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I've had the misfortune to have met only unlucky and sad architects. One was stuck designing casinos, doing all the opposite things she learned in school: instead of happy open spaces to bring people joy, build a maze with no windows to trap people and suck their money. The other one got laid off and then found a job designing prisons, also an inversion, where instead of nice, bright and inviting places they have to optimize how to punish people and trap them in for years and make sure they never escape.

I don't know what the equivalent for software may be, thinking you'd design cool inverted binary tree algorithms, and instead working on sucking people's information and shoving ads in their faces?

> unlucky and sad architects

Oh the tragedy of wasted talent, forced to apply their skills toward other people's flawed and antisocial visions. Building casinos and prisons, one a trap for the mind, another for the body.

Unemployed mathematicians. I feel for their tortured souls in this unforgiving world ruled by capital, a form of numerology. They speak a native tongue almost incomprehensible to others, and the beauty they seek is invisible except for mystics like themselves.

Software engineers working in the dungeons of Mordor, seeing their craft and design abused for user-hostile purposes, against the very freedom of personal computing that brought them joy. Now with the industrial production of code, their knowledge devalued and commodified, gardens trampled by outsiders who do not care for the rich history and culture of the field.

Quoth the daemon, "Nevermore."

My father-in-law’s brother is an architect. He does (or did) design doors and doorways for prisons. He saw it as a way to make money to live, but it’s not his passion.

For passion, he looks to Frank Lloyd Wright, who happens to also be my favorite architect. I think that was one of the things that endeared me to the family when I first met them. Of course, we both realize the issues with Wright. But, the architecture Wright produced is still amazing, regardless of his personality faults.

I love Gaudi, too. I saw Sagrada Família years ago, when my wife and I took a vacation to Barcelona. I’d love to go back and see it again. But, looking at his house which was turned into a museum, you start to understand why the word “gaudy” was invented.

I’m also a big fan of Victor Horta. My wife and I lived in Brussels from late 1998 to early 2006, and we were only a few blocks away from his house, which they had turned into a museum. He did some of the most beautiful stuff I’ve ever seen. But it was also very difficult to create at the time, and difficult to maintain. Only the richest people could afford that. We are fortunate that we were able to collect a couple of Art Nouveau antiques while we were there. But almost no one here in the US would recognize them, and I doubt many here would consider them beautiful.

Sadly, for production purposes in this modern world, ornamentation must be set aside. Throw all the ugly ass cheap tchotchkes in there that you want, and get your ornamentation and decoration fix however you have to. What you throw that onto or into, it’s almost certainly going to be as bland as humanly possible.

I think it's like millennial grey. Not only is it more expensive to add ornamentation, it also hurts resale and repurposing of buildings. Ideally you want mostly identical boxes where you could change the sign to make it a church, a McDonalds, a clothing store, etc every few years.

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

re commerical buildings today, absolutely. Most developments, especially retail ones have the goal of being wrapped up in a commerical real estate portfolio. That might be a REIT or held by a private investor. Their goal is to collect buildings with the widest marketability for retail. They are not generally curating locations with intent. Though some owners specialize in that in high density tourist or luxury retail spaces.

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.

I wish people would stop calling it millennial grey. It's Gen-X grey. Kim K and Kanye were the ones who built the logical conclusion in their contrast-less white casa; millennials are born maximalists who pair tech accoutrements with actual wood grain because their fondest memory is of being sat in front of a PS1 and a CRT housed in a stained oak cabinet in their childhood den, wires, manuals, remotes, and jewel cases hither and thither.

Yeah I've noticed that millennials are often maximalists, years and years of ghastly 'landlord white' paint jobs contributed to that as well I think.

I'm currently renting but looking to buy in my area, I'm sure I'll find the chemical stripping of horrible white gloss paint and the painting over of 'minimal' white walls with a riot of colour outright cathartic. The house I'm renting would look so good if someone took the time to undo all the bodge jobs and cheap decoration choices I think. The lovely hardwood doors have proper brass hinges for example but it's all covered up with decades' worth of horrid white paint. Half the houses round here probably have gorgeous hardwood floors under crappy laminate or lino, and almost all have nice fireplaces I'd love to reinstate and use with a wood burner.

This is the crux. Houses used to be built to be lived in, so ornamentation added value. Now they are commodities to be traded and sold, and variation makes a portfolio harder to manage/less uniform.

> so ornamentation added value.

When and where was this a common thing?

I've lived and owned houses built from the 1750s to the 1960s in England and Norway and none of them have much in the way of ornamentation.

> Houses used to be built to be lived in

Of course and that's one reason why most didn't have a lot of ornamentation, the money would be spent on necessary functionality first.

Perhaps I'm just not wealthy enough.

    > so ornamentation added value.

    When and where was this a common thing?

Depends on the houses. Your neighborhood one? Yeah I get what you're saying I guess, tho some of this probably still applies!

Large urban buildings? I recently-ish randomly watched this https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DBOXF-FION4 "Why Everything We Build is Flat" i.e. how availability of caulk contributed to less beautiful houses (in urban settings at the least).

Very common in the USA. Queen Anne, craftsman, just to name a few styles, featuring elaborate corbels, crown molding, coves, built in cabinetry, wainscotting etc.

Does it actually hurt resale value? Anything with style won't be universally loved, but will make something more attractive and valuable to some. It certainly hasn't stopped fashion and design in other products. Is the solution for "This won't be to everyone's tastes" to make everything into something that nobody actually likes?

Some people think so. Then you have to paint your new house before moving in because it is so ugly.

Tastes change though. A look that was popular 15 years ago might appear garish or old fashioned today.

Fads come and go, but people's tastes are longer lasting and even fashion is cyclical. There's still a thriving market for 1950s-style kitchen appliances and Art Deco designs from the 20s and 30s. If you think a house looks really cool, you're probably not going to change your mind.

The house I bought has one room painted a much more interesting colour (sort of slate blue). I think it made the house much more attractive to us.

Paints not valuable at all. It's a 100 dollars of materials and a couple hours for a pro.

Which is neither here nor there to the effect it creates.

The real estate industry (gag) says that because the whole goal is to turn housing into standard product that they can sell with the least work possible.

That's why you see houses for sale where they repainted everything grey, ripped out the mature landscaping and put down plastic and dyed wood chips.

I am romantic, I would actually love to move into a house that carries the mannerisms, tics, and aesthetic of the previous inhabitants like a permanent ghost, and add mine on top. It feels like a world that was and will be without me, where I struggle to leave a trace by respecting and appreciating the traces of others. When I saw some minor graffiti from a child in the wardrobe of a house I rented, I loved it.

It can be harder to maintain. Repainting and maintaining a look like the Painted Ladies costs much more than vinyl siding.

"Ideally you want mostly identical boxes"

I get your point, but I still feel the need to say here clearly: No, I don't. Identical interchangable boxes are not what I would call a ideal standard for housing.

This is very sad to read.

Alas, each time I pass Passeig de Gràcia I lament there are no more interesting buildings... everything is soo f* bland :|

When we built our house a few years back, our builder gave us 3 total paint colors, for the entire house. Anything above that was $500/room. So, we let our kids pick out their own room colors, leaving us with one color for the rest of the house.

We chose Millennial Gray because it goes with anything, not because we especially liked it. It was a perfectly acceptable option for free.

By now we've repainted half the house or so. But the rooms where the gray remains are just fine.

$500 a room is honestly criminal. You're already paying for the labour, different colors should be the cost of the materials and no more. :/

This applies to most fields. Far more people get advanced education now but just necessarily as you cater to a larger group of people you have to diminish the end goal and operate more by procedures and standardization. That reverberates and diminishes the skills of the more competent people who would have been able to learn all of the above a century ago, because now all the institutions cater to a larger body. I disagree about it being a mirror of the period as some absolute rule though. Insurance policies, building code/zoning, educational structures and the rest are all choices people make. The cost thing is always absurd to me as in medieval guild systems during the great plague people found resources to build great cathedrals. Acting like cathedrals were cheaper then compared to now is just absurd. We have the resources we just choose to use it to create trash and then burn it, and to punish anyone who tries to make anything that isn't trash.

It has nothing to do with that. Architecture has to branches - artistic and technical one. These people are the technical kind of architects. It is a STEM field and job. They do a lot of math, physics and that sort of thing is school. Because, the kind of jobs they get require that.

The people designing cathedrals were the finest engineers of their time. Imagine how you would go about suspending a ton of stone 50 feet in the air before industrial machinery, let alone carving it into a nice shape.

That has absolutely nothing to with what I wrote. I was not writing about history of 400 or 500 years ago nor about people with unlimited budget and building spanning 150 years from start to finish.

I was talking about what architect as a job means today. There are two branches and the technical one exists, because it is needed and useful.

It has nothing to do with culture bullshit, diminished skills and all that, frankly, crap. And if you want experimental architecture and arts, there are plenty of those too. It is just that this guys friend is not that arts guy.

I was an architect. There's some truth to what you're saying, but to be honest we rarely get the chance to enact such grand visions. Normally the stars have to align with the perfect client who has limitless budget. These crafts don't come cheap, you know! Gaudi does things with wood that frankly shouldn't be possible.

The other aspect I think also deserves attention is that as our lives have become more digitised and online, our care and attention towards the physical realm has degraded a little. We no longer need exquisite masonry to fire off the synapses - we have the endless scroll and the 24-hour news cycle.

Finally there is a small amount of survivor syndrome happening too - we keep the beautiful buildings but ignore or forget the enormous unhygienic slums that often co-existed with our most beautiful architecture.

You may find this article interesting, as I did.

https://worksinprogress.co/issue/the-beauty-of-concrete/

I don't understand the bit where they can draw? How did they pass the entrance exams or their classes? The architects I know basically had to draw all day, everyday.

The architects you know drew mostly straight lines and arcs, i reckon.

>They can't draw, they can't sculpt, they have no clue about art history. Or color theory, if you want to go that far. Usually golden ratio/Fibonacci is kinda where it ends. One of them is a professor of architecture, no less.

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.

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

There's an ideological capture of postwar architecture departments. Talk to a dutiful architecture student and mention classical architecture, and don't be surprised if you get some eye-rolling or stock dismissals ("it's anachronistic", "it's pastiche", "it's expensive", "it's unoriginal"). People - and that includes students - tend to go along with the prejudices of their professors, both because of ignorance and because they want to "fit in".

There are some maverick departments[0], however.

> My hope is that in a future where we 3D-print buildings or construct them with robots [...] the cost difference will be marginal/nonexistend.

The cost isn't the issue. Societies much poorer than our - and we are the wealthiest we've ever been in history, materially speaking - have produced magnificent artwork and architecture. We simply have different priorities. I don't remember who it was who said this, but if you want to know what a society worships and holds in highest regard, look for the tallest building in the city.

[0] https://heyzine.com/flip-book/44640c2c78.html

> We simply have different priorities. I don't remember who it was who said this, but if you want to know what a society worships and holds in highest regard, look for the tallest building in the city.

I remember reading an article on HN about how people stated that they preferred traditional Western architecture styles, but what was built by architects was something very different. It was presented as revealed preferences contradicting stated preferences.[1]

But I think it is more about priorities, like you said in your first sentence. People may prefer traditional styles, but individuals have limited power/time, and there are other things to worry about, so their effort goes elsewhere, not on supporting their preferred architectural styles.

1. Edit: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49697496

A poorer country has cheaper skilled labor relative to materials, which makes ornament cheaper.

we've reached meta-ornamentation, our structures can now do without their own adornments as they themselves become ornamentation for a city, there is no shortage of striking and breathtaking architecture, but it is certainly true that modern low density residential leaves much to be desired, and that it is a great shame that we have left the 1830s-1930s so far behind.

Meh history is no reason to keep doing a thing

Would prefer 3D printed buildings try something new; for example 3D print underground living and bedrooms for energy efficiency and just have dining + kitchen at surface level

There is enough antique architecture still standing to appreciate

We can allow ourselves the freedom to dream and explore new ideas just like the long dead gave themselves

> because the cost difference will be marginal/nonexistent.

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.

> 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?