We have terrible architecture for ideological reasons. Flat roofs are not signifincantly cheaper to build than pitched roofs, and far less adept at roofiness, but we got flat roofs from bauhaus philosophy.
As with most modern art, architecture has a fundamentially adversarial relationship with the vast majority of people.
Boringness also probably comes from increasing numbers of people involved in approvals. Try getting some wild thing through public hearings and city councils. Much harder than a cube. The boringness is a feature, not a bug.
I bet there's a ton of other factors too, like the cited attention cost of detail.
Someone said: There are two types of flat roofs: Those that are leaky and those that are not leaky yet.
I don't hate the boxy things, I just hate that there's nothing else being built in Seattle right now except boxy things. And they're not much to look at.
At least I have not really seen those rebar and concrete skeletons that are a common sight basically everywhere else.
This podcast goes over what an absolute disaster this type of construction is [0], but for apartments in most major US cities west of the Mississippi, it is hard to avoid _some_ sort of wood framing.
Not really. Frank Lloyd Wright was building with flat roofs a decade before the Bauhaus school even opened. But it was certainly an artistic endeavour and he’s a great example of somebody who had an adversarial relationship with pretty much everybody.
Look at this majestic crown: https://i.imgur.com/6W2FUz0.jpeg
Is that why those award-winning buildings look like that? Because the architects tried to make them cheaper?
Is 'detail' requiring highly skilled craftsmanship the only way to make pleasant buildings? Because a few of the buildings (Venice and the Italian village) the article gives as examples of beauty have only the barest, simplest of details.
Our society is quite capable of paying for artisans to restore the architectural splendors of earlier times, and does so. At the same time, expenditure on architecture for its own sake seems to have increased in the last decade or so, at least in centers of wealth (which, in modern times, is where non-utilitarian architecture has its first home, even if it likes to have a weekend place in the country.)
What has not happened is that, for the most part, the paymasters for the latter development have demonstrated little interest in adopting styles that demand highly skilled craftsmanship of the sort formerly valued (and still valued, apparently, so long as it dates to a previous era.) Today's vanity architecture reflects the values of those who commission it, rather than being a result of market prices for artisan work.
I owe a lot to this dude, because he made sure that when worker was housing was being built it would have a library on the periphery.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Passmore_Edwards
There was an explicit goal of providing education and opportunities to working people. (Well - working men. But this was over a century ago now.)
Modern philanthropy has no equivalent. There is no interest in creating high quality useful public spaces for ordinary people. So there's no architectural tradition to support that goal.
Some really beautiful structures do use minimalism, but so many big architects today strive for speed, size, and function. I think most modern beautiful, minimalist structures are usually smaller, built for fewer people, etc. Maybe?
Hamburg’s philarmony cost 900 million euros to build. That’s an awful lot of money. Architects decide to spend on structure and texture instead of decor. And with today’s machines, we actually could make all these intricate details without human intervention.
Now the town basically has subsidized a hotel, a few luxury condos, some gastronomy, and got a few classic music venues which it could have gotten otherwise, and cheaper. Besides that it already had those before.
Furthermore I don't see the need to fake the look of this
[1] https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kaispeicher_A#/media/Datei:Kai...
by totally removing the core of it, and putting that new thing on top, instead of simply tearing it down, and build something really new from the bottom up.
I mean, if it had been this building
[2] https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kaispeicher_A#/media/Datei:Kai...
it would at least have had a history, including the timeball on top of it, which signalled the ships the exact time they could adjust their chronometers to at exact 12:00hrs.
But it wasn't. Just a functional building to store cocoa and coffee beans, built in 1963 over the ruin of the former building.
Was that worth to uphold the facade of? 798.000.000€ for the town, and about 100.000.000€ by some fanbois, and who knows who?
I don't get it.
"Das Wahrzeichen des Wahnsinns. Mors, Mors."
EDIT: Hmm, even the payer's power could be factored in. A king may be willing to spend 1/10th of his empire's wealth on an extravagant palace, but the same would likely not be approved in a democracy.
I suppose it is the lack of imagination of top-end architecture that these techniques, some of the hallmark technologies of our age, that there isn't a healthy market in their use in architecture.
The employment of these things all seems focused in mass production and cost reduction (which isn't a bad thing), and seems to ignore the possibilities that programmable manufacturing and production could have on architecture (which could push the state of the art).
It might also be that being an architect kinda sucks these days. Not enough jobs, and those jobs are paying worse, to cover the costs of schooling.
So there aren't the true geniuses anymore? Maybe it's just that the iron rule of finance has drained the budgets from every large scale project, and the ultra-rich are now no longer artistically inclined, they are either concerned with the magnitude of their fortune in numbers rather than edifices.
That's not really the case. As with the internet and software, architecture was hijacked by building products corporations and tradespeople were duped into playing along, just like the employees of social media corporations one can see on this site who try to justify the evil activities of the companies they work for.
Background: when I quit software in the latter half of the 2000s I bought a house built in 1908 in the central US. It needed lots of things, so I basically lived in half of it and worked on the other half for about 10 years.
What I learned in the process of learning how to do all of that stuff by trial and error (including building custom windows and doors... wooden ones to replace the 'new' ones from previous owners that I threw away) is that prior to the 1980s there were lots of small machines built for the market of a small custom shop that might build things for local clientele. They have all been replaced by worse (in every respect) multi-function machines that only make boring things badly.
As a baseline, the most notorious of big box stores [1] says that new plastic windows cost 800 - 1000 dollars. That's highway robbery. There's about 30 board feet of rough sawn lumber in a 4' x 3' wooden double hung window. The material cost (assuming cypress in the southeast or douglas fir in the north/west) is gonna be around 5 dollars per board foot. Glass in smallish bulk quantities lets say 3 dollars per square foot, and hardware about 50 dollars per window, I'll give 10-20 dollars for paint and what not. So we're looking at a material cost of around $250.00 per window if someone wanted wooden windows in a common size.
The problem is not that it's impossible to compete with the plastic window on quality at a slight price markup, the problem is that there's no one to do it because everyone has been turned into a middle man, serving rent seekers. Outside of major cities with enough of a concentration of historic buildings to keep real craftsmen busy, there aren't going to be any such real craftsmen. They're all going to be glorified salesmen with a few hand tools from the local building supply retailer.
It didn't have to be this way. As an example, up until the late 1970s a company named Powermatic built a small single end tender (model # 2A) that is shown here [2] and here [3]. These were marketed to small shops, not giant industrial factories. These machines have appreciated in value on the used market in the past 10 years, because people are still using them! Ten years ago you could buy a serviceable 2A tenoner for $500-1000 dollars, now they're going for $2500 to 3k. I met people running window and door shops doing historic preservation work around Boston that were stockpiling every one they find for sale for parts. Powermatic the company on the other hand was sold and the brand "cashed in" on cheap import imitations of other tool companies' products long ago.
Another example would be the machine called a "sash trimmer" shown here [4] and here [5]. I use the term "machine" very loosely because it's not even motorized, you operate it with your foot like an old sewing machine. This machine could be replicated in a machine shop today using an old milling machine or mortiser as a base for probably $3000 dollars or so in custom parts. It's how you make fancy wooden windows like these [6]. It's virtually impossible to make such a wooden window without that machine, because modern machines can't replicate the required angled mortises. I looked for years and never found one for sale in the southeastern US. Despite the fact that thousands of historic homes in the southeastern US have such windows, that are all over 80 years old now and gradually rotting away.
You can extend this to any other item in the typical single family home in the US. For instance there's no reason for kitchen cabinets to have plywood in them. Plywood is another notorious "profit margin" item by the building products corporations that is basically scrap and glue with a picture of real wood on top of it. Why isn't there a set of jigs like the ones used 80+ years ago for sale by which a local cabinet maker can produce "stick built" cabinets without plywood shells? Why does the local cabinet maker pay obscene prices for fake lumber pressed into sheets, when by the square foot solid yellow pine is cheaper? Because the local cabinet shop sees himself as a building product middle man just like the corporate stores do, there is no other reason.
As if the entirety of American architecture being beholden to corporate producers of junk products isn't bad enough, general contractors are charging an additional 20-30% markup (at least) on top of the supplier's markup, to lead people to think that the junk they've bought is reasonably that expensive.
As the wise machine said in the movie from the cursed decade: "the only way to win, is to not play."
Read a few books, go to architectural salvage stores to look at things in person and see how they were built, go to your local woodworker's meetup group, go watch youtube videos about how to glaze windows and hang doors. You don't have to buy a shop full of antique machines and start with rough lumber if you don't want to, but if you know how to spec and order things from local craftsmen on your own without the aforementioned rent seeking middlemen charging you 20-30% to do it on your behalf, you can have a house just as nice as those from the late 19th and early 20th century, albeit with some quality of lumber compromises due to the lack of old growth supply.
1. https://www.homedepot.com/c/cost_install_replacement_windows
2. https://youtu.be/TT13WmJZyU0
3. https://www.thewoodfurniturefactory.com/tour.htm
4. https://www.facebook.com/seattlehistoricwindow/videos/102924...
5. http://vintagemachinery.org/photoindex/detail.aspx?id=9824
It's funny how similar this sounds to the framework situation in software development.
To set up a table saw (generic multi-function tool) to do what a tenoner does requires quite a bit of ingenuity. It's going to be a trip to the machine shop anyway because you'll need a shaper extension (or a standalone shaper / router table) to cut the coped ends of the muntins and rails. I spent as much on a router table extension for my table saw as I spent on the saw itself (the saw was a Powermatic model 66 from the 1970s, bought used).
Cutting the grooves (rabbets) where the glass in a wooden window or door rests is not only rather dangerous (you have to use a stacked up "dado" blade which is rather rough in terms of operation, and your fingers have to be close to it), but not trivial to set up for. You have to do the muntin ends with the boards standing on end, which requires a tenon jig for the table saw. These [1] videos [2] present a pretty good picture of how silly this all is for the muntins (the 'bars' in a window) and this one [3] is how you have to use a table saw to cut the glass recess in the rails / stiles.
In the case of the tenoning jig, if you search for one, you'll find a plethora of videos and guides from people claiming to have made one on their own out of scrap lumber, plywood, particle board, etc. They're really javascript frameworks manifest into mechanical devices when you watch them. There's no concern in any of these people's faces for the lack of rigidity, unstable nature of the materials they're using to build the thing, or infinitely small likelihood of longevity for the tool they've built. The only concern is making a blog post or youtube video that gets some clicks, just like youtube "coding channels," lol.
Making windows and doors that fit together properly, from experience, needs repeatable accuracy in your cutting machines of about 5 thousandths of an inch. How do people think they can do that with plastic / plywood / particle board jigs they home-built for multi-purpose machines? It's insanity, especially when a very simple purpose-built machine from the 1960s / 1970s can do what they're spending hours on in about 10 seconds, with perfectly repeatable precision.
Eventually all of this becomes a philosophical discussion, of course. My suggestion in the post above that people educate themselves about architecture and art to improve their own houses denotes doing that in their spare time. As in, not spending their spare time as a consultant or contract developer to make more money and just throw money at the problem and hope for a better outcome. Required in the undertaking is the acceptance that money will not buy everything they want. A dangerous consideration, indeed.
The whole world was built with a post-ww2 American economic model, in which factories get expensive purpose-built machines and hobbyists get poor multi-function machines that prevent them from competing with factories. Everyone can take whatever middle-man place they prefer if they make a living in this market, and prices can always go up because demand will always go up too, right? Except when (insert cog in the machine) doesn't, then it all breaks down and starts to consume itself for the last few quarters of bonuses, and the finale is the "Goldman Sachs special" when a finance firm loads a company like Powermatic with debt that they fully intend to default on: the mob-style bust-out.
1. https://youtu.be/jb-KpTfgwQo
You don't wanna carve stone, sure, but there's people out there who love sculpting and carving and all the other physical creative work involved in making a pretty building.
It costs human lives to build a Notre Dame, both in deaths and in total lifespan output, and as for Sagrada Familia it's still not complete. We now value human life and labor too much to be able to afford it.
I personally can't wait to have detailed, warm, organic architecture back again, but I damn sure don't want to carve any stone.