• I think a year ago or so, there was a lot of heated takes on Twitter concerning the ostensible lack of ornamental/artisanal designs in today’s buildings. You look at St. Peters Basilica and Willis Towers side-by-side, you’ll have a clear winner when grading aesthetics. But “modernist” architecture is much more than an attraction to grey, glass boxes and has more to do with Economics 101. An excellent article by Brian Potter on Construction Physics details just how much of developing a plot of land is dictated by the pro forma statements. An excerpt:

    Builders apparently believe that buyers don’t particularly value ornament other than on the front of the house, and so they omit it everywhere else. And since it’s very rare for owners to go and add any sort of ornament back in, it seems like the builders are correct.

    Part of this is a problem of legibility. For some building features, like granite countertops, stainless steel appliances, or washer/dryer hookups, developers can quantify how much they’ll contribute to additional rents, and how much it’s worth spending on them. But for exterior ornamentation, or simply an attractive exterior design, it’s much more difficult to quantify the benefits of it. If it can’t be included as an element in a financial model of the building, it’s hard for a developer to justify spending money on it.

    Follow up question from Scott Alexander,

    … you would expect very expensive “prestige” buildings like museums/opera houses/cathedrals to keep ornamentation, which isn’t what happened. My remaining question for him is how much money is involved - would an ornamented skyscraper cost more like 2% more or more like 20% more?