If the artifact should remain everlasting, it will also depend on its holistic being. Firstly, an heirloom cannot survive in perpetual extraneousness. It must always find relevance in every contemporary – culturally, socially, or functionally. In the same manner, heritors often understand the value of jewelleries much better than a collection of Meerschaum pipes; the use of precious stones has been relatively consistent compared to the use of smoking vessels. In architecture, if a space remains relevant, it inherits the quality of heirloom. For example, Toronto’s St Michael’s Cathedral continues to hold worship services after 171 years. 

Secondly, architecture can survive by craft, the profound ornamentation or formal considerations. Often, this quality is conceived independent of utilitarian purposes. For instance, although Toronto’s Old City Hall has become a dysfunctional building, it remains a prominent icon of the Romanesque Revival style. Today, the building has gained heritage status, and it will remain a permanent part of the urban fabric. 

The third heirloom quality is performance. An object can sustain through time with robustness. We rarely entertain the idea of demolition when something is operating well. This is evident in many brutalist buildings such as Toronto’s Robarts Library. The substantial massing and structure ensures its lasting prowess.

Finally, an enduring artifact may display resilience through versatility. By becoming functionally or physically amorphous, it engenders the ability to resist change to its fundamental identity. Like the numerous post-industrial factories in Toronto, its open floor plans, generous ceiling heights, and over-designed structures enable dexterous adaptations; some of them became offices while others
became residential lofts. 

As architects, we bear immense authority and responsibilities with our designs to provide containers for such memories. And the way we amortize these embodied energies is by making our creative works robust, substantial, and beautiful. Such that architecture reinstates its responsibility of centennial service with intent, and not fortuitously. In hopes, our future generations could look upon the world we created
as inheritance, and not inconvenience.

Therefore, when we build, let us think that we build for ever. Let it not be for present delight, nor for present use alone…and that men will say as they look upon the labour and wrought substance of them, “See! This our fathers did for us.” - John Ruskin, The Seven Lamps of Architecture, 1907.