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I'm going to go out on a limb here and say that steel tinker-toys are likely cheaper than big rock piles, even if the steel buildings aren't as safe and won't l

I'm going to go out on a limb here and say that steel tinker-toys are likely cheaper than big rock piles, even if the steel buildings aren't as safe and won't last a thousand years.

mrspeaker 11y ago
I often wonder that when I walk around the city: a lot of the new buildings look so shoddy in their construction - if you buy an apartment, it's probably not something that will get passed down to your kids' kids. In that case, do you own part of the land underneath the building, or... what?
- deet 11y ago
  If you own a condo or co-op and the building starts to degrade, the owners will vote (via an elected board) whether to make repairs to the building. If they vote to do that, in addition to the apartment, you own your unit's share of the repair bill, which gets passed to you as an assessment. So when you buy the apartment you're buying an obligation to pay for the building's repairs (assuming a majority of the other owners want to keep the building standing as well). If you disagree with everyone else and don't pay the assessment, the other owners (again via the condo board) can put a lien on your property and sell it to cover the amount you owe. If it got really really bad there's probably a situation in which the owners of the building could vote to have it demolished and rebuilt. The take away is that in addition to the apartment itself, you're actually buying shares in a legal entity and get certain rights and obligations as a result of that. It's that entity that owns the building and the land underneath. How exactly the entity is structured depends on whether it's setup as a condominium or cooperative.
  - throwaway889932 11y ago
    As deet said. A practical example of pitfalls with high-rise condos is where there's a swimming pool inside the condo structure. Every time there is a crack, owners will get a $20,000 or more assessment each to fix it.
usrusr 11y ago
That's what i thought when he was talking about the Inca rope bridges: much of our modern construction requires so much maintenance that it seems to be closer to the annual replacement cycle of the woven bridges than to the near-eternity of stone arches. But not steel and concrete is not only cheaper than cutting natural stone, they are also cheaper than the cheap alternative that dominated the millenia before (even when concrete was available in some periods): bricks, the main architectural workhorse from ancient Babylon to Rome to deep into the industrial age. Exposed brick has a quality of functional beauty that reinforced concrete can never achieve, because there all the function is hidden inside the concrete and the outer shape is completely disconnected from function, either completely plain or arbitrarily ornamented. Brick on the other hand has a visible functional structure, the arches never lie and ornaments (which are never entirely afunctional in architecture: they distract the eye from dirt, and dirt will be unavoidable over time) can easily be included using standard or special blocks and blend in perfectly with the "natural" details that are there for technical reasons. Occasionally i dream up a future that would have swarms of bricklaying bots that would turn architectural drawings into houses cheaper than poured concrete. Never did any calculations though, so i don't know if the price advantage would even be possible with hyopthotical zero-cost robots.

I'm going to go out on a limb here and say that steel tinker-toys are likely cheaper than big rock piles, even if the steel buildings aren't as safe and won't last a thousand years.

mrspeaker 11y ago

I often wonder that when I walk around the city: a lot of the new buildings look so shoddy in their construction - if you buy an apartment, it's probably not something that will get passed down to your kids' kids. In that case, do you own part of the land underneath the building, or... what?

deet 11y ago
If you own a condo or co-op and the building starts to degrade, the owners will vote (via an elected board) whether to make repairs to the building. If they vote to do that, in addition to the apartment, you own your unit's share of the repair bill, which gets passed to you as an assessment. So when you buy the apartment you're buying an obligation to pay for the building's repairs (assuming a majority of the other owners want to keep the building standing as well). If you disagree with everyone else and don't pay the assessment, the other owners (again via the condo board) can put a lien on your property and sell it to cover the amount you owe. If it got really really bad there's probably a situation in which the owners of the building could vote to have it demolished and rebuilt. The take away is that in addition to the apartment itself, you're actually buying shares in a legal entity and get certain rights and obligations as a result of that. It's that entity that owns the building and the land underneath. How exactly the entity is structured depends on whether it's setup as a condominium or cooperative.
- throwaway889932 11y ago
  As deet said. A practical example of pitfalls with high-rise condos is where there's a swimming pool inside the condo structure. Every time there is a crack, owners will get a $20,000 or more assessment each to fix it.

usrusr 11y ago

That's what i thought when he was talking about the Inca rope bridges: much of our modern construction requires so much maintenance that it seems to be closer to the annual replacement cycle of the woven bridges than to the near-eternity of stone arches. But not steel and concrete is not only cheaper than cutting natural stone, they are also cheaper than the cheap alternative that dominated the millenia before (even when concrete was available in some periods): bricks, the main architectural workhorse from ancient Babylon to Rome to deep into the industrial age. Exposed brick has a quality of functional beauty that reinforced concrete can never achieve, because there all the function is hidden inside the concrete and the outer shape is completely disconnected from function, either completely plain or arbitrarily ornamented. Brick on the other hand has a visible functional structure, the arches never lie and ornaments (which are never entirely afunctional in architecture: they distract the eye from dirt, and dirt will be unavoidable over time) can easily be included using standard or special blocks and blend in perfectly with the "natural" details that are there for technical reasons. Occasionally i dream up a future that would have swarms of bricklaying bots that would turn architectural drawings into houses cheaper than poured concrete. Never did any calculations though, so i don't know if the price advantage would even be possible with hyopthotical zero-cost robots.