The article you linked is misleading and not particularly relevant to this discussion. Of course that house costs more to build than a normal “traditional” house—its a custom built, high end house with a lot of custom details and high end finishes/appliances. When you’re talking about multifamily housing, “modern” developments are much cheaper because there isn’t as much decoration and the structure is far more efficient. If you wanted to build an exact replica of the townhouses in OPs post, you would have to shell out a ton of money for the decoration, partially because labor is more expensive than when they were built and partially because there are very few companies that could manufacture decorative elements at this point.
I’d encourage you to drop the straw man of the elitist architect too—architects in multifamily construction have very little say over what style the building will be—a combination of what the developer wants and what zoning requires determines the shape and style of the building. Developers generally speaking are incredibly conservative as well—they are putting hundreds of millions of dollars into a project and they don’t want it to tank due to a bad decision. If they want modern architecture, chances are that’s because the market wants modern architecture.
lalalalaasdf t1_j5pp9ai wrote
Reply to comment by BrightThru2014 in What are these homes called and why aren’t they being built anymore? by rdervgyb2345
The article you linked is misleading and not particularly relevant to this discussion. Of course that house costs more to build than a normal “traditional” house—its a custom built, high end house with a lot of custom details and high end finishes/appliances. When you’re talking about multifamily housing, “modern” developments are much cheaper because there isn’t as much decoration and the structure is far more efficient. If you wanted to build an exact replica of the townhouses in OPs post, you would have to shell out a ton of money for the decoration, partially because labor is more expensive than when they were built and partially because there are very few companies that could manufacture decorative elements at this point.
I’d encourage you to drop the straw man of the elitist architect too—architects in multifamily construction have very little say over what style the building will be—a combination of what the developer wants and what zoning requires determines the shape and style of the building. Developers generally speaking are incredibly conservative as well—they are putting hundreds of millions of dollars into a project and they don’t want it to tank due to a bad decision. If they want modern architecture, chances are that’s because the market wants modern architecture.