In light of plans to bring the neoclassical Penn Station and Frank Lloyd Wright's lost pavilions back to life, Aaron Betsky argues that architects should focus on renovating existing buildings rather than replacing new with old, in this Opinion column.

It is a standard plot twist in science fiction films: a loved one has died, but the dead one rises again, whether as a ghost, a mechanical reproduction, or a clone. It almost always goes wrong, because the new version is never quite the same. The same situation now confronts architecture: should we resurrect dead buildings, ones that were torn down or destroyed decades or even centuries ago"
In Berlin, the rebuilt City Palace of the Prussian Kings nears completion (supposedly in 2019), though in this case it is just a facade over a grab bag of different functions. Down the road, the baroque Resurrection Church was rebuilt in 2004, and looks resplendent, if disconcertingly new. Now a New York architect, Richard Cameron, has proposed rebuilding the city's 1910 Penn Station, which was torn down in 1963, and then extending its classical language to cover several square blocks of Manhattan's centre.
Entrepreneur Michael Miner has taken it upon himself to resurrect a Frank Lloyd Wright pavilion in Banff, which was torn down in 1938. Perhaps we don't even need to rebuild ? the architect David Moreno has produced digital versions of Wright-designed structures such as the 1912 Larkin Building that are so realistic that it is har...