that a pencil in the sky made of glass, concrete and steel.

@@JohnFromAccounting Can confirm. A little bit of retrofitting and maintenance and thing can last forever. House im living in rn existed since atleast the 1900's. And when it comes to structure these things are tough even when they go without any maintenance they don't collapse.

My previous house (in England) was built in the 1670s and it still had it's original timber frame. Okay, it had warped with age, but none of the beams had needed to be replaced.

When the writer only knows the suburban hellscape prevalent in the US..

Yeah lol when he said this my immediate response was... a lot.. haha

Yes, I wanted to ask question 2 as well. How long would they last without maintenance?

And what i wonder is what happens if nothing is done, do they collapse?

@@MaxxMcGeePrivate eventually, yes.

@@tacovansambeek I think the answer depends heavily on the climate the ruin will find itself in. Constant frost and thaw cycles will erode structures much faster than a desert climate. But yes, I wish the video had gone into more detail there. I'd love to hear some ballpark numbers for different buildings.

The refitted tower in Shenzhen gives a hint to the answer of your second question: since it was in use from 2002 it lasted 20 years. But if you wonder how long it would last after an apocalypse, I guess it will require a disaster or two before you can answer that questíon as there probably won't be many people surveying building safety lol

This is true in the USA also, however after the war there was a significant up tick in materials robustness, many houses have asbestos siding which is just about impervious to the elements, if the roofing was asbestos also it'd last just about forever. That the thing about asbestos as long as you don't disturb it its very very very stable. In fact there was vastly more danger from disturbing asbestos than just leaving it alone. Anyway alot of mill houses in the USA have asbestos siding and will approach 100 years old soon millions of them having been build in the 40s and 50s. I wouldn't be supprised if as long as the roof is kept in repair and the asbestos siding left alone those houses could last hundreds of years.... they aren't great houses but the shell is quite robust.

Plesase don't throw that 600 million year old stone

Sorry it just had to be said. England=Europe

@@itsalexcollin yeah I first started with just England and cba to change it to much.

@@itsalexcollin not for long once i step in

A thatched-roof cottage listed in the Domesday book is still occupied, closing in on a thousand years later.

There a building on my road a chapel build in 1850 & still occupied by group of religious people according to Siri & Alexa it’s 172 years old, house I live in with my parents is 117 years ago build in 1907 & still standing only the utility room & conservatory aren’t that old the rest of the house is. Hypothetically Sky Scraper could last 1000 years but it would have to be maintained in & out & lobby part probably would of been flooded by then with rising sea levels.

What part of "skyscraper" don't you understand?

@LTNetjak all the stone is still the same. worden doorframes, window frames etc have been replaced. Rooftiles were replaced in 1890 and have since been replaced one by one whenever one broke. Wooden floor was replaced in 1860, and a new kitchen was added in 1930.

@@howieduwit2551 skyscraper is a building too, both require maintenance, and the better they're built, the longer they last. One is just taller than the other.

same tought ... the answer in my head was ... "more then i would be able to count ... just walk through european citys"

Yes, not just century old there are dozens an dozens of churches that are over a thousand years old.

@@JohnFromAccounting I've just looked it up and a number of the churches I used to go to in Northumberland when I was a kid were 12th and 13th century, with only fragments of older buildings remaining. So not _that_ old. ;)

It's a bit like the "Earthquakes are rare" line, uuh, depends on where you live, obviously? Seems to have been kinda US/NYC focused.

@@_SpamMe Not exactly, poke around Europe and you will find entire towns abandoned due to Shit old construction standards no one wishes to live in said death traps. Yes, a few iconic buildings were overbuilt, vast majority are not and will subsequently deteriorate faster and fall down sooner. How many Chinese buildings are built with complete Shit? Look at all these concrete/steel structures built near salt water... 100% guaranteed to fail and fail soon. Only question is HOW soon.

@@rajanarasimhan Tell that to the Pharaoh's immortal spirit. Enjoy the curse.

@@rajanarasimhan the roman temples and catholic churches are less old but heavily used

Yes, but they eroded away, they were 0% profitable and they were only used as a tomb.

@ Well there was no concept of profit at the building period, so that's not really relevent. At they have only really erroded in the last few hundred years because the protective cover stones were removed.

The pyramids for sure had maintenance during the Egyptian empire, they are standing right now but far from their original look

The video is specifically about skyscrapers though, none of which are that old.

@@Antonio-wh3oq The statement was about any building...

@@Antonio-wh3oq But he makes comparison to pyramids and roman structures and then refers to such old buildings as rarely inhabited.

The list is pretty long. Most larger cities in the world have a few. The Americas are the exception obviously as most cities are quite new.

The taller the building the more upkeep they require

It’s because they actually used to insulate old buildings.

I’d bet my last dollar that the climate (location) has a lot more to do with it than the building’s climate control.

we cannot even build a Millenium Tower in San Francisco, without it turning into a leaning tower of Piza.

@@Gumshrud1 San Francisco is built for Europe style structures no taller than 7 stories high.

Old town Edinburgh is wonderful. I have been there twice. I was gobsmacked when I was told those four story stone buildings had been occupied for four and five hundred years! I had the pleasure of drinking a pint at many pubs throughout Scotland and the UK that had been serving adult beverages for longer than my home country , America has existed.

@@tomcartwright7134 There are a few pubs in Britain which claim to be older than Scotland itself! Keep in mind, Scotland is the oldest country in the UK, too.

Some of Edinburghs old buildings are higher than 10 stories high. You never notice as they're built in a valley.

Have stayed there and can confirm. However, the floors in the place we stayed could not be considered level. You could not have set a marble on the floor anywhere in the flat and then expect it to stay put.

You mean Pantheon in Rome right? Parthenon of Athens is made of marble and stone, not concrete

@@penguasakucing8136 Yes.. the roman pantheon was in the video.

Duh

I hope that someday concrete would be strong without steal beams. And skyscrapers wouldn't had this problem.

Just use stainless steel reinforcement 💰💰💰💰💰

I mean, does it even matter? as long it's still being used well, who cares if some philosopher says x and another philosopher says y?

A thing only has meaning until you give it meaning. The Ship of Theseus’ meaning was given. Its meaning was not inherent to its materials. It would be like if a residential high rise had all of its parts refurbished, but the original attendants still occupied it.

@@madmanthan21 The building itself doesn’t care if it’s the original or not. So long as everyone observing it agrees that it’s the same building, then for all practical purposes, it’s the same building.

This thought was heavy on me as well. When does it stop being the original building? We'd be inadvertently creating modern iconography

I think the point is being lost by the above comments in that, the Pantheon and Giza piramids are largely still the originals hence you can call it preservation. If a skyscraper or any historic building is largely replaced by new parts is it still preservation or is it closer to just tearing it down and building an exact replica?

Yep, that's the real question. I think the steel/glass towers would last only a few decades. Once a decent amount of windows break moisture gets in everywhere it will rust away.

@@Sunlight91 That´s what I was thinking. Stone and metallic skyscrapers like the Empire State or the Chrysler building... I can see them lasting for centuries even without maintenance. They were built in a similar fahsion as old churches and cathedrals. But the One World Trade Center or the Burj Khalifa? Yeah, I really don´y think they could last a whole century if they were suddenly abandoned. Plus, the fact that a hundred years ago people didn´t have the exact numbers and built everything with a fat margin of error, makes them be unnecessarily more solid and resistant than what they actually have to. In contrast with todays buildings which are "just as solid as they need to be" for a building that keeps itself in use and in constant maintenance.

@@eduardof7322 The "stone" in old skyscrapers is never structural. They're not built like old churches and cathedrals.

Survivor bias with ancient buildings is a consideration, also. The Romans built concrete structures left, right, and center, but there aren't all that many left standing today in marvelous condition! Roman buildings not infrequently fell apart before they had time to be abandoned if contemporary accounts are anything to go by--the insulae of Rome were incredibly dangerous. Most of the surviving Roman mega-structures were used as churches/or mosques at some point, and were either maintained or modified extensively over the millennia. I don't know that the pyramids are a good 'ancient equivalent' for skyscarpers--impressive that they were engineered and built in the first place, less impressive that they remain standing. They'll last as long as the stone does, because they're essentially a highly engineered, very elegant, pile of rocks in an environment ideally suited for their preservation. We also tend to think the pyramids amazingly well preserved because we've never seen them with their original cladding--all the exterior stones they had originally are either worn away or were scavenged for other construction projects. They're still impressive, but definitely don't look how they would if they'd received maintenance & been fixed up occasionally! I think it would be immensely cool for one of the space billionaires to offer some pocket change for the restoration of a pyramid or two, along the lines of what's being done for the Athenian Acropolis and the Colosseum of Rome.

@@Mockingbird_Taloa Hi, could you provide your sources of ancient romans writing about the instability of the buildings please? I am very interested in the matter. Didn't the people in the middle ages had a distaste for roman architecture though? They repurposed temples and turned them into churches but grand roman villas and amphitheaters were of no use to them. The colosseum was notably used as quarry which is the reason why it is in ruins.

I can see that tower from my bedroom window.

Also money. Cheaper to build a building that's closer to an IKEA furniture in quality, than build actual quality that will stand for hundreds of years. Build cheap, knock it down in 30-50 year, build something new, repeat.

Also, people actually like the Empire State Building and it has historical significance, so people are more likely to put money into keeping it standing

@@LordManhattan how true is this? The Empire State Building was built in almost a year with a lot less technology. While construction these days takes a lot longer. The Shanghai tower took around 5 years for example.

The problem with metal frame buildings is that metal has fatigue. They will eventually come crashing down.

A building will last longer if it becomes iconic too. The Empire State and Chrysler building will probably always have people to protect and maintain them (like a piece of art), but most skyscrapers in history just end up being demolished when they are no longer required.

You'll be surprised at the amount of maintenance old cathedrals in Europe had. They are always undergoing some work : the roof, an arch, heavy cleaning of the facade, the wooden work, etc.

A lot of the old buildings are still working with all of the original stonework, half-timbering, etc. though ... even with updated utilities

True. Amazing how fast highways deteriorate when not maintained. Abandoned sections of Route 66 are often barely discernible as roads.

@@BrBill that's because cars and trucks absolutely love to destroy their infrastructure. Completely unsustainable. Trains however...

@@BrBill Exactly, modern structures deteriorate VERY quickly -- a lot faster than I think most people would even be comfortable knowing about. Both steel and reinforced concrete are inherently susceptible to deterioration. And a lot of people forget that the interiors of buildings are not designed for the elements. And so once you have leaky roof or broken window, then all bets are off, particularly in climates where there are wide temperature ranges with rain and snow.

Just like Triggers broom🤣

But none of them skyscraper

I like

@@texxstalker The Ulm Minster 161.53 meters high Start of construction: 1377 Opened: 1890

@@texxstalker the world's tallest building for hundreds of years was Lincoln cathedral, England, whose spire reached to 500ft high, it only lost that title when an earthquake felled it around 300 years ago, but the main church is still there and over 900 years old

The problem with modern skyscrapers they are engineered to maximize usable (profitable) space. The old buildings mentioned here made with totally another engineer mindset.

Cough... Millennium Tower... cough

But they can’t be demolished practically either so the result is mass destruction

Airplanes in video about scyscrappers? Daring today, aren´t we?

@@PROVOCATEURSK yup that’s way I’m rolling today..

Aircraft are very, very far in the opposite direction. With the exception of Boeing in the last decade or so (heh) aircraft are far, far safer nowadays than they were even a few decades ago. CAD has only improved aircraft safety.

@@planefan082 my point wasn’t they are less safe. It was to say that instead of having a large fudge factor for margin of safety today the margin is quantified almost exactly. For instance a 50% margin in the 60’s really would have been 75% or more. Today a 50% margin is almost exactly 50%.

@@kaptainkaos1202 I'm simply stating that most manufacturers aim higher than 50%, that's all

Must be a nice skyscraper.

You did not.

I will suggest that part of the video is somewhat inaccurate or maybe an exaggeration. However I've been involved in a lot of repairs and retrofits so yes you can do it. You shore up the loads that the beam is carrying then you can remove the beam and replace it or you can add strengthening to it.

Frankly your situation is rarer than most. It should be “excuse me, I live in Europe.” To a large extent Europe is one of the only places with buildings of that age still standing and in widespread use. If you think of Australia, Asia and Africa, as well as the Americas, except a few really old religious or government structures, they’re mostly newer structures.

Yeah, you are right. I just have to drive across the fields and pass enough farms where it says 16XX or 17XX.

@@ungesagt lol.. totally forgot about the farmhouses. But i guess proud farmers would not change that date if they replaced the farmhouse with a new one, so im not so sure if all of them are really as old as they say.... :)

@@falsch4761 lmao, those houses get blown away with a bit of wind That drywall material also is just shit since it already breaks if you even as much as bump into it softly

@@evo3s75 "A bit of wind" The vast majority of wood houses would only get blown away in 200 mph + wind. Imagine calling a tornado or hurricane "A bit of wind"

And back in those days, there was very little steel in the buildings, so the people of the 1700s had much better cell reception

My house literaly predate collumbuse's discovery of the americas, and its still standing just fine

Yeah, 200+ year old buildings are everywhere except in the US

Yeah, my building predates the fall of Constantinople.

Not really. The channel owner isn’t from the US so it’s a bit silly to call it a US centric view.

I do think he is referring to large buildings.

They won't.... almost all of them have varies types of seals that are relatively vulnerable to UV... meaning they have a lifespan of 50-100 years max. After those fail mainly in the windows... the rest of the building will go in another few years, and the structure will probably fail not long after.

A pyramid is nothing more than a pile of bricks in the shape of a triangle. Not hollow but with a few passages inside. Not really a building is it. It's a giant mausoleum.

yeah those buildings were actually the result of tens of thousands of years of trial and error plus we dont know the Roman formula for cement. Whatever they used worked better than what we use now.

@@Wingnut353 that’s why we have maintenance

Kailasa Temple is far greater than the Parthenon ever was.

An interesting side note. The Brooklyn bridge which was made in the 1800’s, is 5x stronger than required!

There are whole streets and neighborhoods full of 200 year old plus buildings in London.

@@screenname1 not only in London. Greetings from Prague tho

@@screenname1 London is actually relatively new compared to most of the UK due to most of it being destroyed in the Great Fire.

​@@katbryce The great fire destroyed only a small portion of London. It was also 350 or so years ago. London is over 2,000 years old. It was once called Trinovantes, or New Troy. This apparently was because exiled Trojans settled there.

@@screenname1 It destroyed most of The City of London, which is only 1 square mile out of what we consider London to be today.

Set fire on it.

By floor by floor deconstruction. You can see the process in the Deutsche Bank Building in NYC.

Older styles of homes were built using peasant/slave labor and an abundance of natural resources. We would be paying multitudes of journeyman carpenters and masons 50/hr plus for that quality of work.

@@dirtyorganboy2264 not every house built in those times was a palace. most of these glass skysrapers cost hundreds of millions and if you talk about slavework look to dubai and china. most of these modern projects go over the budget and cost countries lots of money. people didnt invent robots, automation and cnc machines to live in concrete boxes, those technologies were made so that everyone could live in a great house without paying a lot. imagine living in a time when machines can do the work of a sculptor, a mason or a carpenter in minutes and build uninteresting glass boxes that dont make use of that.

They probably meant building

This video is about skyscrapers, which is a tall habitable building. It is not about iron structures.

As the others stated, you're conflating "skyscrapers" with "towers". No one lives in the Eiffel Tower's entire trunk, though there is a restaurant/observatory I believe on the lower level (can't remember, been decades since I've been).

Keep with termite services.

You have never visited Europe, did you ? There are still buildings being used and occupied since Roman times.

Technology doesn't change? What are you smoking?

That wrinkled Old man is absolutely right, technology changes constantly and architecture technology is no different

@@agorillawithaplan1996 I would be flattered that you agree with me, if you hadn't prefaced it with wrinkled old man. If you have the bad luck of living as long as I have, I hope people treat you with equal respect.

Technology doesn't change? You must be smoking some good shit

Most blocks are meant to last 50-75 years according to two Architects I knew. It is a con that you are sold 125 years /150 or 900 years lease!! I watched some of them being erected and they all look flimsy. Mind you, I am no expert so I stick to an old fashion brick constructed house.

Then let's use a metal that does not corrode as easily as steel.

@@dannypipewrench533 It's not that simple, actually. Steel is strongly preferred for use with concrete because: - Its coefficient of thermal expansion is very similar to concrete's. Temperature differences cause little disturbance as the materials expand/contract together, so long as the structure is not restricted to expand/contract. - Iron, the main metallic component of steel, is an exceptionally abundant and cheap metal. Structural construction materials must be cheap because we use an awful lot of them when building stuff. - Aluminium, the one other highly abundant metal for structural use, has a critical flaw in its performance--it experiences fatigue failure once it goes through enough cycles of loading. Steel does not, so long as it remains loaded below its elastic limit, it can perform well for a much longer time. Aluminium also happens to be more expensive than steel on a per-volume and per-mass basis, because its processing from ores is far more energy-intensive.

@@LucarioBoricua Alright, then how can we prevent the moisture from reaching the reinforcing steel? I love it when somebody gives me a quick breakdown of materials science on KZfaq, this is not the first time by the way. (Not being sarcastic.)

@@LucarioBoricua So is there an artificial alternative to steel or concrete? Like could we in theory develop a material that has better performance and safety margins, but is cheap to engineer on a large scale?

@@sorcerykid people could use brick structures like the romans. its not very fashionable to build arches and vaults but they last very long. the colloseum is 57m tall, thats like 20 floors. but they built towers up to 150m . we have machines now that make the work os a mason in minutes and we produce much more bricks nowadays, it would be cheaper

It’s very economically viable to repair, refit and remodel steel buildings. We do it everyday in every city in the world. Entire structures (like the Golden Gate Bridge) are forever being replaced. We have good examples of structures made of stone and brick that still exist but millions have also deteriorated, collapsed etc.

The Parthenon in Athens was built with iron connectors between the marble segments, designed to add resistance to earthquakes and other lateral forces. The iron connectors were coated with a lead alloy to prevent rust, and as such remained operational for thousands of years. About 100 years ago, a restoration attempt used new non coated steel connectors and they quickly rusted.

I would suggest looking at the channel Building Integrity. It has some excellent videos discussing how reinforced concrete ages. TLDR, water infiltrates the concrete, makes it less alkaline, it eventually stops protecting the rebar, which rusts and causes concrete spalling. Their discussion about concrete punch-through is also interesting. There are good designs poorly executed and poor designs properly executed, and both will fall down.

I mean, yeah. A pyramid is the perfect shape and there's not much that can go wrong with (mostly) solid stone except surface erosion. However, it also takes the cake for lowest ratio of occupiable to total space.

The pyramids have no occupiable space. They're not buildings at all

@@DFwire that's not true. You could fit a couple of offices in there. Just too bad there's only stairs and no elevator.

🤯

Fair. But not the first enclosed building. Very little of the Eiffel Tower can be considered "inside".

Stress causes cracks in steel beams all the time. It can take a long time to occur. Bridge inspections regularly reveal this kind of thing.

Beams probably can be replaced, with some meticulous engineering. But it's highly unlikely that columns can be replaced without hugely costly reinforcements put in place (You're basically talking about putting a giant steel web around the floors where the column(s) are to be replaced to distribute the loads).

@@sorcerykid Yup, basically you have to strip everything nonstructural out from the interior of building so you can build a termporary supporting infrastructure.

I think you mean they DO age well.

@@VanillaMacaron551 haha! Yes, let me correct my message.

Ice-free arctic by 2040. Massive agricultural output disruption (already occuring). Society as we know it may not be able to weather those "storms". Video should have discussed how long these building could survive in neglect.

Exactly, your answer is what I expected to hear addressed in the video. But the narrator only seemed to paint a rosey-coloured picture of how skyscrapers CAN hypothetically last forever with ongoing maintenance-- yet that's not the big question. It's whether society will deem these structures worthy of such investment and usage.

Great questions.

@Cyn D Same here, there's no doubt crypto investment is the key to future wealth, with the current profit of $68,000 made from my investment with Mr Arjun trading platform I'm totally convinced, he's the best trading broker I have worked with and his strategies are so easy to adapt he's such a blessing to me especially in this current dip

@@HLO-iy2bp Agree with you digital currencies that were once viewed as mysterious by many in the past went sky high making millions of dollars for a lot of people including I. It'll definitely do that soon

@@HLO-iy2bp The crazy part is that those advisors are probably outperforming the market and raising good returns but some are charging fees over fees drain your portfolio. Is this the case with yours too?

@@georgebasonathan4784 Nah I Cant say I can relate, Arjun's charge is one-off and pretty reasonable when compared to what I benefit in returns.

@Cyn D I also needed his info too I’ll write him than

So are they going to use the old structure or start completely from scratch?

Came looking for this comment. Yes it's all very well saying tower will last with maintenance, but don't we just know that literally most building owners will not do this unless things are critical. I really hope we don't see more Champlain Towers incidents but unfortunately, we probably will.

Me in the UK:my house is from the Victorian era

@@heidirabenau511 I'm from a mid sized (90k) city in Germany. I know of at least 30+ buildings in the historic parts that are older than his time mark, mostly bei g of late medieval and pre 30years war time. And it was even bombed during WW2. Its ridiculous to put everything in American time frames. I mean for Peters sake, we do have two pubs that are more than twice the age of the American constitution.

no and no

no. its all a way for the princes and other criminals to launder money in real estate. just like in china, its building for the sake of building, if they stop, the economy breaks down, thats why they have ghost towns

Another englishman replies. Yeah yeah, cheers. Like most stats and records it's down to interpretation. There's an argument that the first metal framed building is in Shrewsbury in the UK. Only five storeys high and brick skinned, nevertheless it's the first use of an iron frame with iron beams, columns and tie rods between. Happily it actually beats the two hundred years target too. Still standing, the Shrewsbury Flax mill was constructed in 1797 yes really. 225 years old and counting.

Wind ~ carried particulates are a worldwide cause of erosion. Enough time, wind and sand create awe inspiring shapes in rockfaces let alone buildings. Basically a timelapse version of you having a go with the odd million or two sheets of glass / sandpaper.

i guess people didnt think about what happens when a 50 puls story building needs renovation or crumbles. skyscrapers are a short sighted solution to poor city planning