I looked at this building with one of our clients the other day. In the description of the property there was the phrase “potential teardown”. From the photos it didn’t really look like there was anything obviously wrong with the building, you can see some slight sagging in the center of the facade, but it doesn’t look major – so I was definitely curious.

Usually if the pics look fine and someone is saying – don’t bother saving this one – it means one of two things:

1. there are big time problems that you just can’t see yet
2. this is just my opinion/philosophy and there isn’t actually anything fundamentally wrong with the building

Personally, I’m on team – save the cool old buildings. But seeing this one got me really thinking about this phenomenon in a broader sense… it’s an interesting look at how people see things in general. The lens through which they view maybe one specific thing like a building… or maybe everything.

What is worth saving, or not… what to put energy into, or not. When to salvage something and transform it into something new and potentially so much more than it was before… and when to just destroy the whole thing and start over.

The thing with buildings… and life… is that sometimes the essence or a part of something is truly beautiful, and it wouldn’t take that much extra energy to save or transform it… cleared of the old worn out things keeping it from shining… and sometimes it’s really time to destroy it and create something entirely new. The question for me is always, can we see any given thing with enough clarity to know which to choose for ourselves.