What condition would the Guggenheim building in Bilbao, Spain, be in 400 years from now in a post-apocalypse?

Question

(I posted something earlier and was asked to edit it. I'm new here so … learning is painful, what can I say)

I'm Derek B. Miller. I'm the author of Norwegian by Night, The Girl in Green, and American by Day. I have a forthcoming sci-fi novel called RADIO LIFE being released in autumn, 2020. I am already prepping for the sequel, and you folks are the go-to source for great ideas.

Set-up: It's roughly 400 years from now. In about 2100 (to keep dates simple), the world population was wiped out, mostly from countries acting badly. Nano-tech was used to deliver bio weapons; nukes were used in a few cases; the vast majority of the world pop was killed off. Many animals, of course, but they have largely recovered.

The question is quite focused now: What condition would we likely find the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, Spain?

Keeping in mind climate change (natural and worsening between now and 2100); water levels changing; acidity; natural plant growth in formerly populated areas (etc.), animals wandering about it.

FINAL THOUGHTS: 1. You have time between now (2020) and the collapse (2100) to add some tech and engineering solutions to try and preserve the building — not in anticipation of a war, but certainly in anticipation of a worsening climate 2. It is OK for people to have either stayed there for shelter (and therefore continued to tend to it) or discovered it a hundred or two hundred years later and decided to stick around. 3. THERE IS NO INTERNET ANYMORE. The world went Digital, the digital failed, and now no one knows anything. So no using hi-tech solutions AFTER 2100.

Thanks.

— Derek

Answer 1

Locations which are already hardened against erosion and corrosive effects should last for quite a while... Chemical storage tanks and fallout shelters.

Also, tough concrete constructions might not be pretty after four hundred years, but they might still be habitable. Multi-level parking garages are built to carry tons of load, so they are probably strong enough to last a while. Subway stations, bank vaults (if not the banks themselves), hardened military bunkers and prisons should also be okay.

In addition to bridges, other public works including traffic tunnels, sewers and drainage canals are built for the long haul. Beyond that, anything build using concrete block should have quite a lifespan. Their roofs might be gone but can be rebuilt from manually harvested lumber.

Finally, although your readers may be entering the world 400 years after an apocalypse, your characters won't be. They will likely be the descendants of survivors and will have whatever knowledge of construction techniques that can be salvaged from the golden past. Housing is a tier one life requirement, so in the years directly following the event, salvaging the skills needed to put a roof over one's head will be secondary only to finding a way to fill one's stomach. Your characters probably won't be limited to using the decrepit left overs of their fallen ancestors. They will have developed a new culture and new answers to the questions which all cultures must address.

Others will probably mention the various documentaries which track the decay and destruction of our cities after we mysteriously disappear, but that is not really the case in your story. There are survivors and those survivors will have multiplied in the years following the bio-war. Those survivors will have maintained the structures they choose to live in and will have kept at bay the encroaching jungle overgrowth.

You should probably think about your question from a different direction... Where would the survivors of a bio-war choose to settle afterwards and what structures would the choose to defend against decay? These will be the structures which will be extremely habitable even 400 years after the fall.

Answer 2

The pyramids

They'll probably look about the same.