Elizan McLean: Blog Response 9+10

The projects I found most interesting over this semester were the Itsukushima shrine and the Ise Jingu family shrine. Old Japanese style architecture has always been very appealing to me, but I found the story of how they rebuild Ise Jingu every 20 years to be amazing. No matter how good a design or how solid the structure a building is, it will eventually break down. I think the average life span of a building is designed for around 100 years or so. We as architects focus a lot on how our buildings will impact the environment at the time of its conception, but rarely do we give thought to its end life. There are already a few cities in the united states that have hundreds of abandoned buildings just decaying in them and taking up space, and its most likely only going to get worse as buildings reach their limit, and we as a nation get further and further into debt. If we look at Ise Jingu as a precedent though, and try to build our buildings to be recycled frequently with low costs and labor required it might help keep our cities from becoming decaying ghost towns. In general though, I love how Japanese architecture gives the chance to reflect all aspects of nature and the different kami's and the use of the torii to often capture a certain view.