Yesterday morning I attended a CTBUH (Council on Tall Buildings and Urban Habitat) breakfast event called The Story of Marketing Tall Buildings.

It consisted of a talk by William Murray, who is Group Director of the UK-based creative agency Wordsearch, and then a panel discussion with some of Toronto’s leading developers. (David Wex of Urban Capital was one of the panelists. Many of you will probably remember him from this BARED post.)

Shown above is one of William’s slides. The title is: The roots of the tree. And I thought it was a great metaphor for what tall buildings, well really all buildings, should aspire to do.

The tendency is to think of buildings as objects. Here, look at how beautiful this thing is. That’s obviously important, but what about its roots? What about the way in which it interfaces with its context and hopefully gives back? Is it a catalyst for positive change?

I thought it was a good slide.