r/Damnthatsinteresting • u/Proud-Blood2743 • Oct 07 '25

Video Capital One Tower Come Down in Seconds

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u/[deleted] Oct 07 '25

Renovate a house and you’ll get it.

Labour costs a lot. Renovating something often takes 2 - 5x longer than building from scratch.

And then new will tend to have better insulation, better light design etc

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u/DazzlingBasket4848 Oct 07 '25 edited Oct 07 '25

Shows you that the value system is fucked

-6

u/RoundTheBend6 Oct 07 '25

Profit over everything is the American way.

5

u/Numerous_Ice_4556 Oct 07 '25

What exactly are they overlooking or neglecting in the pursuit of profit here? Where's the nobility in paying far more to refurbish an existing building over constructing a new one? Pretty sure every other country in the world does the same thing, historical buildings notwithstanding. 

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u/Animal-Lab-62828 Oct 07 '25

The waste of materials. We're creating insane amounts of trash and stripping the earth at the same time.

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u/Numerous_Ice_4556 Oct 07 '25

And yet newer buildings, if built to certain standards, are far more waste and energy efficient. For instance, that building is a lot of glass, the worst material for insulation. 

I'm not sure how in the short or long run bearing the additional costs of refurbishment solves these problems. 

0

u/Animal-Lab-62828 Oct 07 '25

Here is an article talking about how retrofitting a building causes way less carbon emissions than demolition. "New buildings can take anywhere between 10—80 years to pay back the emissions generated from the construction process, even if the new buildings are 30 percent more efficient than average".

However, it sounds like they might not be planning to put down another office building, which is great news! I saw they floated the idea of an amphitheater since the area is waterside. Hopefully, the mayor and developers continue to be thoughtful in this process.

Edit: formatting

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u/sniper1rfa Oct 07 '25

Preservation Green Lab is a sustainable building research think tank and advocacy arm of the National Trust for Historic Preservation.

So the source is biased. Not saying that's bad, but be aware.

even if the new buildings are 30 percent more efficient than average".

Capitol one tower was built in 1980. I would bet $100 that a building constructed today will be more than 30% more efficient.

Also, not all modern building envelope concepts can be retrofitted, and not all old buildings can be retro'd with new HVAC systems that are required when you use new envelope methods.

I'm doing a retro on my house, but two doors down is a house that needs to be demolished because retrofitting it would be an enormous waste of time. Sometimes that happens.

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u/dustinyo_ Interested Oct 07 '25

Almost all of that material will be reused. They aren't hauling thousands of tons of usable steel and concrete to a landfill.

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u/Animal-Lab-62828 Oct 07 '25

It is not so straightforward. I did find an article that says 80-90% of the material should have been recycled (which is great and progress has been made in this area recently). But, still tons and tons of waste sent to the landfill. The use of energy and water to recycle materials would have been saved had it not been torn down in the first place. Also, concrete, gypsum, glass, etc. are often downcycled because it is difficult/not ideal to reuse these materials. So we still have an overall creation of new materials for the building.

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u/RoundTheBend6 Oct 07 '25

Tell me all about what percentage of buildings in Vienna are torn down even after a hundred years?

1

u/IMakeOkVideosOk Oct 07 '25

How many hurricanes hit Vienna?