Let us think that we build forever.

01 Feb, 2025

“When we build, let us think that we build forever.
Let it not be for present delight nor for present use alone.
Let it be such work as our descendants will thank us for; and let us think, as we lay stone on stone, that a time is to come when those stones will be held sacred because our hands have touched them, and that men will say, as they look upon the labour and wrought substance of them, ‘See! This our fathers did for us’.”

John Ruskin, from ‘The Seven Lamps of Architecture’

And when we build, let us too think that we build forever, and build together, and that this we that builds forever is our ageless collective, from earliest ancestor to furthest descendant — and as we build, let each act of building invite and enable the next.

When we build, let us think that we forever build, constantly improving toward some ideal state that’s always our aim but never our fate to achieve. Let us not though think that to build is to grow but to refine. As we sustain so we must dwell, and thus must build, but as we dwell and build must we sustain all such future acts.

When we build, let us not think that we’ve built forever. Let us always allow for the great opportunity offered by the unknown, and let us not forget or forego the great delight offered by surprise.

And yet… let us think, and hope, that we have built forever, and aspire to that timelessness. Let us not be so mean as to build-in obsolescence, or to think in terms of endless churn, but rather let us have the ambition to believe we’ll grace the world with so valuable a thing as will last forever, with the generosity of spirit to accept that nothing ever does.

When we build, let us think that though it might seem that we build for one or some we build for all. No act of building takes place in a vacuum, and none is independent of the others. Let us build in a spirit of mutuality and reciprocity.

When we build, let us not think that we alone build, but rather that our acts of building facilitate and free the creative acts of all who would build. Let us invite the inputs and interpretations of those who will inhabit what we’ve built. Let us always presume upon the wisdom of the unknown future occupant — they are there, and know better than us what they need. Let our present acts not hinder but help the future ones.

When we build, let us think that we build forever.

Let it not be for present delight nor for present use alone.

Let not what we perceive to be the present use mitigate against the future use, nor exhaust the future’s resource.

Let us think, as we pattern and form, construct and develop, as we undertake all the acts that be to build, that timeless are our acts and outcomes. Let us not seem to do all this in anticipation of some future thanks, but rather let it be that the results of our acts of building are so as to seem the native and inevitable state.

The time’s to come, and when it does it’ll be forever, when these stones and bricks and places and spaces will be held sacred because all our hands have touched and shaped them, and that we all will say, as we look upon our common wealth, the wrought substance of all our labour and genius, ‘See! This we’ve all done, and do, and will do, for us and by us, for all and forever!’