Why Did We Stop Building Beautiful? The Economics and Ideology Behind an Aesthetic Revolution - Marginal REVOLUTION
“Why are buildings today drab and simple, while buildings of the past were ornate and elaborately ornamented?,” that’s the question asked by Samuel Hughes in the latest Works in Progress. There are two extant theories: The naive explanation for the decline of ornament is that the people commissioning and designing buildings stopped wanting it, influenced […]
“Why are buildings today drab and simple, while buildings of the past were ornate and elaborately ornamented?,” that’s the question asked by Samuel Hughes in the latest Works in Progress . There are two extant theories: The naive explanation for the decline of ornament is that the people commissioning and designing buildings stopped wanting it, influenced by modernist ideas in art and design. In the language of economists, this is a demand-side explanation: it has to do with how buyers and designers want buildings to be. The demand-side explanation comes in many variants and
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