CNC Stone Carving (carmelitegothic.com)

> Ornate pieces that used to take months for a skilled carver, now can be accomplished in a matter of days. Instead of cutting out the beauty, using the excuse that it takes too long, thus doesn’t fit into the budget, modern technology can be used to make true Gothic in all its beauty a reality again today.

The options are either use the best tool for the job, or don't do the job at all because the budget (time or monetary I'm not sure) is not there.

I'm short, it's artistic boilerate with no meaningful value to either the artist or the viewer.

E.g. https://x.com/Monumental_Labs/status/2102775795689419214?a=x...

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/robot-role-marble-art-sculpting...

But they will make your life better.

This just sounds like some whiggish defense of modernism.

> This led the tastemaker art and architecture elite to start playing a kind of inside baseball where what's "beautiful" isn't beautiful in some objective sense, or to ordinary people, it's just what's trendy within their clique at a given time.

I don't find "gothic" design beautiful though I can recognize the skill and devotion it represents; I do love shaker and bauhaus and scandi design. There is no "objective sense" when it comes to beauty.

I think you could rephrase this as "where what's beautiful is no longer determined by the amount of skill and effort to construct it", which I think is also true but also more meaningful and much more accomodating to the range of actual "ordinary people's" tastes ...

The elites like things the masses dislike as a way to signal their social distances from the masses. By designing a building that conforms to their elite taste at the expense of nearly everyone else who has to look at the thing, it reinforces their power and control over the space.

It's the moral equivalent of buying a beachfront property and blasting noise every morning from a giant PA system just so that everyone trying to just relax on the beach knows who is really in charge.

In the end, the construction industry is really a deciding factor : you only see, as a classic survivorship bias phenomena, what the best building with all the money in the world looked like, ie cathedrals, palaces, and expect every building to have the same standard today. It is not realistic, nor responsible. Cheap building for the masses have always been the norm!

But modern architecture being bland and non-decorative? You can lay the majority of the blame for that on building owners.

My partner works for a building engineering firm that is hired by architects and building owners, and we both are not fond of modern architectural trends and have discussed it at length.

In short, buildings have two scenarios - one, the person or company paying for the building plans on keeping it over the next decade plus, or two, the buyer plans on flipping the building as soon as possible.

In the first case, and extremely so in the second, buyers are entirely without taste and despise spending any money that they don't absolutely have to. The desire to min/max buildings has led to function over form to the point of nearly ignoring form.

"Cheap" is the top priority, followed closely by "inoffensive to the people we want to rent this to / flip this to". This results in cheap, low effort facades and an absolute minimum of permanent decorative elements.

Buildings are seen as short term (10 years or less) consumable items, and nothing endures long enough to make it seem worthwhile to buyers to put any money towards design excellence.

However, there is a divide between vernacular and classical architecture. Vernacular is utilitarian and it is what most people build (you build your house to serve your needs) while classical is not only utilitarian but also communicates a message (authority in gov. buildings).

Most people find vernacular architecture pretty. For example, Florence, San Miguel de Allende, New Orleans, etc. All of them have different architecture caused by the locally available materials and the weather of the place. Contrary to popular belief most of their 'beauty' doesn't come from an old appreciation of the arts people, instead these buildings only met the needs with what was available and worked best.

For example, in the north of Mexico houses were built with thick limestone ('sillar de caliche'). The thickness helped as insulation (hot weather). The limestone was plastered with 'cal' in a light color with an 'aborregado' finish that helped reflect the sunlight thus keeping the house cooler. The houses were tall because hot air rises, windows looked almost like doors because people opened them during the night to let the air in. The buildings are beautiful but they are extremely utilitarian. Nowadays most houses in Mexico are built with cement and rebar, which is ugly.

The architect Leon Krier made the argument that all of this was a 20th century phenomenon caused by industrialization and fossil fuel dependency, which has not only affected buildings but how cities get built (urban planning). He believed this would end once fossil fuels reservoirs decreased.

I have come to the conclusion that if it is worth protecting you can see it in tourist numbers - people who go out of their way to look at something.

And, to your point, yes, if the monks followed the construction with a hundred years of prayer and sacrifice to consecrate the building, indeed the building would carry a more powerful emotional resonance than it does now. The sacrifice is the point, the effort is the point. It’s an act of devotion, not just one of construction.

I suppose things like the Svalbard seed vault are similar secular efforts, as is the Long Now’s clock, although that feels somewhat more self-indulgent than these others. I’m interested in others, if you can think of them.