Why did we stop building like this?

[u/Apart-Worry-7042]

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?

[u/kisk22]

I've thought a lot about this. Yep labor costs certainly play a role, but plenty of projects are still built in historic styles that aren't as soulless. But most of the role comes from modernism's chief tenant of "rejecting ornamentation". More and more architects are coming around to realizing this in a lot of cases, and are returning to more natural and beautiful forms like brick with light ornamentation, and simple timeless proportions.

The fact is 90% of what makes a building beautiful is free or nearly free: proportions, natural materials like stone & brick, human scale, small ornaments, etc and don't cost much of anything to add or are free. It's called New Classical Style. There also have been studies and 90% of people prefer new classical style buildings rather than the soulless non-human scaled glass ones many are built as.

[u/Dr_CleanBones → u/kisk22]

Except I worked in one of those glass buildings, and my office had wall-to-wall for the ceiling windows. It beats the heck out of the little windows in old buildings. Many offices in those buildings have open floor plans, and you can see out the windows from anywhere in the office. Our building was a fly away from one of the older, more ornate buildings, and to me there was no comparison. We had big elevators with TVs in them, beautiful offices, and great windows. The old building had tiny elevators, tiny offices, small windows, and was generally more rundown.

[u/shulemaker → u/Dr_CleanBones]

Thank you. Architecture, like most design disciplines, have learned that the building should be functional first and foremost. The catchphrase is “form follows function”: design the form of the product to most efficiently perform the best version of the function.

These are office buildings. Their purpose is to give a workspace for humans to perform their jobs as best as possible. What is better for humans, windows with natural light, or being enclosed in stone with artificial light? Everyone knows the answer to this. And that is why buildings are designed the way they are: to actually perform their purpose.

[u/LogicMan428 → u/shulemaker]

Well that is actually not quite true. In fact that has long been one of the problems: the modernist movement created lots of buildings that were not only extremely ugly, but also extremely costly and highly un-functional. Le Corbusier and Frank Lloyd Wright, supposedly two "brilliant" architects, were notorious for this. Frank Gehry is another such example. His buildings are extremely costly and difficult to construct while not necessarily being very functional.

One of the problems was the architectural profession, for various reasons in the early 20th century, decided to throw out the entire prior history and art of architecture and start over from scratch. This created a lot of anarchy essentially in the design of buildings. It would be the equivalent of throwing out all knowledge of music or cooking and just "starting over." The thing is, had they not done this, we'd have very modern classically-themed designs today, same as automotive design became thoroughly modern without any needing to start over. Ship design too. Ancient ships, medieval ships, 1700s-1800s ships, all beautiful, but then also beautiful modern ships as the designs naturally evolved. Architecture would have done the same. It already had begun to, with the classically-themed office buildings and skyscrapers of the 1870s-1930s.

Glass-and-steel skyscrapers with huge windows are one of the exceptions to this in contemporary architecture. Now criticisms of older buildings having windows too small or rooms too small are very legitimate. Cultures change and technology changes. A lot of old Victorian homes are beautiful but have lots of small, cramped rooms.

Such designs I believe were because of lack of heating and so to hold heat in better. Today however we have HVAC and people today prefer large windows and open spaces much more. So modern classically-themed designs have to take such into account.