Architectural conservation encompasses the management of places in the face of change, a proposition with an inherent temporal dimension. However, the recognition of humanity’s ability to affect the world on geological scale (the Anthropocene), gives notions of preservation for the future an additional ethical and uncertain perspective. The project proposes an architectural headquarters for the ‘Long Now Foundation’, an organization which explores the nuances and implications of long term thinking. They understand the present not as an isolated moment but ‘The Long Now’, a period which spans the last and next ten-thousand years. This exaggerated period forms the programme of the proposal, with successive architects developing projects to explore the implications of generational architecture. This representation explores seven such proposals, each occupying a distinct temporality, drawn from a speculative reading of Ruskin’s ‘Seven Lamps of Architecture’. They encompass physical and virtual proposals and involve heterogenous activities ranging from documentation to recollection of a millennial architecture., Technical and design solutions are developed within a community of craftspeople on site. However, at the dawn of the proposals concluding utterance, the uncertain presence of its makers amongst its ruins questions how human actions can influence the future: Are we being good ancestors?
