Acceptance of decay, a painful and necessary step towards a more responsible architecture

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Over the last couple of decades, the broader public gradually became accustomed to associating the whole field of architecture with colorful renderings portraying stylish, ethnically diverse people strolling in front of the soon-to-be-built shopping malls, all under clear blue skies. Other than renderings, Dezeen, Archdaily, and other mainstream media is regularly filled with images of recently completed buildings that are passionately promoted by private investors with quick profits in mind. Not much consideration is given to the building's further life cycles and in particular, one question remains avoided at all cost, the question of the eventual, inevitable demise of the building. Without exception, vital information remains omitted, such as for how long is the building intended to last, could it be easily adapted and repurposed in case of abandonment or could the materials be reused for new projects in the future once the building officially wears off?. It seems like a denial of topics such as decay in architecture stems from our collective emotional attachment to architecture that lasts ''forever'' and resists natural fluctuations. Although the idea of everlasting, resilient architecture remains prevalent in the public, in recent years an increasing number of architects started drawing attention to numerous pitfalls of the current paradigm. Today many believe that architect's reluctance to include "death" of the building in the process of planning actually robs them of their chance to build more responsibly. One such architect is Thomas Rau, a huge proponent of looking at cities as mines and handling waste in architecture with more innovation. He is the inventor of the register "Madaster", a cadastre for all materials that were used for a building, and that can be reused once that building gets demolished. Rau is just one of the architects whose responsible and wholesome approach to architecture I want to explore further in the essay.