But it is a _lot_. Putting aside the artistic skill and construction cost of it, I'm glad I don't live in a city where everything is like that. I feel like it'd be overstimulating much like an analog version of the Las Vegas strip.

It would not be a lot. It would fade into the background, except that any time you want to see beauty you just have to look up and focus.

i highly doubt a christian church has the same effect. everytime i see a church i think about atrocities commited by the religion and alienation

Maybe not the exact same effect as nature but it is indeed calming to me at least. Stepping into a cathedral, or masjid, or temple and the noise of the world falls away (and I'm not even religious). I'm sure I'm not the only one.

Not to downplay atrocities committed in the name of Christianity but I am pretty sure every large ideology has its share of of atrocities.

Sagrada Família is very purposefully a total exaggeration but so are most large churches when viewed as part of their surrounding context. They’re designed to stand out.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YfN517mqhC8 (Absolutely worth watching if you want to know why Barcelona was planned the way it was.)

If you go to the "Gothic quarter" or to Gracia you won't see much "Art nouveau."

Its a very varied city. I live in a building in the "Modernisme" style and its lovely.

The Central Square (Piata Unirii) has been renovated nicely and looks very good. The old main street is still in renovation, so it's not so nice now.

The latter had a bikini fashion shoot ongoing.

Maybe something to do with it. The world and society completely transformed. Mass media, fashion, loss of religiosity, sexual liberation, globalization, social mobility...

Softly put, it's discipline, focus and a sense of greater purpose, far above the monetary value of things, fame and fortune.

In other words, exactly what our current, consumer-oriented society lacks.

You can buy discipline, focus, and a sense of greater purpose. But it ain't cheap and few with the means to do it have the will to want it.

Consider my office. The original drafted designs for it had an airy look, full ceiling, windows connecting the rooms for added light, doors.

Every single one of those things got nixed because it meant $$$ and the people running my company didn't want to foot the bill. So instead what we ended up with is cheap carpet, no ceiling (I can see all the joists and the ductwork), and paper thin cardboard walls which you can hear discussions from across the building. But the conference room where the C Levels commonly meet is fantastically decorated.

I do understand and share the view that the current mainstream is utterly boring, but I also acknowledge the (somewhat) irresistible forces that shape it: money, time, effort. And I don't believe AI can do anything to counter them in a significant manner, sadly.

Cheap, soulless, forgettable, replaceable metal and glass rectangular prisms filled with cheap, soulless, forgettable, replaceable workers. Form follows function!

That old architecture implied things like spirit, transcendence, community, beauty. Outmoded concepts for sure!

https://architizer.com/projects/tiktok/

It was all killed because two dynamics came together to push "the yale box": corporate america's love of cheap buildings (although the buildings are cheap to build but often nightmares to maintain and use... somebody else's problem) and the ideological purity spiraling post WW2 driven by the academic environment and the rise of abstract architectural criticism over the practical building arts.

post modernism acknowledged the failure of the yale box but, because going back to traditional building forms was unthinkable (of course), had to do ironic kitsch instead

i.e. "any mason can build a brick house, but an architect will create an ugly box that no mason would ever have built".

That said, I'm sure there are architects today for which some or all of this is not true.

Most of the above are subjects an architect student would have had to learn about and demonstrate profienciency in, to earn their degree, a 100 years ago.

I'm sure the change in architecture's priorities played a role in this too. Industrial materials, construction efficiency. The need to mass produce housing, costs and new social ideals, yadayadayada.

And ofc the modernist rejection of any ornament; even that which is there historically, on existing architecture.

My hope is that in a future where we 3D-print buildings or construct them with robots we will see a renaissance of non-functional[1] beauty/sculpture/texture/color in architecture because the cost difference will be marginal/nonexistend.

But then, architecture is also always a mirror of the period. And from that pov it's not looking so great for beauty making it back any time soon.

[1] Yet functional because how can the happiness/joy of the perceiver of architecture be removed from what should count as functional, in architecture?

Or that seems like the goal of commercial builders now, right?

To be fair, this isn't entirely new. The American West was strewn with cheap wooden structures that all looked alike with big fake fonts with hand painted signs. Those mostly rotted so they're uncommon in our lexicon outside of movies.

It will not happen because the rich will always keep standards of living of the average and poor people just at the low level that they will not rebel.

Could you explain your exact line of thinking?

I only have a couple of architect friends, but wow, they actually have exactly these skills and interests. Amazing artists and designers in their own right. They seem to know a lot about how philosophy interacts with architecture too! Interesting to know they might be the exception.

Thank you!

Hand placed parquet that took a master craftsman several weeks to lay disappeared. Intricate carvings upon otherwise utilitarian and common structures likewise.

Art Deco itself is a compromise with this creeping reality. Not fully modern minimalist but economically efficient in using flattened elements, prefabs and smoker accents for detailing.

When a trad person posts their diatribe online it is a simple tell. They know next to nothing about how the built world is actually created. And they don't understand how wages came to form the basis of respect for working people. The act of decrying the utilitarian transition is itself a form of disrespect via ignorance. Because what you are essentially saying is that your aesthetic preferences are more important than the time of expert laborers, whether you know it or not.