The Long Office

How far ahead are you working?

1 yearthe horizon most offices plan on

Under construction for more than 140 years. Antoni Gaudí, asked about the pace, is recorded as saying his client was not in a hurry.

Started	1883
Architect died	1926, with the work perhaps a quarter done
Still	under construction

Duplicate seeds from the world’s gene banks, kept in a mountain at −18 °C, against losses nobody can schedule.

Opened	2008
Holds	over 1.3 million seed samples
Needed	the year something is lost, unknown in advance

A tunnel for spent nuclear fuel, dug to be filled over a century and then sealed and forgotten on purpose.

Begun in 1248, halted in 1473 with a crane left standing on the unfinished tower, completed in 1880 to the medieval plans. 632 years.

Rebuilt from scratch every twenty years, so that the carpentry is never more than one generation from living hands.

A funnel of pitch set up in 1927 to show that it flows. Nine drops in ninety years. No one has ever watched one fall.

Set up	1927
Drops so far	nine; the ninth in 2014
Custodians so far	three, across two of their lifetimes

Seeds of wild plants banked underground in Sussex; the collection is meant to outlast the institutions that use it.

Opened	2000
Holds	about 2.5 billion seeds from some 40,000 species
Storage design	centuries, cold and dry

A forest planted in 2014. Each year one author hands in a manuscript nobody may read until 2114, when the trees are cut to print the books.

Nobody here is expected to finish this.

Photographs