Meaningful Returns

Sitting on the corner of Wade Avenue and St. Mary’s Street in Raleigh is a four-story building shaped like a box, which I would guess was built right in the middle of the 20th century. It served as office space for a number of governmental and non-profit agencies up until sometime in the summer of 2014, when it was bought by a local investor who intended to build several condos on what many would consider prime Raleigh real estate.

In the interest of full disclosure, I tend to be a bit cynical about such projects, since the current movement usually involves levelling everything in sight and starting from scratch to build uninspiring residential and commercial spaces. But this particular project has caught my eye as an exception, simply because they left the bones of the building completely intact and are transforming it into something which, if not groundbreaking, is at least a unique structure with a touch of whimsy.

We don’t seem to be very good at using what we have. We buy new things because we can. And though that’s not always the worst answer, Excess without Creativity often turns into Waste.

Sometimes people get very angry about Excess as if it automatically becomes Waste, but that misses the full picture. It’s not that Excess has to become Waste; it’s the skipping of the hard work and imagination required of Creativity that leads us to throw away and tear down and buy brand new when sometimes all we need is to repair, clean up, or repurpose something that has already been used.

When’s the last time you caught a whiff of the Thrill of the Hunt? It’s never too late to start exercising that Imagination muscle. Clothes, cars, homes, stereo systems, instruments, furniture, art…the possibilities are endless!!