Construction in 2100: What the Labs See Coming, and What It Means for Investors

Here is the fact that makes 2100 a practical question rather than science fiction: a building permitted today will very likely still be standing in 2100. A condominium that opens in 2027 will be 73 years old at the turn of the next century. It will go through several of Florida’s milestone inspection cycles, a handful of major hurricanes, at least two or three generations of building systems, and whatever the climate and the market do in between.

So investors are already making decisions about 2100. They just don’t usually say it out loud.

Nobody can describe 2100 with confidence. What we can do is separate three things: the forces that are close to certain, the technologies that research labs and early adopters are already building, and the scenario those two point toward. Then we can ask what it means for whoever is putting money into buildings.

Part 1: The forces that are close to certain

People. The United Nations projects world population will peak at about 10.3 billion in the mid-2080s and settle near 10.2 billion by 2100. By around 2080, the world will have more people aged 65 or older than children under 18. Growth slows, and the world gets older.

Cities. In its 2018 projections, the UN expects 68 percent of humanity to live in urban areas by 2050, up from 55 percent in 2018. That is about 2.5 billion more city dwellers, almost 90 percent of them in Asia and Africa.

Floor area. The global building stock reached about 273 billion square meters in 2024, according to the UN Environment Programme. Architecture 2030 estimates the world will add about 241 billion square meters over the next four decades, roughly doubling the stock. That is the equivalent of building a New York City every month for 40 years.

Infrastructure. The G20’s Global Infrastructure Hub and Oxford Economics estimated a global infrastructure need of about $94 trillion between 2016 and 2040. They put the largest national investment gap in the United States, at $3.8 trillion.

Carbon. Buildings account for about 34 percent of global energy-related CO2 emissions, according to UNEP’s 2024-2025 status report. Cement alone is responsible for around 8 percent of global CO2, according to Chatham House. A sector that large cannot stay outside climate policy for another 75 years.

Water. NOAA’s 2022 technical report projects about 2 feet of sea level rise along U.S. coasts between 2020 and 2100 from emissions already in the system. Higher-emission paths raise that to roughly 3.5 to 7 feet. For Florida, that is not an abstraction. It is the operating environment for every coastal asset built this decade.

Hands. Associated Builders and Contractors estimates the U.S. industry needs about 349,000 net new workers in 2026 alone, mostly to replace retirements. An aging world will have fewer people available for hard physical work.

Put those together and the shape of the century is clear: an enormous amount to build and rebuild, fewer people to do it, a carbon budget to respect, and a climate that is moving.

Part 2: What the labs and early adopters are already building

The construction of 2100 is not being invented in 2090. Its pieces exist today, mostly in university labs and a few early commercial projects.

Robots that build, not just assist. At ETH Zurich, the National Centre of Competence in Research Digital Fabrication built the DFAB HOUSE. It is a working building that combines six digital construction processes: an on-site construction robot, robotically fabricated reinforced concrete without conventional formwork, and timber modules assembled by cooperating robots. At the University of Stuttgart, the Cluster of Excellence IntCDC develops design, robotic fabrication and building systems together as one process. It has funding extended to 2032.

Printing whole neighborhoods. In Georgetown, Texas, ICON and Lennar have printed a 100-home community at Wolf Ranch, widely described as the largest of its kind. Critics point out that it still depends on carbon-intensive concrete and that building codes for printed structures are still catching up. Both are fair, and both are the kind of problem that gets solved with scale.

Building off-world. NASA awarded ICON $57.2 million in 2022 to develop a lunar surface construction system that would print roads, landing pads and habitats from local regolith. Technology developed for the hardest site imaginable tends to come back down to Earth.

Materials that repair themselves. At TU Delft, Henk Jonkers’ group developed concrete with dormant bacteria that produce limestone when a crack lets water in. Their research reports sealing cracks up to 0.8 mm wide. Early coverage put the added cost at about 50 percent per cubic meter. Expensive now, but the direction is a structure that maintains part of itself.

Wood going tall. Milwaukee’s Ascent, a 25-story, 284-foot mass timber hybrid, was certified the world’s tallest timber building in 2022. Twenty years ago that would have been unthinkable in a code-governed U.S. market.

Factories instead of sites. McKinsey found modular projects accelerating timelines by 20 to 50 percent. It argued that construction is shifting “from projects to products,” with more of the building made in controlled factory conditions and assembled on site.

Every one of these is early, expensive or narrow today. So was the smartphone in 2007.

Part 3: Construction in 2100, a scenario

What follows is a scenario, not a forecast. It extends the trends above to their logical end and assumes no single breakthrough.

Buildings are manufactured, then assembled. Most of the value of a building is produced in factories. The site becomes an assembly and verification operation, faster and quieter, with far less waste.

Machines do the repetitive and the dangerous. Layout, tying, drilling, lifting, welding and inspecting at height are largely done by machines. The skilled worker is an operator, an inspector and the person who handles everything that doesn’t go to plan, which on a real job is a lot.

Design and compliance happen together. AI generates design options and checks them against code in the same step. Licensed engineers and architects set the intent, make the judgment calls and carry the responsibility. The license becomes more valuable, because it is the human accountability in an automated chain.

Buildings keep their own record. Sensors and models report a structure’s condition continuously for its whole life. Inspections are triggered by data instead of the calendar. Florida’s milestone inspections, created by SB 4-D after Surfside, are an early version of this idea: the building’s history becomes a regulated, inspectable asset.

Materials are low-carbon and recoverable. Low-carbon cements, engineered timber and recycled materials dominate. Buildings are designed to be taken apart, so a building at the end of its life is a source of materials rather than a landfill problem.

Adaptation is the main construction market in mature countries. In the U.S., Europe and Japan, with slow population growth and existing stock, most work is retrofit, hardening and adaptation: raising, strengthening, re-skinning, re-purposing. In parts of the coast, it includes planned retreat.

The growth markets are elsewhere. Most new floor area is built in Asia and Africa, where urban populations are still rising. That is where the largest volume of new construction, and the largest new construction companies, will be.

Part 4: What it means for the investor

If you own or finance buildings, the long view changes how you read today’s decisions. Eight practical implications follow:

1. Underwrite the 2100 climate, not the 2026 climate. For a coastal Florida asset, the relevant flood, wind and insurance environment is the one in its fourth and fifth decade, not its first. Elevation, drainage, wind design and insurability are value drivers, not compliance items.

2. The record will carry a price. We expect buildings with a complete digital record and continuous monitoring to cost less to insure, inspect, finance and sell. Milestone inspections already show regulators moving that way. A building without a record will increasingly trade at a discount.

3. Retrofit is the long trade. In mature markets, the work and the returns shift from building new to upgrading what exists. Recurring inspection cycles create recurring repair work. That is a business, not a burden.

4. Labor scarcity rewards industrialized builders. With fewer workers available, the companies that deliver more value per worker hour through offsite production, automation and connected data will win the work and protect their margins. Back them, or become one.

5. Carbon becomes a line item. In several jurisdictions, embodied carbon is already moving from voluntary reporting toward procurement rules and regulation. Low-carbon materials and designs that use less of them become a cost advantage, not a marketing claim.

6. Demographics pick the asset classes. An older population means more demand for healthcare, senior housing and accessible design, and different needs in every home.

7. Flexibility protects value. Buildings that can change use, such as floor plates that can become housing, offices that can become labs, and systems that can be swapped, resist obsolescence. Rigid buildings are the ones most likely to be stranded.

8. The transition itself is the opportunity. The $94 trillion infrastructure need, the doubling of global floor area and the rebuilding of the existing stock all require new tools, materials, data and skills. The companies that supply that shift are where much of the century’s value in the sector will be created.

Five questions to ask before you build or buy today

1. What does this asset’s flood, wind and insurance exposure look like in 2060 and 2080, not just today?
2. Will it have a complete, transferable digital record from day one?
3. How easily can it change use in 25 years?
4. How much embodied carbon is in it, and could that become a cost?
5. Is the team building it using today’s tools, or 2015’s?

The century ahead belongs to the people who build and invest as if their buildings will still be standing in 2100, because most of them will be.

This is the long-view companion to The Rebuild: How Technology Is Changing the Way Buildings Get Built, 2015 to 2030. JobsiteAI builds the record that starts on day one: estimates, permits, inspections and closeout from a single project file.