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Obsolescence: An Architectural History
In our architectural pursuits, we often seem to be in search of something newer, grander, or more efficient—and this phenomenon is not novel. In the spring of 1910 hundreds of workers labored day and night to demolish the Gillender Building in New York, once the loftiest office tower in the world, in order to make way for a taller skyscraper. The New York Times puzzled over those who would sacrifice the thirteen-year-old structure, “as ruthlessly as though it were some ancient shack.” In New York alone, the Gillender joined the original Grand Central Terminal, the Plaza Hotel, the Western Union Building, and the Tower Building on the list of just one generation’s razed metropolitan monuments.
In the innovative and wide-ranging Obsolescence , Daniel M. Abramson investigates this notion of architectural expendability and the logic by which buildings lose their value and utility. The idea that the new necessarily outperforms and makes superfluous the old, Abramson argues, helps people come to terms with modernity and capitalism’s fast-paced change. Obsolescence, then, gives an unsettling experience purpose and meaning.
Belief in obsolescence, as Abramson shows, also profoundly affects architectural design. In the 1960s, many architects worldwide accepted the inevitability of obsolescence, experimenting with flexible, modular designs, from open-plan schools, offices, labs, and museums to vast megastructural frames and indeterminate building complexes. Some architects went so far as to embrace obsolescence’s liberating promise to cast aside convention and habit, envisioning expendable short-life buildings that embodied human choice and freedom. Others, we learn, were horrified by the implications of this ephemerality and waste, and their resistance eventually set the stage for our turn to sustainability—the conservation rather than disposal of resources. Abramson’s fascinating tour of our idea of obsolescence culminates in an assessment of recent manifestations of sustainability, from adaptive reuse and historic preservation to postmodernism and green design, which all struggle to comprehend and manage the changes that challenge us on all sides.
In the innovative and wide-ranging Obsolescence , Daniel M. Abramson investigates this notion of architectural expendability and the logic by which buildings lose their value and utility. The idea that the new necessarily outperforms and makes superfluous the old, Abramson argues, helps people come to terms with modernity and capitalism’s fast-paced change. Obsolescence, then, gives an unsettling experience purpose and meaning.
Belief in obsolescence, as Abramson shows, also profoundly affects architectural design. In the 1960s, many architects worldwide accepted the inevitability of obsolescence, experimenting with flexible, modular designs, from open-plan schools, offices, labs, and museums to vast megastructural frames and indeterminate building complexes. Some architects went so far as to embrace obsolescence’s liberating promise to cast aside convention and habit, envisioning expendable short-life buildings that embodied human choice and freedom. Others, we learn, were horrified by the implications of this ephemerality and waste, and their resistance eventually set the stage for our turn to sustainability—the conservation rather than disposal of resources. Abramson’s fascinating tour of our idea of obsolescence culminates in an assessment of recent manifestations of sustainability, from adaptive reuse and historic preservation to postmodernism and green design, which all struggle to comprehend and manage the changes that challenge us on all sides.
208 pages, Hardcover
First published March 7, 2016
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Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews
September 5, 2017
There’s a line tucked away near the end of Daniel M. Abramson’s Obsolescence when he riffs off of Wolfgang Sachs’ twin crises of nature and justice. Abramson frames his critique of architectural obsolescence as caught between a rock and a hard place: “can you have it both ways – austerity and social justice?”
Abramson tracks the concept of obsolescence throughout the 20th century from its birth as a tax strategy – a way for building owners to write off their expenses – into a genuine crisis of sustainable architecture. If buildings are going out of functional use nearly as quick as they are going up, what stops this from turning into replacement-as-consumption?
The book levels several critiques against capitalism, but not all of them hit the mark. By focusing on obsolescence’s birth as a tax advantage, Abramson makes the pre-income tax built environment sound like a preservationist’s arcadian dream. He refers often to Roman ruins poking out of 19th-century European cities, but loses track of the city for the monuments: the commercial structures that make the best parallels for his 20th-century examples of hospitals, museums and office buildings don’t appear in his selection of the historical record.
On the other hand, his tracking of the American peculiarities of obsolescence is on point. By demonstrating how “financial decay” became part of modernization theory, and layering the concept of “creative destruction” onto modern architecture, Abramson is able to show how a word was invented and became inevitable.
If a landowner can make more money from a new building, minus demolition costs, than they can make from the old building – then the old building is obsolete. Nevermind how it fits as a part of the fabric of the city or a space for working, argues Abramson, obsolescence is a product of capitalism and the way land is valued.
This dovetails well with Rachel Weber’s From Boom to Bubble, and the books’ focus on Chicago is not a surprise in either case. This is the city with the best-recorded booms (and bubbles) in land values and the most expressive use of architecture to portray these prices. Abramson succeeds the most where he shows how obsolescence became an inevitability, the death and tax effect of a building.
Again, the book gets a bit looser when it leave the US to show how architects have tried to conquer obsolescence. While it’s interesting to see how van der Rohe’s National Gallery in Berlin was meant to defeat obsolescence through mutability, other examples fail to regard how even the most famous architects have clients, who have needs and bottom lines. It would have been interesting to bring in more voices: how did teachers deal with schools with moving walls? Did patients appreciate a hospital with inhuman proportions?
As Abramson concludes, he examines gentrification in the 21st century. He begins to venture out of the Western European tradition and looks at adaptive reuse. There are interesting points where Red Bologna and East Germany’s ambivalence towards obsolescence is hinted at, but not fully examined. Cities like Istanbul, who had its historic core of Istiklal gutted in order to provide rent-seeking, are ignored. These are my own pet peeves.
Lines like “gentrification is in effect the neutron bomb of urbanism: buildings intact, people gone,” show a genuine care for how people interact with this dance between architecture and capital. It’s a line that makes me wish Abramson would explore the issue more – or at least perhaps differently. For as much fascinating work is in Obsolescence, it still can fall into the trope of heroic architects grappling with a system. The system of financially-guided obsolescence is his first target and certainly the most interesting part of this work.
Abramson tracks the concept of obsolescence throughout the 20th century from its birth as a tax strategy – a way for building owners to write off their expenses – into a genuine crisis of sustainable architecture. If buildings are going out of functional use nearly as quick as they are going up, what stops this from turning into replacement-as-consumption?
The book levels several critiques against capitalism, but not all of them hit the mark. By focusing on obsolescence’s birth as a tax advantage, Abramson makes the pre-income tax built environment sound like a preservationist’s arcadian dream. He refers often to Roman ruins poking out of 19th-century European cities, but loses track of the city for the monuments: the commercial structures that make the best parallels for his 20th-century examples of hospitals, museums and office buildings don’t appear in his selection of the historical record.
On the other hand, his tracking of the American peculiarities of obsolescence is on point. By demonstrating how “financial decay” became part of modernization theory, and layering the concept of “creative destruction” onto modern architecture, Abramson is able to show how a word was invented and became inevitable.
If a landowner can make more money from a new building, minus demolition costs, than they can make from the old building – then the old building is obsolete. Nevermind how it fits as a part of the fabric of the city or a space for working, argues Abramson, obsolescence is a product of capitalism and the way land is valued.
This dovetails well with Rachel Weber’s From Boom to Bubble, and the books’ focus on Chicago is not a surprise in either case. This is the city with the best-recorded booms (and bubbles) in land values and the most expressive use of architecture to portray these prices. Abramson succeeds the most where he shows how obsolescence became an inevitability, the death and tax effect of a building.
Again, the book gets a bit looser when it leave the US to show how architects have tried to conquer obsolescence. While it’s interesting to see how van der Rohe’s National Gallery in Berlin was meant to defeat obsolescence through mutability, other examples fail to regard how even the most famous architects have clients, who have needs and bottom lines. It would have been interesting to bring in more voices: how did teachers deal with schools with moving walls? Did patients appreciate a hospital with inhuman proportions?
As Abramson concludes, he examines gentrification in the 21st century. He begins to venture out of the Western European tradition and looks at adaptive reuse. There are interesting points where Red Bologna and East Germany’s ambivalence towards obsolescence is hinted at, but not fully examined. Cities like Istanbul, who had its historic core of Istiklal gutted in order to provide rent-seeking, are ignored. These are my own pet peeves.
Lines like “gentrification is in effect the neutron bomb of urbanism: buildings intact, people gone,” show a genuine care for how people interact with this dance between architecture and capital. It’s a line that makes me wish Abramson would explore the issue more – or at least perhaps differently. For as much fascinating work is in Obsolescence, it still can fall into the trope of heroic architects grappling with a system. The system of financially-guided obsolescence is his first target and certainly the most interesting part of this work.
March 5, 2017
This is a small book - about 140 pages - that gives a concise overview of the concept of "obsolescence" in architecture; it touches upon its rise, fall, and complicated present. The book is easy to read without being over theoretical. I particularly enjoyed the author's coverage of the demolition of Boston's East End. However, the compactness of the book sometimes falls prey to simply being a laundry list of moments when obsolescence enters the public dialogue. The book could benefit from a few deeper descriptions of particular buildings or writings on the topic. That said, there are many points made that other scholars may find worthwhile to explore further. The bibliography at the end of the book is broad and provides good source material for further scholarly work.
January 20, 2025
Really interesting premise, and the first half of the book is a great history and discussion of the thesis. However, the book runs out of steam at the end and tries to tie into the contemporary context, which I don't think really helped it.
December 18, 2017
Architecture = forgetting, more or less. Even design "fixes" end up enforcing forgetting sooner or later.
December 23, 2021
Look. I didn't care for the book.
As a non-specialist, I hesitate to criticize it.
I can confidently say it was written in that way that academics write things. Long, confusing sentences full of verbs that have been transformed into nouns and then made the subject of sentences. The logical subject of these sentences - like a rabbit dropped into a magician's hat - somehow remain just out of view. Here's an example chosen at random:
"There are tensions and struggles in design and building that go beyond illustrating simple historical or theoretical consluions. Instead, form points to deeper, more conflicted levels of thinking about obsolecense and change than is otherwise verbalized."
More importantly, I suspect the author's entire approach to this subject is bullshit. I do not know that for a fact and cannot emphasize enough my ignorance here. However, he searches the seeds of capitalism in general and the American tax code for clues as to why we began to treat buildings as obsolete instead of permanent. What follows is a synopsis of social theory from the mid to late 20th century in which we get to learn about Marx.
What's missing? An honest to god investigation as to whether changes in building technology and approach might have justified the change? The author thinks (1) capitalism demands constant production; (2) architects situated within a capitalist system made sense of this by (a) suiting their technologies to constant production (e.g., ephemeral buildings) and (b) building a tax code that included depreciation of buildings; (3) as this sort of building reached its apex, a conservationist and sustainable movement emerged - upset about the waste created; (4) these competing theories - conservation and obsolecense - expose weaknesses in each other and form a sort of dialectic in which much of modern architecture debate rages.
The question as always - is the juice worth the squeeze. Does the subject really justify this kind of Hegelian meditation or is the author sorta forcing it.
These arguments - if not pushed - have sort of a self fulfilling quality. Nothing the author says is false, per se, but there are few truly falsifiable claims. For instance, he believes that to point out that obsolescence ideas were placed in the tax code is also to prove capitalism animated this change. But he does not examine the specific underlying logic of capitalism for a contradiction. It is one thing to say newer building techniques lowered the cost of new construction sufficient to make shorter lives buildings most viable. It is another to say capitalism demanded production for its own sake, regardless of whether there was an economic contradiction. I believe the author boringly concludes the former, in which case there is no interesting contradiction here. Maybe I’m missing something here.
Look I think the burden is extremely high for these sorts of "what looks like x is actually a structural outgrowth of y" arguments. When done well, they are social theory at its best. Practical, observant, insightful. One thinks of Toqueville, Durkheim, or even Weber. You can be wrong, just make sure you're wrong in service of some theory worth explaining.
Didn't meet my uninformed, potentially entirely wrong view. But hey, it's my review and these are my thoughts.
Two stars!
As a non-specialist, I hesitate to criticize it.
I can confidently say it was written in that way that academics write things. Long, confusing sentences full of verbs that have been transformed into nouns and then made the subject of sentences. The logical subject of these sentences - like a rabbit dropped into a magician's hat - somehow remain just out of view. Here's an example chosen at random:
"There are tensions and struggles in design and building that go beyond illustrating simple historical or theoretical consluions. Instead, form points to deeper, more conflicted levels of thinking about obsolecense and change than is otherwise verbalized."
More importantly, I suspect the author's entire approach to this subject is bullshit. I do not know that for a fact and cannot emphasize enough my ignorance here. However, he searches the seeds of capitalism in general and the American tax code for clues as to why we began to treat buildings as obsolete instead of permanent. What follows is a synopsis of social theory from the mid to late 20th century in which we get to learn about Marx.
What's missing? An honest to god investigation as to whether changes in building technology and approach might have justified the change? The author thinks (1) capitalism demands constant production; (2) architects situated within a capitalist system made sense of this by (a) suiting their technologies to constant production (e.g., ephemeral buildings) and (b) building a tax code that included depreciation of buildings; (3) as this sort of building reached its apex, a conservationist and sustainable movement emerged - upset about the waste created; (4) these competing theories - conservation and obsolecense - expose weaknesses in each other and form a sort of dialectic in which much of modern architecture debate rages.
The question as always - is the juice worth the squeeze. Does the subject really justify this kind of Hegelian meditation or is the author sorta forcing it.
These arguments - if not pushed - have sort of a self fulfilling quality. Nothing the author says is false, per se, but there are few truly falsifiable claims. For instance, he believes that to point out that obsolescence ideas were placed in the tax code is also to prove capitalism animated this change. But he does not examine the specific underlying logic of capitalism for a contradiction. It is one thing to say newer building techniques lowered the cost of new construction sufficient to make shorter lives buildings most viable. It is another to say capitalism demanded production for its own sake, regardless of whether there was an economic contradiction. I believe the author boringly concludes the former, in which case there is no interesting contradiction here. Maybe I’m missing something here.
Look I think the burden is extremely high for these sorts of "what looks like x is actually a structural outgrowth of y" arguments. When done well, they are social theory at its best. Practical, observant, insightful. One thinks of Toqueville, Durkheim, or even Weber. You can be wrong, just make sure you're wrong in service of some theory worth explaining.
Didn't meet my uninformed, potentially entirely wrong view. But hey, it's my review and these are my thoughts.
Two stars!
November 24, 2025
Obsolescence provides a thorough and engaging overview of architectural developments between 1910 and 1975. It weaves together numerous theories and trends from the past century, offering explanations for how and why they emerged. One particularly interesting point is how obsolescence in the 1920s was driven by tax code incentives—while today, preservation is encouraged in much the same way. The book is especially rewarding if you’re already familiar with key architectural theories, as it helps you place them in a broader timeline. It clarifies the contrasts between building practices in America, Europe, and Asia, and sheds light on how the concept of sustainability evolved. I was surprised by the framing of sustainability as a product of capitalism, much like obsolescence itself. Despite its density of information, the book remains accessible and would be a great read for anyone looking to deepen their understanding of the architectural world.
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