I was talking to an industry friend yesterday about the process of facade retention within the field of demolition. For those of you that don’t know, the process is precisely as the name suggests. It is a demolition and construction technique in which the external walls or “façade” of a building are preserved while the rest of the structure – usually the interior and sometimes the roof – is demolished and rebuilt.
It is a process I have encountered many times over the years; and it is one that I find endlessly fascinating, because it truly tests the ingenuity and engineering skill of the demolition contractor.
Which is why it struck me as odd that this thought had never occurred to me before. That facade retention is, in many ways, the perfect metaphor for the demolition industry of today. And the more I thought about it, the more similarities I found.
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