The Old House Paradox: Why Tearing Down Is Tearing Us Apart

I stood across the street, watching dust rise where a house used to be.

It wasn’t particularly grand. Not listed. Not the kind of place that would end up in a glossy book on European architecture. But it had charm. Wooden shutters, modest proportions, an old iron railing wrapped in ivy. A house you wouldn’t notice unless you cared. And clearly, nobody did. Because now it’s gone.

In its place: nothing yet. Just churned soil and a developer’s sign promising “Prestige Living in Luxembourg”. Prestige, in this case, soon to be rendered in beige render, perforated aluminium, and a strangely hostile number of balconies.Because nothing says “luxurious living” quite like a façade that looks perpetually annoyed.

We demolish quickly. We build quickly. But we lose slowly.

From Façades to Forgetting

Luxembourg has perfected a curious contradiction: we revere our castle ruins while casually signing demolition permits for heritage homes that are perfectly sound. We speak of national identity, of rootedness, of preserving the Luxembourgish language, and then we bulldoze the built evidence of the people who spoke it.

Call it cultural amnesia, paved in granite and LED spotlights.

There was a time when buildings were repaired. Adapted. Reused. But somewhere along the way, preservation became an inconvenience. And demolition? A default.

Walk through towns and village centres today. Count the original buildings. Then count the new white cubes.

The math tells a story, doesn’t it?

What Are We Really Replacing?

In Luxembourg demolition has become the go-to gesture for "improvement." Tear down a villa from the 1930s, possibly with hand-crafted stonework, mature trees, maybe even a story, and replace it with six flats, all priced for investors. The gain is financial. The loss is everything else.

Architecture used to be part of memory. Now it’s just a placeholder until the next build. We are flattening character for yield. And the result?

A landscape that feels newer, taller, shinier - and somehow emptier. Like a new smartphone that's somehow less satisfying than the one it replaced, despite the extra camera lenses.

When did we decide that a 1950s villa had nothing to teach us? That a century-old façade had nothing to show us?

The Book Metaphor, or Why Not Every Story Needs a Sequel

Think of buildings as books.

Some are classics. They deserve to be preserved, re-read, passed on. Others could use revision: a new foreword, a cleaned-up layout, better margins. But very few need to be pulped.

And yet, that’s how we treat them. Entire buildings tossed aside, as if what they offered - their story, their materials, their place in the streetscape - had no value.

As if beauty and proportion could be reproduced in a 3D BIM file and slapped onto a concrete box. Spoiler: they can’t. That’s like saying you can replace Hemingway with ChatGPT. The words might be there, but something essential is missing.

Elsewhere in Europe, They Chose to Read

Vienna has quietly renovated hundreds of thousands of homes, many still occupied during works, preserving neighbourhoods and affordability alike. In Paris and Bordeaux, architects like Lacaton & Vassal have added space and dignity to social housing blocks without evicting a single resident or demolishing a wall.

In Brussels, office towers have been turned into housing with breathtaking speed and minimal carbon cost.

They chose to read what was already there. To edit, not erase.

And the result? Cities that feel like cities, not PowerPoint decks with balconies and investor brochures that somehow became three-dimensional.

Meanwhile here...

Here, demolition is often speculative. Developers knock down before they know what they’re building. Sometimes before they secure financing. That’s how you end up with half-finished holes in the ground where beautiful buildings used to stand.

Like the Hôtel du Grand Chef in Mondorf, a graceful structure that held both memory and presence. It was partially demolished for a luxury flat project that later stalled. And the new apartments? Not even built.

A Wealthy Country That Demolishes Its Wealth

Luxembourg is one of the richest countries in Europe. We can afford to preserve. We can afford to renovate.

And yet, we behave like a place in a rush - to replace, to erase, to sell.

It’s as if we’ve collectively decided that architectural character is the one luxury we can’t afford. We apply for EU heritage status while destroying the ordinary buildings that make our towns liveable.

We talk about housing shortages while letting vacant buildings rot. Or worse: tear them down to build five unaffordable units in their place.

It’s not just short-sighted. It’s absurd.

Demolition, Sitte, and the Aesthetic Undercomplexity of It All

Camillo Sitte once warned against cities becoming too geometrically clean, too orderly, too stripped of layers. He championed the complexity of lived-in space, the richness that comes from history pressing up against the present.

Demolition, especially when done en masse, flattens that complexity. It replaces narrative with neutrality. Texture with efficiency.

In short, it gives us the very aesthetic undercomplexity that Sitte spent his career warning against.

And we’re doing it not out of need, but out of habit.

So What Are We Really Preserving?

Preserving a building isn’t about nostalgia. It’s about continuity. It’s about trusting that not everything valuable must be new. That age can mean richness. That imperfection can be beautiful.

When we demolish indiscriminately, we erase the physical proof that someone was here before us - someone who built, lived, planted, repaired, walked the same pavement.

We erase context. We erase continuity. We erase past.

And it’s not just a personal concern. Across Europe, and now in Luxembourg too, citizens are beginning to push back. The HouseEurope! Initiative, recently launched with support from Luxembourg’s architects, planners, and cultural organisations, calls for exactly this shift: renovation over demolition, care over erasure.

Their message is simple: stop wasting buildings, stop wasting identity, and start seeing the value that’s already there.

Final Thought: What Would a Renovation Culture Look Like?

Imagine if, instead of tearing down and starting over, we chose to see what already exists - really see it. Its weight, its craft, its quiet presence on the street.

Imagine a Luxembourg where architects and developers were required to live in what they build. Where investors couldn’t demolish until they proved renovation wasn’t possible. Where our first instinct wasn’t clearance, but care.

Maybe we should measure cities not by what they built and add to their skylines, but by what they choose to keep.

By how generously they repair. By what they refuse to throw away.

Because in the end, saving a building saves more than just stone and timber.

It saves a story.

And maybe, if we’re lucky, our place in it.

written by Helen M. Krauss