AFTER THE BUILDER’S YEAR
AFTER THE BUILDER’S YEAR
Submitted by Benjamin A. Faulkner
‘Around 80-90% of the existing building mass will still be standing in 2050.’
I rose quietly, walked over to the kitchen counter, and plunged the coffee headfirst into my cup. ‘What the hell did I just read,’ I grumbled eventually to myself and went over to the laptop to confirm. It’s actually what’s written there. In order for us to meet the requirements of the Paris Agreement, we almost have to stop building new buildings. That’s what this SINTEF report (2020) says, indeed: ‘Considering that most of the world’s building mass in 2050 already exists today, rehabilitation and adaptive reuse of existing buildings will be a crucial contribution to a sustainable future.’ It can actually take 10 to 80 years ‘before a new building offsets the carbon emissions that occurred in the construction process.’ According to the World GBC, the total building mass is responsible for 39% of global carbon emissions. For God’s sake, let’s not build more buildings now.
But hold on a second. Well, yes: I am trained as an urban planner, and our education primarily revolves around keeping property developers in check to maintain good living spaces. If no one is building anything, urban planners and architects might as well pack their bags and find work elsewhere. But the industry and the government have a different opinion. The construction industry is just going to increase, and increase, and increase, and then planners and architects are needed.
Throwback to 2021: ‘We need more, good urban and landuse planners throughout Norway,’ wrote the Government. The whole country is in fear that the Planning and Building Act will stand unprotected while crazies bombard the municipality with exemption applications and 1960s zoning plans where the garages are larger than the houses. The issue is clear: we need to educate at least 400 new land-use planners per year. When I started studying urban and regional planning at the Norwegian University of Life Sciences in 2018, we were like lit candles in the lecture hall when the professors queued up to tell us that ‘it is quite common to get a job before you have finished writing your master’s thesis.’ At least that’s what NTNU professor in planning, Dag Kittang, told NRK in 2010.
Nevertheless, we felt lucky to finally join the party! Imagine the job opportunities the future will bring! The country is being built! And we were the knights who, with our rhetoric as our weapon, would shout “en garde!” to builders who thought they could get away with poorly planned universal design or impermeable surfaces that the record-breaking rain showers could penetrate. “There aren’t enough bees!” we looked forward to shouting across the municipal meeting table, and slam our fist down so hard that the eco-friendly packaging topples, while the contractors fumble to find a suitable response to this broadside of sustainable development par excellence. Little did we know what kind of world was unfolding just halfway through our studies. It started as small bubbles beneath the surface.
“The world has changed. I see it in the water. I feel it in the earth. I smell it in the air,” says Galadriel, an 8000-year-old elf with a magical ring on her finger who just wants to escape from it all because it’s “not her time anymore”. It is said that crises never emerge as a singularly perceived event. It’s always the small components that are individually registered and collectively form a picture of a legendary spectacle. Let me explain:
First, COVID-19 happened. In a 2020 survey, 64% of the construction industry experienced a decrease in turnover for that year. Of course, this ended up being a temporary little issue. But then one thing led to another. In 2022, there were price increases. Interest rate hikes. An article in Dagens Næringsliv pointed out that the sale of new homes could be lower than the bottom during the financial crisis.
On January 17, 2023, there was unrest in the architectural community. More and more people were laid off. In June 2023, there was shocking news from the architecture firm 4B, where half of the chairs in the office are now empty; desks cleared. And it wasn’t layoffs. The news sent a shiver down the spines of us master’s students. Working life was just around the corner! In September, Sweco Architects was going to cut 30 full-time positions, equivalent to 15% of the workforce. But there’s another thing that’s going to make the situation even worse.
Every year, a few hundred architects and quite a few spatial planners are educated. There must have been many newly graduated architects and planners who were job-seeking in the period 2020- 2023. “One thing is layoffs and terminations, another is that it builds up in the queue with newly graduated individuals outside the workforce,” writes Ida Messel in Arkitektur.no. But the job market situation was only going to get worse.
On November 16, 2023, the forecasts from Veidekke were clear. Production in the Norwegian construction market will decrease by 30 billion NOK over the next two years. The Association of Norwegian Homebuilders shows that the sale of homes has decreased by 32% since October last year. The number of new housing projects was 62% lower than the previous year. According to NAV, “the number of unemployed in construction has increased by 37% since October last year.” The entire construction industry may possibly seek government assistance. And into this spectacle, three hundred architects and four hundred urban planners are educated each year. In the new year, Minister Ola Borten Moe confirmed that, yes, there is a need for expertise.
Expertise for what need excatly?
I interpret the situation as the construction industry finally approaching a more sustainable level, and a weakened construction sector is very good news for us. The complete cataclysm with the ability to wipe out human living conditions as we know them is real. We can no longer build OBOS housing machines in reinforced concrete. We must consider our buildings as nonrenewable resources. We need more expertise in the rehabilitation of old buildings, even the ugliest ruins and warehouses. We need expertise to consolidate and optimize the efficiency of the resources we have because neither we nor the planet can afford more. To claim otherwise is pure fantasy and falsehood. Ironically, Valery Legasov never said this, but his quote in HBO’s ‘Chernobyl’ is somewhat applicable: Every lie we tell incurs a debt to the truth. Sooner or later, the debt must be paid.
