Identifying building obsolescence: towards increasing buildings' service life

Purpose Obsolescence is a decline or loss of utility of an object, building or product. Different types of building obsolescence decrease buildings' utility and shorten their service life. The purpose of this paper is identification of building obsolescence types and the relevant factors that affect buildings to become obsolete. It is also intended to categorise building obsolescence types to provide a contribution towards increasing building service life and delivering sustainability. Design/methodology/approach A systematic literature review is applied to conduct this research. It follows five steps: (1) formulating the research question; (2) locating studies; (3) selecting and evaluating relevant studies; (4) analysing the findings; (5) reporting and making use of the results. Findings Via this study, it is revealed that there are 33 types of building obsolescence. They are clustered in 10 categories regarding their conceptual and causing aspects and are presented based on their recurrence in the literature. According to the findings, economic obsolescence (including economic, financial and market obsolescence types) and functional obsolescence (including functional, use and utility obsolescence types) are the most remarkable categories. Originality/value Investigating the literature makes it clear that building obsolescence types have been studied intermittently with infrequent profound exploration of the relationship between them. This paper presents a comprehensive identification of building obsolescence types and introduces obsolescence categories that classify connected obsolescence types. It is a new framework for further studies on building obsolescence to find more effective prevention strategies to mitigate social, economic and environmental consequences of building obsolescence.