> how did they go from clear eurocentric gilded design to the boring uprises you see in nearly every city today? profit-seeking motive. people have always sought profit, but back in ye olden days, you could also have other considerations. a businessman could choose to spend slightly more for an aesthetic effect which has no clear impact on profitability; he could do it just because he wanted to, because that made him feel better about it. but in modernity where making any less than the maximum profit for your shareholders is illegal, and so many companies are public, those choices cannot be made. someone will ask you to justify raising costs by whatever amount to add gilding and  > i think it looks better won't fly, so it won't be done. even companies that aren't public tend to follow the zeitgeist and make the same choices, if for no other reason than a lack of demand for ornamentation has produced a critical lack of supply (i.e. guys who know how to do it). it's also lending. since very few can pay to build their own home to their own specifications, developers mainly build houses, and they have to build them specifically to get lent against, which means they all need to be built to match the appraiser's definition of what a "house" is. and the developers are of course for-profit so they cannot choose ornamentation, they must choose ugly, and ornament only where strictly necessary to bump up the price. so it's basically that we're a society and culture that prefers cheap and ugly to expensive and beautiful. the architecture matches our souls.
United States