1. 99% of everything is crap. 2. Crap buildings get torn down before beautiful buildings. This article brings up many examples of modern crap, but ignores the

1. 99% of everything is crap. 2. Crap buildings get torn down before beautiful buildings. This article brings up many examples of modern crap, but ignores the fact that most of that crap will not be painstakingly conserved for centuries to come, as many of the good examples shown have been. There do exist examples of beautiful modern architecture. The article also makes some valid points, such as how modern architects seem to be highly reluctant to use ornate details. The reason may be simple economics. The modern international bidding process heavily favours architects who can deliver a beautiful building for less money. Ornate details may please the eye, but they are undeniably expensive. Some cities have started mandating a certain percentage of any public project be spent on art, but that art is often an afterthought. They'll build a utilitarian overpass and then regulations will force them to put up a hideous and overpriced sculpture in the middle of a pedestrians nightmare. The only people who will ever see it are whizzing past at 80 kph. We have the will to make the places we live in more beautiful, but how can we better quantify beauty and find ways to fit it into city budgets? I feel that a system flexible enough to say, "Yes, scrap the sculpture and do the funky masonry." is a system in which ornateness could return.