2 ms·

Here, have a look at a representative sample of images: https://duckduckgo.com/?q=new+orleans+french+quarter&bext=msl&atb=v1-1&iax=images&ia=images https://duck

Here, have a look at a representative sample of images: https://duckduckgo.com/?q=new+orleans+french+quarter&bext=msl&atb=v1-1&iax=images&ia=images https://duckduckgo.com/?q=new+orleans+french+quarter&bext=ms... Just look at any of those wrought iron railings. From a purely functional viewpoint they could do their job of being a railing to stop you from falling off the balcony with a series of plain vertical bars. But they are these elaborate concoctions of decoration and detail that someone had to cast, bend, and shape. You'll find similar aesthetic choices made throughout the city; a lot of houses have wrought iron bars over their windows to deter breakins, and very few of them are the simplest, cheapest design possible, for instance. I am quite sure these buildings have made a profit; hell, the ones in the French Quarter are a big part of the modern tourist economy that draws people and money from all over. But there are a lot of details all over that serve purely to make the buildings pleasing to live and work in, which tend to be the first thing to go in modern architecture driven entirely by maximizing profits (and also still in love with the inhuman brutalist visions of people like Le Corbusier, when it comes to building housing).

kortilla 7y ago
But making a building aesthetically pleasing usually is for the purpose of increasing profit (attracting tenants, etc). Any building where the owner is worried about resale value or attracting long-term customers who care about visual appeal is incentivized not to cut corners if it’s any kind of buyer’s market.
cortesoft 7y ago
Maximizing profit is not always achieved by going for pure function over form. A lot of places try to maximize profit by making a place aesthetically pleasing so more people come.
kazen44 7y ago
One of the supposed reasons for this is the relation between labour and product prices. Before WW2, labour was far cheaper then materials, especially in Europe.
- wwarner 7y ago
  Thanks for making this point. Beat me to it.
- notahacker 7y ago
  Labour being cheap made elaborately designed wrought iron balconies possible for relatively modest housing. It didn't make them necessary (and relatively speaking, the iron itself was a lot more expensive then)
- perl4ever 7y ago
  I've often thought that a lot of the problems with modern society people complain about could be solved, and can only be solved, by making "stuff" much more expensive relative to labor. And the straightforward way to do that (not "simple") would be to put a huge universal tax on energy. A day's labor is about 600 watt hours, and let's say it is (or should be) 8 hours at $15/hr plus benefits, so a reasonable cost is $180. That means human power costs about $300/kwh. By comparison, electricity is maybe $0.12/kwh. My modest proposal is that we should tax energy (maybe exempting renewables) so that it's only, I dunno, 20 times cheaper than human power. This would make an enormous reduction in the amount of materials disposed, in the durability of machinery, and so on.

kortilla 7y ago

But making a building aesthetically pleasing usually is for the purpose of increasing profit (attracting tenants, etc). Any building where the owner is worried about resale value or attracting long-term customers who care about visual appeal is incentivized not to cut corners if it’s any kind of buyer’s market.

cortesoft 7y ago

Maximizing profit is not always achieved by going for pure function over form. A lot of places try to maximize profit by making a place aesthetically pleasing so more people come.

kazen44 7y ago

One of the supposed reasons for this is the relation between labour and product prices. Before WW2, labour was far cheaper then materials, especially in Europe.

wwarner 7y ago
Thanks for making this point. Beat me to it.
notahacker 7y ago
Labour being cheap made elaborately designed wrought iron balconies possible for relatively modest housing. It didn't make them necessary (and relatively speaking, the iron itself was a lot more expensive then)
perl4ever 7y ago
I've often thought that a lot of the problems with modern society people complain about could be solved, and can only be solved, by making "stuff" much more expensive relative to labor. And the straightforward way to do that (not "simple") would be to put a huge universal tax on energy. A day's labor is about 600 watt hours, and let's say it is (or should be) 8 hours at $15/hr plus benefits, so a reasonable cost is $180. That means human power costs about $300/kwh. By comparison, electricity is maybe $0.12/kwh. My modest proposal is that we should tax energy (maybe exempting renewables) so that it's only, I dunno, 20 times cheaper than human power. This would make an enormous reduction in the amount of materials disposed, in the durability of machinery, and so on.