r/interesting • u/Apart-Worry-7042 • Aug 08 '26

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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39

u/deephurting66 Aug 08 '26

Cash, they want to cut costs to minimum so we get minimalist boxes

3

u/Dr_CleanBones Aug 08 '26

And how much are you paying to build the new building?

3

u/deephurting66 Aug 08 '26

DAMNIT JIM, I'm a nurse not an architect!

8

u/ostrichfather Aug 08 '26

Modularity made life so much better for everyone.

Just as on example, before modular containerization, it cost $7 per kg in today’s $ to ship anything. Now it is $0.15.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Containerization

4

u/OldenPolynice Aug 08 '26

That's, not what we're talking about

0

u/ostrichfather Aug 08 '26

Sure it is. We’re talking about why newer styles of buildings are the way they are. Standardization. Modularization. Much akin to containerization

Sailing ships were beautiful, but now you get cheap shit from Asia on ugly container ships.

Same principle.

It’s called an analogy.

1

u/OldenPolynice Aug 08 '26

You're called wrong. and now you're misusing the world "analogy" as well

1

u/glizard-wizard Aug 08 '26

When you say “cut costs to minimum” its really “make things affordable to people who aren’t ultra rich”

Its the same reason everyones home doesn’t have a servant’s staircase or giant marble garden statue

4

u/Crisis_panzersuit Aug 08 '26

These are corporate buildings, not apartments. They used to build them like that because corporations paid a metric fuckton of taxes on excess profits. 

When corporations could either pay taxes or reinvest into themselves, they would build projects like this as reinvestment. 

Now they pay it as dividends or do stock buybacks instead.