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Industrialization and Baumol's cost disease are the reasons why. For the same reasons that you need to go to an artisinal bakery to get handmade bread today, y

Industrialization and Baumol's cost disease are the reasons why. For the same reasons that you need to go to an artisinal bakery to get handmade bread today, you cannot get anything with significant ornament in it without paying enormously. Industrial bakeries are far more efficient so only a select few can afford to pay for good bread, and so there are far fewer individual bakers, and they're more expensive because there's less demand - they can't make it up on volume. It's the same with artisans. My father was a plasterer in his 20s, and worked with old men who did the ceiling decorations in the British Embassy in Dublin. But they were the last of their kind, because nobody wanted that any more. And now they're all dead. Richly decorated edifices could be risen today, but they're far more expensive, and thus we can't afford to roll the dice and end up with a bunch of good buildings by process of survival. Instead, everything is mediocre and designed to amortise to zero value within a few decades, to be torn down and built again, not better, merely different.

bsder 6y ago
And maintenance. For every 1 of those pretty chapels there are 10 that are falling apart. Ironically, look at Rosslyn Chapel--it was basically falling apart until The DaVinci Code caused enough tourism that they had enough revenue to repair it.
- pessimizer 6y ago
  Everything eventually falls apart. Rosslyn Chapel is 600 years old.
  - vidanay 6y ago
    See: Notre Dame being practically abandoned for a century or so.
novalis78 6y ago
“The contributions of sound money to human flourishing are not restricted to scientific and technological advance; they can also be seen in the art world. It is no coincidence that Florentine and Venetian artists were the leaders of the Renaissance, as these were the two cities which led Europe’s adoption of sound money. The Baroque, Neoclassical, Romantic, Realistic and Post-impressionistic schools were all financed by wealthy patrons holding sound money, with a very low time preference and the patience to wait for years, or even decades for the completion of masterpieces meant to survive centuries.” https://books.google.com/books?id=Sw5TDwAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover&dq=Saifedean+architecture&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjR7rjquJHqAhUDZjUKHVctAJUQ6AEIJTAA#v=onepage&q=Saifedean%20architecture&f=false https://books.google.com/books?id=Sw5TDwAAQBAJ&printsec=fron...
gibsonf1 6y ago
Actually, the opposite is true. The ornamentation of the past was painfully and time consumingly created manually. It is trivial today to mass-produce ornamentation - a simple form insert into a concrete form can create any desired ornamentation. Frank Lloyd Wright is a key example of using ornamentation within the context of modern construction techniques and materials, his concrete block houses a classic example of both with the Hotel Biltmore in Arizona a masterpiece example of it. The key issue is not cost, it is philosophy. The architect striving to present their view of the world. For Wright, his work focuses around the human experience, around human scale, all ornament reinforcing that his buildings are to be measured by our experience of and relation to them. Many of the more grotesque examples of modern architecture are by architects who believe the world is chaos, in flux, that humans have no place in the world, etc. [Footnote on Wright] If you happen to be taller than 5'8 when visiting a Wright building (like myself), bend your knees until you are at that eye-level to appreciate the full experience. https://wrightchat.savewright.org/viewtopic.php?t=8915 https://wrightchat.savewright.org/viewtopic.php?t=8915
- vidanay 6y ago
  Yeah, but aren't FLW houses/buildings notorious for being crap quality construction? Leaking, cracking, sinking, and molding?
  - RNCTX 6y ago
    No, just the opposite. His schools have had issues, because the schools were meant to be sandboxes for the students to get real world experience, and try things which may or may not work. The fact that the schools have become landmarks after his death has nothing to do with Wright's design philosophies. If you look at Wright's own house, it incorporates lots of clever ideas in terms of engineering more rugged forms which will hold up over time (like molding profiles that are designed to be coped from multiple directions to keep joints in place, and stained glass patterns that lend themselves to 'hiding' extra reinforcement on one side where the structure will be invisible to the beholder, for example). Here are my pics of his house when I went through it last time I was in Chicago. I tried to get as many such above examples as possible... https://imgur.com/a/ontIR https://imgur.com/a/ontIR
andrekandre 6y ago
for some reason, i feel like software has followed a similar tragectory... or maybe it is just my bias, working in consumer apps...
buzzkillington 6y ago
>For the same reasons that you need to go to an artisinal bakery to get handmade bread today, you cannot get anything with significant ornament in it without paying enormously. The 'bread' you get in the Anglosphere is a crime against humanity. Not because it is machine made, but because it comes with a philosophy: looks matter more than taste. Meanwhile Eastern Europe still uses the old soviet factory bread and the thing tastes like manna when you get it fresh.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
mcnamaratw 6y ago
That's relevant but it's definitely not the whole problem. As the article shows, lots of architectural ugliness isn't cost-saving at all. It costs extra and makes the buildings less usable http://news.mit.edu/2008/sponge-book-1007 http://news.mit.edu/2008/sponge-book-1007 Sometimes it costs a lot extra and is much less usable. https://thetech.com/2010/03/19/statasuit-v130-n14 https://thetech.com/2010/03/19/statasuit-v130-n14
- ooobit2 6y ago
  Sweet Jesus. That sponge building is hideous. Reminds me a bit of the State Farm campus in Tempe, AZ. When I first walked there at night, I thought, Wow, this is gorgeous. And then I went during the day, and was blinded at every turn. All glass buildings are a nightmare.
jariel 6y ago
This and cultural foundations which provide a context for the architecture. Especially in the 'new world' it'd be hard for a culturally aware 'rich man' to even know what to build because often the context doesn't exist. If you want to build something traditional in downtown Stockholm, you have a few choices. If design is a 'language' - many areas literally don't have a language other than the functional. So the creative aspects end up being ... 'whatever'. I'm pretty sure that, for example, most places in Switzerland has some pretty strict rules for what you can build.
wisty 6y ago
Cheap buildings are cheap, but when they have money I think architects just try to be unique, which just ends up being uniquely ugly in most cases. I don't think this is entirely true. A lot of the most hideous (in my opinion) modern buildings look like they actually spent money looking horrible. They have contorted structures that seem to be screaming out "I could fall over at any moment" which must rely heavily on load-bearing frames. Their "brutally honest" concrete often looks like it does nothing more than providing an ugly facade, and creating more work for a hidden steel skeleton. I think there's two separate complaints - first that cheap modern buildings are cheap, functional (as long as they hold up), and ugly. Think Stalinist city blocks. Second, the modern showpieces are even worse, actively going out of their way to look horrible, like some Stalinist government buildings. It's not the fault of architects if private companies want to build cheap square feet for cubicles or cheap apartments. Maybe the public could regulate against it, but that's only going to happen if they trust architects to do a better job with more money. But when architects do have a bit of money to waste on making a building look good, I think they're often pressured to make something original. Previous designs had evolved over maybe thousands of years, of course they are much better, just try drawing a totally original concept for a car that other people won't think is cringey. There's also more time pressure - presumably older designers had far more time for planning (a king can wait a little before a new cathedral is built, a mayor can't wait till the next election). And while new materials and techniques can make new things possible, those things are not always attractive to people who spent their early childhood stacking bricks (so anything relying too heavily on tension just instinctively feels like a disaster waiting to happen).
brokenkebab 6y ago
It's a well-documented cultural revolution which praised, awarded, and celebrated departure from traditional aesthetics, so we can't reduce the phenomenon to just economy of cheap concrete.
xpaqui 6y ago
This is false. I regularly buy artisan bread for the same or lower price of the bread in the supermarket.

bsder 6y ago

And maintenance. For every 1 of those pretty chapels there are 10 that are falling apart. Ironically, look at Rosslyn Chapel--it was basically falling apart until The DaVinci Code caused enough tourism that they had enough revenue to repair it.

pessimizer 6y ago
Everything eventually falls apart. Rosslyn Chapel is 600 years old.
- vidanay 6y ago
  See: Notre Dame being practically abandoned for a century or so.

novalis78 6y ago

“The contributions of sound money to human flourishing are not restricted to scientific and technological advance; they can also be seen in the art world. It is no coincidence that Florentine and Venetian artists were the leaders of the Renaissance, as these were the two cities which led Europe’s adoption of sound money. The Baroque, Neoclassical, Romantic, Realistic and Post-impressionistic schools were all financed by wealthy patrons holding sound money, with a very low time preference and the patience to wait for years, or even decades for the completion of masterpieces meant to survive centuries.” https://books.google.com/books?id=Sw5TDwAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover&dq=Saifedean+architecture&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjR7rjquJHqAhUDZjUKHVctAJUQ6AEIJTAA#v=onepage&q=Saifedean%20architecture&f=false https://books.google.com/books?id=Sw5TDwAAQBAJ&printsec=fron...

gibsonf1 6y ago

Actually, the opposite is true. The ornamentation of the past was painfully and time consumingly created manually. It is trivial today to mass-produce ornamentation - a simple form insert into a concrete form can create any desired ornamentation. Frank Lloyd Wright is a key example of using ornamentation within the context of modern construction techniques and materials, his concrete block houses a classic example of both with the Hotel Biltmore in Arizona a masterpiece example of it. The key issue is not cost, it is philosophy. The architect striving to present their view of the world. For Wright, his work focuses around the human experience, around human scale, all ornament reinforcing that his buildings are to be measured by our experience of and relation to them. Many of the more grotesque examples of modern architecture are by architects who believe the world is chaos, in flux, that humans have no place in the world, etc. [Footnote on Wright] If you happen to be taller than 5'8 when visiting a Wright building (like myself), bend your knees until you are at that eye-level to appreciate the full experience. https://wrightchat.savewright.org/viewtopic.php?t=8915 https://wrightchat.savewright.org/viewtopic.php?t=8915

vidanay 6y ago
Yeah, but aren't FLW houses/buildings notorious for being crap quality construction? Leaking, cracking, sinking, and molding?
- RNCTX 6y ago
  No, just the opposite. His schools have had issues, because the schools were meant to be sandboxes for the students to get real world experience, and try things which may or may not work. The fact that the schools have become landmarks after his death has nothing to do with Wright's design philosophies. If you look at Wright's own house, it incorporates lots of clever ideas in terms of engineering more rugged forms which will hold up over time (like molding profiles that are designed to be coped from multiple directions to keep joints in place, and stained glass patterns that lend themselves to 'hiding' extra reinforcement on one side where the structure will be invisible to the beholder, for example). Here are my pics of his house when I went through it last time I was in Chicago. I tried to get as many such above examples as possible... https://imgur.com/a/ontIR https://imgur.com/a/ontIR

andrekandre 6y ago

for some reason, i feel like software has followed a similar tragectory... or maybe it is just my bias, working in consumer apps...

buzzkillington 6y ago

>For the same reasons that you need to go to an artisinal bakery to get handmade bread today, you cannot get anything with significant ornament in it without paying enormously. The 'bread' you get in the Anglosphere is a crime against humanity. Not because it is machine made, but because it comes with a philosophy: looks matter more than taste. Meanwhile Eastern Europe still uses the old soviet factory bread and the thing tastes like manna when you get it fresh.

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

mcnamaratw 6y ago

That's relevant but it's definitely not the whole problem. As the article shows, lots of architectural ugliness isn't cost-saving at all. It costs extra and makes the buildings less usable http://news.mit.edu/2008/sponge-book-1007 http://news.mit.edu/2008/sponge-book-1007 Sometimes it costs a lot extra and is much less usable. https://thetech.com/2010/03/19/statasuit-v130-n14 https://thetech.com/2010/03/19/statasuit-v130-n14

ooobit2 6y ago
Sweet Jesus. That sponge building is hideous. Reminds me a bit of the State Farm campus in Tempe, AZ. When I first walked there at night, I thought, Wow, this is gorgeous. And then I went during the day, and was blinded at every turn. All glass buildings are a nightmare.

jariel 6y ago

This and cultural foundations which provide a context for the architecture. Especially in the 'new world' it'd be hard for a culturally aware 'rich man' to even know what to build because often the context doesn't exist. If you want to build something traditional in downtown Stockholm, you have a few choices. If design is a 'language' - many areas literally don't have a language other than the functional. So the creative aspects end up being ... 'whatever'. I'm pretty sure that, for example, most places in Switzerland has some pretty strict rules for what you can build.

wisty 6y ago

Cheap buildings are cheap, but when they have money I think architects just try to be unique, which just ends up being uniquely ugly in most cases. I don't think this is entirely true. A lot of the most hideous (in my opinion) modern buildings look like they actually spent money looking horrible. They have contorted structures that seem to be screaming out "I could fall over at any moment" which must rely heavily on load-bearing frames. Their "brutally honest" concrete often looks like it does nothing more than providing an ugly facade, and creating more work for a hidden steel skeleton. I think there's two separate complaints - first that cheap modern buildings are cheap, functional (as long as they hold up), and ugly. Think Stalinist city blocks. Second, the modern showpieces are even worse, actively going out of their way to look horrible, like some Stalinist government buildings. It's not the fault of architects if private companies want to build cheap square feet for cubicles or cheap apartments. Maybe the public could regulate against it, but that's only going to happen if they trust architects to do a better job with more money. But when architects do have a bit of money to waste on making a building look good, I think they're often pressured to make something original. Previous designs had evolved over maybe thousands of years, of course they are much better, just try drawing a totally original concept for a car that other people won't think is cringey. There's also more time pressure - presumably older designers had far more time for planning (a king can wait a little before a new cathedral is built, a mayor can't wait till the next election). And while new materials and techniques can make new things possible, those things are not always attractive to people who spent their early childhood stacking bricks (so anything relying too heavily on tension just instinctively feels like a disaster waiting to happen).

brokenkebab 6y ago

It's a well-documented cultural revolution which praised, awarded, and celebrated departure from traditional aesthetics, so we can't reduce the phenomenon to just economy of cheap concrete.

xpaqui 6y ago

This is false. I regularly buy artisan bread for the same or lower price of the bread in the supermarket.