From the BBC’s Culture section are some proposed buildings that were never built, including the Third Reich’s Volkashalle, a manmade mountain, and Frank Lloyd Wright’s mile-tall skyscraper, among others. From afar they represent history, but in their planning stages they were plans for the future. Through them we can consider how things could have gone differently: what if the Third Reich had existed for one thousand years? what if we did have a giant monument to Newton?
And while this may be a funny idea considering they never existed, this reminds us of the permanence of buildings. Buildings are our silent links to the past which exist because of humans and for humans. Over the years, they often are populated by countless people, serving as tangible links between historical strangers. They carry architecture and culture into the future for us to experience, and yet we have the power to alter and tear them down. On a more individualized scale, buildings allow us to revisit our memories when we return to the places where we were earlier in life.
As you can deduce, demolitions make us weepy.
Image: “Cénotaphe à Newton” by Boullée via Wikimedia Commons