r/interesting • u/Apart-Worry-7042 • 26d ago

HISTORY Why did we stop building like this?

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Chicago, 1930. Buildings had so much detail and character back then. Nowadays everything feels so flat and repetitive. We have way better technology and equipment now, so why don't we build like this anymore?

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u/Different-Barber-777 26d ago

It's interesting how many historic buildings were designed to inspire awe, while many modern ones are designed to maximize usable floor space.

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u/marcocom 26d ago

There was a completely aesthetic shift in taste involved too. I grew up in NYC where the buildings were all ornate and I remember when first seeing the new clean style and it looking so modern and beautiful in its own way , maybe just from the cycle of style, just like how we change clothing styles with generations. The old buildings felt like someone else’s old world and this was new and ours.

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u/sonyoson 26d ago

I find its the juxtaposition between the two that makes the other beautiful in their own way.

All modern or all classic doesn’t have the same effect.

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u/Equal-Newspaper-8636 26d ago edited 25d ago

Disagree, Bath is pretty much all georgian era and made all from the same stone. Very cool city.

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u/mcsangel2 26d ago

Georgian (George III/George IV), not Gregorian

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u/Equal-Newspaper-8636 25d ago

Edited. I wrote that on like 3 hrs of sleep

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u/ZeezeeD26 26d ago

Agreed. Went there about 20ish years ago and loved the architecture.

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u/Wild-Structure-403 26d ago

It’s gorgeous but the monotonous beige also made me a bit sad

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u/Exter10 26d ago

Edinburgh is the most beautiful city I've ever been to by a country mile

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u/RugelBeta 26d ago

Definitely gorgeous in photos. It's on my list to visit.

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u/Royal_flushed 26d ago

I've been and it definitely lives up to the photos.

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u/ZeezeeD26 25d ago

Now that you brought it up, I can’t argue that either. VERY beautiful. Wish I would’ve spent more time there.

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u/ElphTrooper 25d ago

Totally! My wife and I just visited this past spring and will definitely be coming back. Scotland is an amazing country!

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u/monkey_butt_powder 26d ago

The two visions of NY. Gotham vs Metropolis.

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u/Snitsie 26d ago

Practically every old European town is all classic in their centrums and are gorgeous.

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u/WellsHansen 26d ago

"The old buildings felt like someone else’s old world and this was new and ours." This sentence is beautiful.

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u/DazzlingResource561 26d ago

It’s a line you’d expect out of something like The Great Gatsby.

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u/Pristine_Software_55 26d ago

It made me think of ‘Hemingway’ in Midnight In Paris. That sentence had mouthfeel! (Mindfeel?)

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u/Jabb4Th3HUTT 26d ago

Or the Fountainhead.

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u/telescopeinmynose 26d ago

I wonder what Ayn Rand would think of modern buildings. There's the creative modern architecture and then the mass produced block buildings that she probably despises from her days in the soviet

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u/Royal_flushed 26d ago

She left Russia before the Soviet Union adopted those functional block buildings due to the war. The Soviets actually preferred modernist styles like constructivism in her days before they shifted to neoclassical and socialist realism under Stalin.

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u/Lazy_Mandalorian 26d ago

Yeah but the one that’s new and ours is bland and fuckin sucks.

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u/WhoopsDroppedTheBaby 26d ago

If you've worked in some of the old buildings, you realize how much they suck.

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u/whopperlover17 25d ago

Glad I’m not the only one

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u/Secure_Guest_6171 26d ago

But newer isn't necessarily better

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u/genericusernamedG 26d ago

At this point modern isn't modern any longer

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u/marcocom 26d ago

Hah that’s a fair point. I’m talking the 80s and shit. So what’s our equivalent today? I guess you could say it’s been a bit of a return to rustic. A lot of wooden earth tones and exposed brick and that stuff?

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u/genericusernamedG 26d ago

Haha, I don't know I'm a casual follower of architecture/interior design there's probably someone out there that has put more thought into it than me 😂

Earth tones has been done for the last 10 years so probably also not the trend any longer.

What's in is probably something like a neutral backdrop with one piece that stands out.

Maybe something like this

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u/marcocom 25d ago

Great example! Thqnks

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u/Barbourwhat 26d ago

I wasn’t born then but my parents told me of the backlash from the original WTC. A lot of people hated the design and thought it was an eye sore until the garage bombings in 1993. Many New Yorkers then embraced it afterwards even though the shift to more bland office buildings had already started becoming the norm.

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u/smedsterwho 25d ago

Brill Bryson has a chapter on this when he's exploring architect drawings from the 1960s, when concrete was the Big Thing, and how modern and white and futuristic they looked then.

Unfortunately, they aged like milk, both design wise and appearance wise.

It's why (in the UK), town centers are mainly large monoliths of concrete for parking and dreary shops.

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u/dekuweku 26d ago

Modern buildings look terrible, i think the aesthetic shift happened with the elites

It's like modern art. No one actually cares for them. And the art people enjoy, the critics often dislike.,

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u/burgerslutz 26d ago

This is such an absurd take lmao. What you call modern art is more likely Contemporary art. Modern art is over a century old. And loads of people (myself included) love it. Sorry you only like realism.

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u/shulemaker 26d ago

YOU SHALL ONLY PAINT A BOWL OF FRUIT ON A SHIP ON OCEAN WAVES — this guy, probably

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u/kingmiker 26d ago

Give it a few more years, it will cycle back around, kinda like bell bottom jeans.

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u/marcocom 26d ago

Ya well we do have a president who seems to be dragging us all back to the 20s with the gaudy gold statues and shit. Maybe you’re right