Nothing stands in the way of progress. The celebrated decisions of a couple decades ago are today’s eyesore, an obstacle to a bright and shiny future. Around this reality has grown the fascinating industry of building demolition. There are a number of ways to remove a building structure from the landscape. Some involve timed explosions, others are a matter of removing structure a piece at a time and carting it away, like large-scale surgery. It is impressive to watch buildings that in many cases took years to complete be edited out of modernity in a fraction of that time. Demolition is a very powerful tool for urban planning, and it allows the erasure of ideas that, with their brick and concrete, were probably thought to be permanent. I came across the video below of a Japanese demolition crew demolishing a building floor by floor, like the Japanese toy Daruma-otoshi. This video has been posted on quite a few sites, but it is what got me thinking about this post:
A few more videos of building demolition, but by precision implosion. The second video below should be noted for its smart, incisive commentary:
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