Why We Don't Build 'Beautiful' Buildings Anymore

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[TheBritalianJob]

As someone who’s renovating a historic villa in Italy, I was shocked at how affordable ornamentation is. Take a window, that classical decorative pediment above it is literally a slab of cement that’s cast on site in a mould. Wash and repeat per window. This is how ornamentation has been done in Italy since Roman times. I GUARANTEE it costs less than that silly modern cladding that the put all over buildings now.

[AVKnecht]

Ornaments were mass produced in the past. I live in a part of Nuremberg that was built in the late 1800s to house the workers of the factories and nearly every building has some kind of ornamentation or other decorations. If you look carefully while you walk through the city you will see the same gargoyles, eagles, arches, stone carvings and whatnot over and over again.

[leogobbi]

As an architect I can assure it's perfectly possible to build affordable and very nice looking contemporary architecture with modern materials & techniques. There are lots of projects just like that in several countries, especially Europe.
That's just not as common as could be due to the factors Adam pointed out, commoditization of buildings and the damn car centric policies that rule our cities.
But there are a lot of designers, planners and others battling to change that

[stefanie-marie]

What also bothers me is this "grey-trend". In my area (Austrian countryside) almost EVERY new house has either grey windowframes, grey roof, grey facades or at least a grey stripe of colour.... It looks so cold and sad... But of course that's also a question of individual taste, apparently some people like the look of it :///

[DerTypDa]

Another, smaller factor is also just plain survivorship bias. The past had its own bland, ugly, decrepit buildings just like today. It's just that those were usually first in line to be torn down and replaced, while the well-built, good-looking ones were more likely to be kept around and continually renovated.

[CityPlannerPlays]

I think you missed one key point - banks won't lend on properties they don't believe will be viable. Banks are often pushing for more parking, oddly enough. It's hard to fight history and inertia.

[micha]

The architecture of tomorrow shouldn't try to imitate old beautiful building styles but try to create new, unique buildings that combine function and aesthetics.

[darkwoodmovies]

In my opinion, the bigger problem, at least in the U.S., is when new buildings are built, especially skyscrapers, they're so expensive that the commercial tenants can only be luxury stores or big chains. That's why you don't have "neighborhoody" stores in new development areas, which adds to the sterilized feel. It hits differently when you have a restaurant, niche coffee shop, a pub, and/or a little convenience store vs. new buildings that just have a Starbucks and a Coach store.

[calmeilles]

"We don't mass produce classical ornaments." We used to. Developers would select them from pattern books and stick them on. Often you can see the change from one speculative builder on a plot of land to another on the next by the subtle differences in their choice of ornamentation.

[babelhuber]

I wouldn't underestimate the first point: Fashion

In Germany, before WW1 buildings usually were decorated with stucco. Looks nice nowadays, but back then it was actually quite cheap - as it was mass-produced in factories.

After WW2, stucco was out of fashion. It was even common to remove the stucco (in German: "Entstucken"). Nobody would do this today!

So if we'd have stucco as a new fashion trend and would start to mass-produce it again, I think we could do it. But we don't want to.

[eyesofthecervino]

The funny thing is, even those plain blocky buildings could look pretty nice if they just added window boxes and some planters on the terraces. It'd make the building a lot more pleasant to live in, too.

[ludde]

I would like to point out how important it is for a place to feel alive. This can be achieved in many ways and one of the more noticeable is having a building create shadows. Shadows change the way a building looks over the course of the day and add a natural element.

[mohamedsalem]

I once met a man whose father used to fabricate door knobs to Pashas in Egypt during the 30’s n 40s, he said his father would brake the mould in front of the customer after delivery so that he knows his door knobs are absolutely unique!!

[julianosvonskingrad]

The german-french broadcaster "arte" made a video about the GDR standardized buildings. The author explains how she lived as a kid in the after-war years in Berlin's center, in a building "with ornaments and 3 meter ceilings, which was beautiful but moldy, extremely cold, hard to heat, the toilet was in the courtyard". Therefore, you can absolutely understand her joy when her family was allowed to move to one of those housing projects in Berlin-Marzahn: Fresh, new buildings, modern and exciting. Large rooms, new floors, central heating, fitted kitchen, hot water, bathroom with toilets. Old buildings were simply associated with many negative things. New buildings with much nicer things. Today it's just the other way around again.

[cubeflinger]

In the UK we like to cover our new cubes in flammable panels to make sure it self destructs properly.

[thebighurt]

Art Deco was an era that is severely underappreciated. It's the Gothic architecture of the 20th century and didn't last anywhere near as long as it deserved.

[thejtotti]

As an architect, I really appreciate this breakdown. I get asked this all the time, and every time I say that architects would love to design better, but the our hands are tied by budgets or in the case of developers, profit margins. Beauty is a public good, but in a society that has no concept of collective ownership, nobody wants to foot the bill for something that benefits everyone.

[Jjames]

This is something way underappreciated in modern society. Humans _need_ beautiful spaces, just like they need nature.

[marjankrebelj]

I spent two years as an architect in a studio that designed shopping malls during the boom years just before the 2008 crisis. Our clients only cared about cost, cost, and speed. They gave almost zero shit about what we do with the facade as long as we keep everything super cheap and extra fast. We were actually free to experiment with the outer looks of the building, but realistically the time constraints and the budget didn't allow for much.

[Benjumanjo]

Also people stopped building things of lasting value, we don’t think about future generations, or about leaving a legacy. This was a major motivator of making buildings beautiful; to leave your mark and be remembered.