JC - re your post, if you don't mind a semi-aside:
The Greeks had two terms for (and conceptions of) Time -- Kairos was used to refer to the natural/proper time for an event or action (including internal subjective events like the time it takes to make a major -- and wise -- decision)...and they recognized that Kairos didn't always align with or fit into the demands of the other term/conception, ie Chronos, from where we get the word chronological and that refers to 'clock time', to the passing of time day after day and year after year.
And the Greeks made this distinction, being the ancient Greeks, because they wanted to distinguish the ever fleeting and ever changing things of this world (Chronos) from the internal processes involved in something like making a major decision (Kairos), which they saw as so deeply a personal/subjective process, one so tied to the individual human 'soul', that for them it qualified as eternal.
Which is to say: I think the kind of 'time' you're talking about, the kind of time an architect might take in letting the site show/tell him what kind of course it wants to be and in weighing so many different options/possibilities because he cares very much about doing his very best, is Kairos. Whereas John seems to be talking more about Chronos, the fleeting changing tastes over the years that might make what was once popular and 'good' back then considered less so today....or the same kind of time that might make a client ask an architect to hurry up, to take less time.
I suppose that's why there are tensions and conflicts sometimes between the client and the architect, i.e. because one is living in/on Chronos and the things of this world, while the other is trying to honour Kairos, and to put (golf in) The Kingdom first and foremost.
Two very valid approaches to/understanding of Time, of course -- which are also two very valid understandings of/value-systems for life; but for my tastes and temperament Kairos is where it's at, and what it's all about, and what I'm most interested in.
Peter