Building for the Ages

Lately, it feels like everyone I meet is locked into this forward-thinking mindset around health and wellness—what people are calling "Medicine 2.0." Names like Huberman, Hyman, Attia, and Sinclair are everywhere. They are rewriting the playbook on how we age, making it feel like humans are outpacing even the buildings we live in when it comes to longevity. This?got me thinking about buildings in a big way last month when my wife and I were wandering through the Acropolis in Athens. There we were, marveling at structures that have stood tall for millennia while much of the city's more modern architecture crumbles into mediocrity. How did we, as a society, lose the thread on building for the ages?

Outside of a few gems, the architecture in Athens just doesn't hold up. Sure, there was a spark of creativity between the 1930s and 1970s—designs roughly inspired by Le Corbusier, Mies Van der Rohe, and the European modernists. But it's clear, as time has passed, that these structures don't age with the same grace as the ancient ruins. So, what happened in the decades that followed? The 80s? 90s? 2000s?

And it's not just Athens. So many cities have this same story. The places we hold up as the most beautiful in the world—Paris, Barcelona, London, Florence—they still stand tall because their historic architecture survived. Walk through those cities, and the buildings around for centuries far outshine anything built in the last fifty years. The modern stuff is easy to ignore, hidden in alleys or overshadowed by something grander from another era. It's the design and, more so, the craftsmanship and dedication to detail that set these buildings apart. There was pride in the craft that is rare in today's development.?

But why did we stop building with that spirit? If we love these historic cities so much, why aren't we pushing for the same kind of architectural soul today? My guess is twofold: money and lack of imagination.

Take New York's Financial District. It's like a treasure chest of American architectural history, packed with iconic skyscrapers that symbolized Wall Street's dominance. Now that many on? Wall Street have dispersed to New Jersey, Texas, or South Florida, several of those buildings are being converted into residential spaces. And while some of these transformations are beautiful, many of them—especially the post-1950s office buildings—are just plain ugly, built without any real thought for aesthetics, designed purely for function.

The developers who are buying these buildings are trying to make homes out of spaces never meant to be homes. It's like forcing a square peg into a round hole, and the results are just as awkward. Instead of keeping these structures alive for another 100 years, we're setting ourselves up for more teardowns in a decade.

Here's the thing: we need to let go of what isn't working. Rather than clinging to these uninspired office buildings, we should give developers the freedom to start fresh. Let them tear down what's?ugly, design something that can stand the test of time, and in doing so create a building for the ages.

Let's do this-

Shaun