The quality of modern construction (not necessarily brick) is a big pet peeve of mine and something I keep looking for answers.
The way I see it, some time right after WWII, people in US suddenly decided to live in a poorly built and ugly looking dwellings regardless of their income level. It is especially easy to see when looking at NYC buildings, some rentals are even explicitly advertized as "pre-war".
Examples of annoying trends in modern construction:
- Low "hobbit" ceilings.
- Short door frames.
- Tiny windows.
- Nearly non-existent noise/vibration insulation
Even looking at materials used for construction today, I can't figure out why everyone thinks that drywall-on-sticks is acceptable? Literally every multi-story home I've been in felt hollow and shaky if you jump on the 2nd floor because there's no mass anywhere.
This is clearly not a cost issue, I have taken tours looking at brand-new multi-MM homes in Austin, TX just for fun. While they all had top-notch appliances, finishes and a gazilion of square feet and bedrooms, they were also built using the same "toy" materials and used generally similar architectural patters as middle class homes.
What caused this change? It's like our collective mind suddenly stopped caring about tall doors, 10ft ceilings and solid feel of floors we walk on.
Nope, that's exactly it - it's cheaper and faster for the builder to frame a house small and simply. They've found that people spend money for houses based on location, size, and the visible stuff (like nice paint jobs and shiny appliances). They could spend twice as long as 40% more in materials and the home would sell for 2% more - not worth their time.
1. Labor specialization, meaning less of the home-buying market is savvy enough in the "handyman" sense to tell the difference.
2. A move away from building the thing you're going to own, and building things that other people will buy later.
3. Minimum standards for housing construction.
The third needs to be explained more - instead of aiming towards "building a good home", the construction industry aims to build the cheapest thing that they are legally allowed to sell (ie, meets building codes). While building codes do mean that there's a quality floor, competitive pressure means that nobody can consistently exceed the floor without getting out-competed by people who aim to barely meet it.
It is very much a cost issue, although a small one in terms of the overall price of the house. However, money that goes into 2x6 vs 2x4 studs, drywall, doors, insulation, windows comes out of the overall budget. People shop by price because they have to. Fancy appliances vs sturdy floors? People will pick fancy appliances 99% of the time.
I built a few dozen homes and only once had a client request 2x6 construction. I tried to sell it on all the others, citing sturdiness and better insulating properties, but everyone looked at the features it excluded and went for flimsy 2x4 builds.
It gets important if you are a developer building subdivisions of homes. $10k saved on every house is $big profit. 25 home subs is $250k+ savings...very much an issue.
My own house is 2x6, and properly insulated top to bottom. My neighbor's slap job summer cooling bill is not quite double mine. Close to same sqft and same interior ac temp setting.
This is not just an issue with housing. Virtually EVERY product is built with less long-term quality.
I collect antique espresso machines. Some of these are highly sought after because they use big, heavy, high quality components: big brass boilers, copper piping, stainless steel enclosures and big brass groupheads. Compare that with many flimsy, plastic machines today (which rarely last more than a couple years), and it's no wonder there is a market for these older machines.
Where are you? The new construction I see in the Washington DC area has none of these things, whether it's a new apartment in the city or a new house in the suburbs. The ceilings are quite high--typically ten feet. Even basement ceilings are quite high, in contrast to old homes where one often must bend over a bit while in the basement. Door frames are high.
Windows if anything are too big, not too small! My city apartment has floor to ceiling windows which are difficult for window treatments. Suburban homes can have huge two-story family rooms.
Noise is more a problem from adjoining units. Outside noise is sealed out quite well thanks to double-pane windows.
Overall new construction is of quite high quality when it comes to what's important. New homes have smoke detectors, fire sprinklers, better electrical systems, more durable cladding on the outside, better insulation, more bathrooms, and air conditioning. As someone who has seen both old and new homes and has considered living in both, I do not get the nostalgia for old homes. Most home buyers around here agree as they are gutting old homes and renovating them, not living in them as is. I considered living in old homes, but only because they are in good locations. Their oldness in and of itself offered no benefits.
If you're talking about the Bay Area - then there's good reason why buildings are wood framed and light weight. Wood frame construction is generally more earthquake resistant.
re 'drywall on sticks' - not only does this construction technique provide for a huge amount of flexibility in interior layout, it's by far the most earthquake friendly construction for single family homes.
It wouldn't be at all surprising to see a home built with such 'toy' materials require nothing more than some stucco repair and drywall patching, with a brick house right next door literally falling apart.
I realize not every region has earthquakes to worry about, but it is a factor in some areas.
Agreed, and wouldn't mind if my city (Los Angeles) bulldozed most, if not all of the buildings built around the 60's. This is also the time when suburbs became fashionable, for a double-whammy of craptastic design. These two factors, among others contribute immensely to the uninviting, ugly, even amateurish feel to much of the city.
> 10ft ceilings
These were no longer necessary once air conditioning was invented. However high ceilings and window awnings are more energy efficient and therefore should probably make a comeback.
Whenever something is done cheaply and it looks like it's not a cost issue because it's only miniscule part of the total cost of the product, it's usually actually is a cost issue. The buyer of the final product might not mind spending a little extra to have that one thing done a little better, but for the supplier of the sub-sub-contractor whose entire profit comes from doing that one thing, the "miniscule" part becomes 100% of the cost.
Not only that, but this is only one of many things that could be done more expensively. What if you add better fire resistance, better insulation, more weather resistant paint, more carefully assembled parts, etc. it ends up becoming quite a lot more expensive. It's a bit like the difference between a Mercedes and a Toyota. They both seem to be basically the same, but the Mercedes has slightly more expensive parts scattered all through it like a few dollars spent on fluid dampers on the adjustable seat backs compared to no damping.
If you go around old homes in Portland, you will see lathe and plaster walls as smooth as a still lake built close to 100 years ago, not to mention lovingly crafted wood details.
If you go into a modern home, you see sheet drywall with tons of shitty looking texture all over it to hide the deep imperfections with the hanging of the drywall, and nary a wood detail to be found.
It's absurd that we've taken these woefully cheaper home construction standards with the prices of housing.
...in many cases i have seen in NYC, homeowners are economically motivated to "lower" their ceilings (cheaper to heat/cool living space).
I bought and still live in an early century Georgian, and the maintenance costs over the past two decades has been a very real challenge.
If a pipe leaks, if there is a crack in the wall, if/when the floor eventually gets bowed, etc. It is an entirely different, time-consuming and expensive approach to maintaining everything.
For the majority of homeowners, it is clearly and absolutely a cost issue.
"some time right after WWII, people in US suddenly decided to live in a poorly built and ugly looking dwellings regardless of their income level. "
We stopped living in walkable villages and cities and started living in motorway dependant sprawling suburbs. Our buildings got uglier. Our built environment got worse even as we got richer.
Largely this was a matter of public policy. The Roosevelt administration made new rules to plan new development to promote industry during the Depression and imposed it on banks and local planning boards. Still, there wasn't enough push to get the banks to allow anything to be built. Then after the war, those regulations had been in place for almost fifteen years and nothing had been built in the whole country for 16 years since the Depression began.
So people took the rules as gospel and built using them. The only thing allowed was car dependant sprawl and the car companies -- an enormous political power right after the war -- loved it. So the whole country was redesigned. It still is. And if your community isn't worth loving -- as sprawl isn't -- then it isn't worth building beautiful buildings.
That's why this is now the nation of NIMBYism. People can see that nothing has gotten built here but garbage since 1929 and they don't want more of it. Places like San Francisco are now like jewels and museums since nobody has been allowed to build like that in 86 years and won't be allowed to start tomorrow. The epoch when things could be new and beautiful has passed from living memory.
If you've ever worked in residential construction, there's one constant truth: everything you make will be redesigned away before it fails. Our desire for novelty is strong, and cheap construction lets us reconfigure houses affordably in ways that old, stronger construction didn't. Someone will want a new countertop because it looks pretty long before the old one will break, and the same goes for closet space and windows.
That's no explanation for situation in the article, of course. One would expect that structural elements of large, dramatic investments of that sort would take proper care to last. But drywall-on-sticks is an economic reality that makes sense.
re: shaking, it's not necessarily mass; it's rigidity, or lack thereof. It's more expensive, but you can build a more rigid floor by using deeper joists and spacing them more closely. You also need to make sure the floor is well anchored to the walls, but these days it should be done as a matter of the course to get good seismic performance.
One main development might be the specialization of the construction industry and the advent of professional management after WWII. When homes are not built by home owners but by development companies, a totally different set of incentives might fall in place, and with professional management one might start looking for metrics and optimizing against them.
The main thing is the drywall. Interior walls in homes used to be plaster, troweled onto lathe or wire backing in several coats. Plaster is a LOT heavier than drywall: it's basically like having 3/4-inch cement walls. Plaster walls lend a sense of solidity and quiet to the entire house.
The basic framing of houses is not that much different.
> The way I see it, some time right after WWII, people in US suddenly decided to live in a poorly built and ugly looking dwellings regardless of their income level.
You could extend this to a lot of other things. Pre-war and post-war America look way more than five years apart.
Is the brick actually holding up the building? In many modern buildings, it's just a veneer, about 1cm thick. The steelwork holds it up. The new Box.net HQ in Redwood City looks like a brick building, but it's not; it's steel and concrete with about 1cm of brick on the outside.
There's some nice work being done with brick today.[1] Some of this is gentrification, built to fit in with existing brick buildings, or to imitate them in new construction. All those examples have recessed windows, although not structural stone lintels. Many lintels today are precast stone and decorative; steel is carrying the load.
Robotic bricklaying is here.[2]
In earthquake country, you really don't want tall brick buildings where the brick is structural. San Francisco is very anti-cornice; in even minor earthquakes, overhanging masonry cornices tend to fall off and kill people.
This was my thought as well. The modern building is likely just using the brick as veneer, even if it is full-thickness brick. It's likely concrete walls with brick layered over it. The fact that the brickwork is poorly done likely doesn't matter except aesthetically. If all the brick fell off the building would still be standing.
The newer building is indeed ugly, and the brickwork looks cheap and poorly done. But that doesn't mean the technology has declined. It means the technology has advanced to the point that the brick is just ornamental.
I think even some old (100 year old) buildings w/ "full sized" bricks (not 1cm veneer) are still wood-frame construction w/ brick non-structural outerwork.
The article mentions that it's not a wood-framed building, I think implying that it's a true layered (multi-wythe) brick construction:
My analysis doesn't even address brick problems associated with the switch from multi-wythe brick construction to brick veneer over wood framing. (Andres Hall is not a wood-framed building.) Although buildings with brick veneer over wood framing are usually better insulated than old multi-wythe brick buildings, they are frequently plagued by an entirely new category of water entry problems due to flashing errors, clogged air spaces, and missing weep holes. But that's a topic for another article.
I was excited to find your robot brick layer link, but it didn't look that great. There was still a chap doing some of the finishing work sitting alongside. I prefer the idea of programming the robots, leaving the site, and then returning to find your house complete! The 3d printing using concrete made more sense. http://www.theguardian.com/technology/video/2014/apr/29/3d-p...
The article uses the word "façade" 7 times in reference to both the older and newer building. My takeaway is the emphasis on "technology" in the article is on form rather than function.
Reminds me on a recent conversation at a maker space:
How do you control it, a transistor and a oscillator?
Nah, just an Arduino.
So with micro controllers we loose a lot of applied knowledge of analog circuits and I suspect something similar is going on in architecture. The hours a architect spends on learning about modern materials is not spend thinking about brick works, and consequently a modern architect is a lot worse at building brick buildings than a architect one hundred years ago.
> "Part of the blame, I feel, rests at the feet of the Modernist movement — a movement that idealized the cube and disdained roof overhangs. Modernist architects were ignorant of the entire concept of moisture management. The fact that thousands of Modernist buildings suffered water entry problems did little to deter architects from falling in love with Modernism and Brutalism. This tragic love affair contributed to the withering of age-old skills."
I believe this is a fair assignment of blame. It's analogous to the complaints people have about some modern web design - total focus on appearance at the expense of usability or technical quality.
The architects produce buildings that look good on paper, because that's what wins the contract. The next client isn't going to go to their previous building and do a customer satisfaction survey on the users. Nobody ever does.
Edit: Incan stone construction is one of the great examples of ancient 'over'building: precisely fitted hand-carved stone, good for five centuries. And Rome has plenty of 2000 year old brick buildings, especially the Pantheon dome.
This was a good article but I think the authors assignment of blame is misplaced.
In my opinion the reason contemporary brick construction is not up to par with 100 year old brick construction is the same reason contemporary washing machines are not up to the standard of washing machines 100 years ago: The emphasis in making things now is on speed and cheapness, the emphasis 100 years ago was on quality.
The college dorm building was certainly thrown up in a fraction of the time, for a fraction of the price with a fraction of the labourers, than the bank building.
The author admits to the limited comparison. I have a few other reasons:
1. We actually care if our buildings are insulated now and withstand earthquakes.
2. People are so wealthy here they don't have to get it right, they can always pay to do it over again. They don't care to put in the research to make sure it is done right. [0]
3. Corollary to #2, we don't need our buildings to last 100 years because we expect the area to be overtaken by increased density by then?
[0] CSB: Person tells about friend that bought house in Las Vegas just prior to 2008, has enormous cooling bill because house doesn't have overhang to protect southern exposure from the sun and HOA won't allow her to alter it. Asks why the government doesn't protect her. I ask why she didn't do a little more due diligence before spending $300k. He hadn't thought of it that way and considers it.
4. The 19th century buildings which were shoddily built (the majority) have been torn down. It's the same bias that makes people claim old appliances were built better than modern ones.
The article's author is not wrong. The average 1980's brickwork building is built less well than the average 100 year old building. However, 100 years ago buildings probably were built worse on average than today. Both of those statements can be true at the same time.
Essentially, Holladay is complaining about the lack of water detailing, which is super important to the durability of brick. It doesn't need to be as fancy as his first example, as the link above shows, but you need someone to care about it.
Essentially, the issue building science specialists have with modernist architecture is that it often favors geometric simplicity over proper protection of the materials. Brick can withstand water, to an extent, but without drip edges and other details, it's quickly going to get damaged and ugly.
Note that building science nerds also tend to hate bumpouts and complicated rooflines because the air tightness and insulation details are hard to get right (and usually they just aren't done properly).
The small house I live in is 100 years old, and built of brick. It is a tremendously (over-)engineered building: two layers of brick even for interior walls, exterior walls are around 1 ft thick, and four massive chimney-breasts (although two were sadly removed by previous owners).
My theory is that they just had enormous amounts of cheap labour 100 years ago, and you'd never be able to build such a building today because it would be far too expensive.
In my experience the timber in buildings that old is of the sort that would be hard to find at any price these days, and ruinously expensive if you could. Single thick, long, flawless pieces used in places where several thinner, knot-filled pieces would be used today.
Exceptional (by modern standards) material, used in quantities that would be considered excessive even in nice construction these days.
Alright, too many mentions of survival bias and too much skepticism. There're large parts of some cities that are almost exclusively constructed from brick. It might be bias or it might not be.
It's clear that nowadays buildings are made cheaply. For example the construction of the regular American suburban "stick" house is just the cheapest and the quickest way put up walls and a roof. What you get is something that's badly insulated (both from weather and sound) and just isn't very strong, and the technique is getting traction in other parts of the world too, replacing concrete, beams and brick.
That would imply that there's no issues with the newer design when the article clearly showed where the wrong choices have affected the durability of the building.
...but comparing a bank (a building that in 1891 had to LOOK expensive) and student flats (a building that has to BE cheap) results in the rather underwhelming discovery that because they had wildly different budgets with completely different aesthetic aims, they ended up with different built qualities. Shocking, isn't it?
If they want to make an apples-for-apples comparison, the author should come to the UK and compare our 1890 semi-detached with any post-70s new-build. There are certainly ecological issues with the older building (that are expensive to retrofit past) but the quality of building and workmanship is drastically better in the older houses.
And [at least in the UK] this isn't a case of crappy houses made of sticks falling down. With the rarest of exceptions, there is no "survivorship bias".
If you are curious about this topic you should bring it up with some architects from different countries. From my understanding there are indeed regressions in building quality in some countries but it's not entirely clear what causes it other than decisions that have been made at the time.
In particular the brick did not decrease in quality but the way they were built did. For instance for a while people paid less attention to protecting buildings from water damage to achieve more interesting designs.
A particular crazy architectural style that suffers a lot from this is British brutalist architecture.
Survivorship bias and structural integrity aside, I suspect it's all about the cashflow.
The bank was built in 1891. The FDIC wasn't around until 1933. The appearance of wealth and institutional stability was a very important marketing tool to late 19th-century bankers wanting patrons to trust them with their money.
The dorm houses kids fresh out of high school who can't / don't want to live off campus. I'd guess the building is attractive enough to most people to avoid negative attention, and -- as the article indicates -- it obviously isn't swaying money away from Dartmouth, so why bother?
More broadly on this subject, I recommend that every software engineer read the book How Buildings Learn, by Stewart Brand. It's a book about the lifecycle of buildings, design compromises, and how buildings are altered and repurposed over their life. It's a fascinating way to think about software as well.
Could it be survivor bias? What if the cheap shitty hundred-year-old buildings are torn down or covered in plaster or siding, thus leaving only the good specimens?
Buildings from 100 years ago that still stand today necessarily must have been those that were most carefully constructed or those that have been thoughtfully preserved. This creates a biased comparison between the highest quality buildings of the past and an average (or perhaps worse than average) building from modern times.
This article could conclude that not all brick buildings today are superior in construction to the highest quality buildings built 100 years ago, but making a more general statement would be a fallacious extrapolation.
Where are brick buildings being torn down left and right? I challenge the survivorship bias argument as where I live in the US east coast multiple cities push for historical status on buildings past a certain age in order to retain character.
There are some other great explanations in this thread (survivor bias seems very plausible), but I'll throw out another based on my experience with other construction trades: economics.
If you look at old buildings, you tend to notice that they also have a lot of intricate plaster-work that you never see anymore. Why? Because it used to be much cheaper to hire skilled labor than it is today. You can see a similar trend every year in the Christmas Price Index, which tracks the cost of the items in the 12 Days of Christmas song. The prices of goods tend to stay stable, while the price of labor tends to increase significantly.
For our brick buildings, I tried to find the best numbers I could, and here's what I came up with:
In 1894, bricks cost about $5.70/thousand [1], which is $165.51 in today's dollars
Today, you can get bricks wholesale for $220/thousand - and that's what I found online, I imagine an actual wholesaler is less. [2]
That's an increase of about 37%
For the bricklayer, the average wage in 1891 was $4/day, which is about $110 in today's dollars [3]
Today, the median bricklayer pay is $24/hour [4], which is $192 per 8 hour day.
That's an increase of 75% in the real wages of the bricklayer, and it means that the rate labor costs have increased is double the rate of material costs.
In 1891, it may have made financial sense to pay for a bricklayer to make intricate, high quality buildings. In the past few decades, it's likely that's no longer the case.
We have the same issue here in Australia. The quality of recent brick work is terrible, even the bricks are worse. It seems brickies are unable (or unwilling) to lay bricks anymore.
Many cheap brick buildings from 100 years ago are gone, where the high quality ones are more likely to remain.
Also, steel Lintel are often used over windows in brick buildings. They don't last as long, but are fine for cheap construction that is not expected to last. AKA the kinds of building that are unlikely to be around in 100 years.
As I sit here in a rather old house (1920's) though never very expensive house I would say there are good and bad things about it.
There's very little insulation, the heavy exterior is only a couple inches from some sort of plaster board on the inside causing many electrical boxes to be shallow. They really didn't care about the price of heating the house when they built it or maybe they did it to be cheap, but in any case that cost has gone way up.
I do like an actual wood floor and heavy beams used in the construction of the basement and such.
The plumbing is sometimes far more creative then is easy to fix now and I've found myself just cutting sections out and replacing it. I actually have some pipes made from lead going out so they can be bent in curves. Terracotta drains in the yard probably need to be replaced.
The wiring was the first thing I replaced, knob and tube without grounds was just scary. O, and since the entire house was painted (yes they painted the formed bricks, not exactly like in the article though still bricks) with lead paint I certainly wouldn't eat something grown close to the house. Also I have steam heat which is interesting all by itself. So all in all, a not super expensive old building tends to be a lot of work these days and I would rather have a newer even if flimsy construction next time. I think I'll go along with the commenter who said the surviving old buildings are a bias because they are generally the best of the best of what was built in that time period.
There are almost no 100 year old brick buildings in San Francisco. Why? Because there was a big goddamn earthquake in 1906, and unreinforced masonry (which is to say, functionally almost all of it) deals badly with earthquakes in general. It deals especially badly with them when they are built on landfill.
There are also lots of mentions of survivorship bias, which is extremely relevant here.
Now that said, I find modern construction to be badly done in general, because it is almost all of it erected as cheaply as possible—and as cheaply as possible as measured by the shortest possible term metric. There is good stuff done still, and it is arguably cheaper over the ten year run or longer, but that's not what people buy and so it's not what the developers make. I'd like to claim this is shortsightedness but I can't shake the feeling that it's because real wages have been stagnant or sometimes declining since around 1972. There just isn't the money to spend.
N.B.: there are a lot of reasons why modern lumber seems like so much crap. About 95% of it is because folks are unwilling to pay for good lumber, as described above. Quality lumber, even quality construction lumber exists, but it's significantly more expensive than #2 common. Of the remainder, it's worth remembering that modern 2x4s are tend to be farmed in sustainable fashion using fast growth species like Douglas fir or Southern yellow pine. The stuff we were building with in the 30s and 40s? Quite a lot of that came from old growth forests, now irrevocably gone.
[+] [-] old-gregg|10 years ago|reply
The way I see it, some time right after WWII, people in US suddenly decided to live in a poorly built and ugly looking dwellings regardless of their income level. It is especially easy to see when looking at NYC buildings, some rentals are even explicitly advertized as "pre-war".
Examples of annoying trends in modern construction:
Even looking at materials used for construction today, I can't figure out why everyone thinks that drywall-on-sticks is acceptable? Literally every multi-story home I've been in felt hollow and shaky if you jump on the 2nd floor because there's no mass anywhere.This is clearly not a cost issue, I have taken tours looking at brand-new multi-MM homes in Austin, TX just for fun. While they all had top-notch appliances, finishes and a gazilion of square feet and bedrooms, they were also built using the same "toy" materials and used generally similar architectural patters as middle class homes.
What caused this change? It's like our collective mind suddenly stopped caring about tall doors, 10ft ceilings and solid feel of floors we walk on.
[+] [-] patmcc|10 years ago|reply
Nope, that's exactly it - it's cheaper and faster for the builder to frame a house small and simply. They've found that people spend money for houses based on location, size, and the visible stuff (like nice paint jobs and shiny appliances). They could spend twice as long as 40% more in materials and the home would sell for 2% more - not worth their time.
[+] [-] ThrustVectoring|10 years ago|reply
1. Labor specialization, meaning less of the home-buying market is savvy enough in the "handyman" sense to tell the difference. 2. A move away from building the thing you're going to own, and building things that other people will buy later. 3. Minimum standards for housing construction.
The third needs to be explained more - instead of aiming towards "building a good home", the construction industry aims to build the cheapest thing that they are legally allowed to sell (ie, meets building codes). While building codes do mean that there's a quality floor, competitive pressure means that nobody can consistently exceed the floor without getting out-competed by people who aim to barely meet it.
[+] [-] AmVess|10 years ago|reply
I built a few dozen homes and only once had a client request 2x6 construction. I tried to sell it on all the others, citing sturdiness and better insulating properties, but everyone looked at the features it excluded and went for flimsy 2x4 builds.
It gets important if you are a developer building subdivisions of homes. $10k saved on every house is $big profit. 25 home subs is $250k+ savings...very much an issue.
My own house is 2x6, and properly insulated top to bottom. My neighbor's slap job summer cooling bill is not quite double mine. Close to same sqft and same interior ac temp setting.
[+] [-] adevine|10 years ago|reply
I collect antique espresso machines. Some of these are highly sought after because they use big, heavy, high quality components: big brass boilers, copper piping, stainless steel enclosures and big brass groupheads. Compare that with many flimsy, plastic machines today (which rarely last more than a couple years), and it's no wonder there is a market for these older machines.
[+] [-] massysett|10 years ago|reply
Windows if anything are too big, not too small! My city apartment has floor to ceiling windows which are difficult for window treatments. Suburban homes can have huge two-story family rooms.
Noise is more a problem from adjoining units. Outside noise is sealed out quite well thanks to double-pane windows.
Overall new construction is of quite high quality when it comes to what's important. New homes have smoke detectors, fire sprinklers, better electrical systems, more durable cladding on the outside, better insulation, more bathrooms, and air conditioning. As someone who has seen both old and new homes and has considered living in both, I do not get the nostalgia for old homes. Most home buyers around here agree as they are gutting old homes and renovating them, not living in them as is. I considered living in old homes, but only because they are in good locations. Their oldness in and of itself offered no benefits.
[+] [-] bitanarch|10 years ago|reply
http://timber.ce.wsu.edu/Resources/papers/4-3-2.pdf
However, if you're not in an earthquake-prone area... then I agree I'd prefer to have a more solid construction.
[+] [-] djrogers|10 years ago|reply
It wouldn't be at all surprising to see a home built with such 'toy' materials require nothing more than some stucco repair and drywall patching, with a brick house right next door literally falling apart.
I realize not every region has earthquakes to worry about, but it is a factor in some areas.
[+] [-] mixmastamyk|10 years ago|reply
> 10ft ceilings
These were no longer necessary once air conditioning was invented. However high ceilings and window awnings are more energy efficient and therefore should probably make a comeback.
[+] [-] Asbostos|10 years ago|reply
Whenever something is done cheaply and it looks like it's not a cost issue because it's only miniscule part of the total cost of the product, it's usually actually is a cost issue. The buyer of the final product might not mind spending a little extra to have that one thing done a little better, but for the supplier of the sub-sub-contractor whose entire profit comes from doing that one thing, the "miniscule" part becomes 100% of the cost.
Not only that, but this is only one of many things that could be done more expensively. What if you add better fire resistance, better insulation, more weather resistant paint, more carefully assembled parts, etc. it ends up becoming quite a lot more expensive. It's a bit like the difference between a Mercedes and a Toyota. They both seem to be basically the same, but the Mercedes has slightly more expensive parts scattered all through it like a few dollars spent on fluid dampers on the adjustable seat backs compared to no damping.
[+] [-] dclowd9901|10 years ago|reply
If you go into a modern home, you see sheet drywall with tons of shitty looking texture all over it to hide the deep imperfections with the hanging of the drywall, and nary a wood detail to be found.
It's absurd that we've taken these woefully cheaper home construction standards with the prices of housing.
[+] [-] darkskyshades|10 years ago|reply
...in many cases i have seen in NYC, homeowners are economically motivated to "lower" their ceilings (cheaper to heat/cool living space).
I bought and still live in an early century Georgian, and the maintenance costs over the past two decades has been a very real challenge.
If a pipe leaks, if there is a crack in the wall, if/when the floor eventually gets bowed, etc. It is an entirely different, time-consuming and expensive approach to maintaining everything.
For the majority of homeowners, it is clearly and absolutely a cost issue.
[+] [-] WildUtah|10 years ago|reply
We stopped living in walkable villages and cities and started living in motorway dependant sprawling suburbs. Our buildings got uglier. Our built environment got worse even as we got richer.
Largely this was a matter of public policy. The Roosevelt administration made new rules to plan new development to promote industry during the Depression and imposed it on banks and local planning boards. Still, there wasn't enough push to get the banks to allow anything to be built. Then after the war, those regulations had been in place for almost fifteen years and nothing had been built in the whole country for 16 years since the Depression began.
So people took the rules as gospel and built using them. The only thing allowed was car dependant sprawl and the car companies -- an enormous political power right after the war -- loved it. So the whole country was redesigned. It still is. And if your community isn't worth loving -- as sprawl isn't -- then it isn't worth building beautiful buildings.
That's why this is now the nation of NIMBYism. People can see that nothing has gotten built here but garbage since 1929 and they don't want more of it. Places like San Francisco are now like jewels and museums since nobody has been allowed to build like that in 86 years and won't be allowed to start tomorrow. The epoch when things could be new and beautiful has passed from living memory.
[+] [-] bhuga|10 years ago|reply
That's no explanation for situation in the article, of course. One would expect that structural elements of large, dramatic investments of that sort would take proper care to last. But drywall-on-sticks is an economic reality that makes sense.
[+] [-] alricb|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] cmarschner|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ams6110|10 years ago|reply
The basic framing of houses is not that much different.
[+] [-] sotojuan|10 years ago|reply
You could extend this to a lot of other things. Pre-war and post-war America look way more than five years apart.
[+] [-] Animats|10 years ago|reply
There's some nice work being done with brick today.[1] Some of this is gentrification, built to fit in with existing brick buildings, or to imitate them in new construction. All those examples have recessed windows, although not structural stone lintels. Many lintels today are precast stone and decorative; steel is carrying the load.
Robotic bricklaying is here.[2]
In earthquake country, you really don't want tall brick buildings where the brick is structural. San Francisco is very anti-cornice; in even minor earthquakes, overhanging masonry cornices tend to fall off and kill people.
[1] http://www.bdcnetwork.com/7-emerging-design-trends-brick-bui... [2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ppk4O7iyzPI
[+] [-] dpark|10 years ago|reply
This was my thought as well. The modern building is likely just using the brick as veneer, even if it is full-thickness brick. It's likely concrete walls with brick layered over it. The fact that the brickwork is poorly done likely doesn't matter except aesthetically. If all the brick fell off the building would still be standing.
The newer building is indeed ugly, and the brickwork looks cheap and poorly done. But that doesn't mean the technology has declined. It means the technology has advanced to the point that the brick is just ornamental.
[+] [-] bch|10 years ago|reply
See http://www.carsondunlop.com/resources/articles/brick-houses-...
[+] [-] po|10 years ago|reply
My analysis doesn't even address brick problems associated with the switch from multi-wythe brick construction to brick veneer over wood framing. (Andres Hall is not a wood-framed building.) Although buildings with brick veneer over wood framing are usually better insulated than old multi-wythe brick buildings, they are frequently plagued by an entirely new category of water entry problems due to flashing errors, clogged air spaces, and missing weep holes. But that's a topic for another article.
[+] [-] cobweb|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] anonbanker|10 years ago|reply
Does this mean there are robot Freemasons in our future?
[+] [-] agumonkey|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] chejazi|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] tantalor|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] yk|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] pjc50|10 years ago|reply
I believe this is a fair assignment of blame. It's analogous to the complaints people have about some modern web design - total focus on appearance at the expense of usability or technical quality.
The architects produce buildings that look good on paper, because that's what wins the contract. The next client isn't going to go to their previous building and do a customer satisfaction survey on the users. Nobody ever does.
Edit: Incan stone construction is one of the great examples of ancient 'over'building: precisely fitted hand-carved stone, good for five centuries. And Rome has plenty of 2000 year old brick buildings, especially the Pantheon dome.
[+] [-] everyone|10 years ago|reply
In my opinion the reason contemporary brick construction is not up to par with 100 year old brick construction is the same reason contemporary washing machines are not up to the standard of washing machines 100 years ago: The emphasis in making things now is on speed and cheapness, the emphasis 100 years ago was on quality.
The college dorm building was certainly thrown up in a fraction of the time, for a fraction of the price with a fraction of the labourers, than the bank building.
[+] [-] coryrc|10 years ago|reply
1. We actually care if our buildings are insulated now and withstand earthquakes.
2. People are so wealthy here they don't have to get it right, they can always pay to do it over again. They don't care to put in the research to make sure it is done right. [0]
3. Corollary to #2, we don't need our buildings to last 100 years because we expect the area to be overtaken by increased density by then?
[0] CSB: Person tells about friend that bought house in Las Vegas just prior to 2008, has enormous cooling bill because house doesn't have overhang to protect southern exposure from the sun and HOA won't allow her to alter it. Asks why the government doesn't protect her. I ask why she didn't do a little more due diligence before spending $300k. He hadn't thought of it that way and considers it.
[+] [-] Joeri|10 years ago|reply
The article's author is not wrong. The average 1980's brickwork building is built less well than the average 100 year old building. However, 100 years ago buildings probably were built worse on average than today. Both of those statements can be true at the same time.
[+] [-] SamBam|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] alricb|10 years ago|reply
Essentially, Holladay is complaining about the lack of water detailing, which is super important to the durability of brick. It doesn't need to be as fancy as his first example, as the link above shows, but you need someone to care about it.
Essentially, the issue building science specialists have with modernist architecture is that it often favors geometric simplicity over proper protection of the materials. Brick can withstand water, to an extent, but without drip edges and other details, it's quickly going to get damaged and ugly.
Note that building science nerds also tend to hate bumpouts and complicated rooflines because the air tightness and insulation details are hard to get right (and usually they just aren't done properly).
[+] [-] rwmj|10 years ago|reply
My theory is that they just had enormous amounts of cheap labour 100 years ago, and you'd never be able to build such a building today because it would be far too expensive.
[+] [-] ashark|10 years ago|reply
Exceptional (by modern standards) material, used in quantities that would be considered excessive even in nice construction these days.
[+] [-] vvpan|10 years ago|reply
It's clear that nowadays buildings are made cheaply. For example the construction of the regular American suburban "stick" house is just the cheapest and the quickest way put up walls and a roof. What you get is something that's badly insulated (both from weather and sound) and just isn't very strong, and the technique is getting traction in other parts of the world too, replacing concrete, beams and brick.
[+] [-] gluggymug|10 years ago|reply
That would imply that there's no issues with the newer design when the article clearly showed where the wrong choices have affected the durability of the building.
[+] [-] oliwarner|10 years ago|reply
...but comparing a bank (a building that in 1891 had to LOOK expensive) and student flats (a building that has to BE cheap) results in the rather underwhelming discovery that because they had wildly different budgets with completely different aesthetic aims, they ended up with different built qualities. Shocking, isn't it?
If they want to make an apples-for-apples comparison, the author should come to the UK and compare our 1890 semi-detached with any post-70s new-build. There are certainly ecological issues with the older building (that are expensive to retrofit past) but the quality of building and workmanship is drastically better in the older houses.
And [at least in the UK] this isn't a case of crappy houses made of sticks falling down. With the rarest of exceptions, there is no "survivorship bias".
[+] [-] the_mitsuhiko|10 years ago|reply
In particular the brick did not decrease in quality but the way they were built did. For instance for a while people paid less attention to protecting buildings from water damage to achieve more interesting designs.
A particular crazy architectural style that suffers a lot from this is British brutalist architecture.
[+] [-] unit91|10 years ago|reply
The bank was built in 1891. The FDIC wasn't around until 1933. The appearance of wealth and institutional stability was a very important marketing tool to late 19th-century bankers wanting patrons to trust them with their money.
The dorm houses kids fresh out of high school who can't / don't want to live off campus. I'd guess the building is attractive enough to most people to avoid negative attention, and -- as the article indicates -- it obviously isn't swaying money away from Dartmouth, so why bother?
[+] [-] beat|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] pilsetnieks|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Plough_Jogger|10 years ago|reply
Buildings from 100 years ago that still stand today necessarily must have been those that were most carefully constructed or those that have been thoughtfully preserved. This creates a biased comparison between the highest quality buildings of the past and an average (or perhaps worse than average) building from modern times.
This article could conclude that not all brick buildings today are superior in construction to the highest quality buildings built 100 years ago, but making a more general statement would be a fallacious extrapolation.
[+] [-] smrtinsert|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dworin|10 years ago|reply
If you look at old buildings, you tend to notice that they also have a lot of intricate plaster-work that you never see anymore. Why? Because it used to be much cheaper to hire skilled labor than it is today. You can see a similar trend every year in the Christmas Price Index, which tracks the cost of the items in the 12 Days of Christmas song. The prices of goods tend to stay stable, while the price of labor tends to increase significantly.
For our brick buildings, I tried to find the best numbers I could, and here's what I came up with: In 1894, bricks cost about $5.70/thousand [1], which is $165.51 in today's dollars Today, you can get bricks wholesale for $220/thousand - and that's what I found online, I imagine an actual wholesaler is less. [2] That's an increase of about 37%
For the bricklayer, the average wage in 1891 was $4/day, which is about $110 in today's dollars [3]
Today, the median bricklayer pay is $24/hour [4], which is $192 per 8 hour day.
That's an increase of 75% in the real wages of the bricklayer, and it means that the rate labor costs have increased is double the rate of material costs.
In 1891, it may have made financial sense to pay for a bricklayer to make intricate, high quality buildings. In the past few decades, it's likely that's no longer the case.
[1] https://books.google.com/books?id=Oo4oAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA953&lpg=...
[2]http://brickbroker.com/brick.html [3] https://books.google.com/books?id=cNdEAQAAMAAJ&pg=PA722&lpg=... [4] http://www.payscale.com/research/US/Job=Bricklayer/Hourly_Ra...
[+] [-] danieltillett|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Retric|10 years ago|reply
Many cheap brick buildings from 100 years ago are gone, where the high quality ones are more likely to remain.
Also, steel Lintel are often used over windows in brick buildings. They don't last as long, but are fine for cheap construction that is not expected to last. AKA the kinds of building that are unlikely to be around in 100 years.
[+] [-] tsetliff|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] gchpaco|10 years ago|reply
There are also lots of mentions of survivorship bias, which is extremely relevant here.
Now that said, I find modern construction to be badly done in general, because it is almost all of it erected as cheaply as possible—and as cheaply as possible as measured by the shortest possible term metric. There is good stuff done still, and it is arguably cheaper over the ten year run or longer, but that's not what people buy and so it's not what the developers make. I'd like to claim this is shortsightedness but I can't shake the feeling that it's because real wages have been stagnant or sometimes declining since around 1972. There just isn't the money to spend.
N.B.: there are a lot of reasons why modern lumber seems like so much crap. About 95% of it is because folks are unwilling to pay for good lumber, as described above. Quality lumber, even quality construction lumber exists, but it's significantly more expensive than #2 common. Of the remainder, it's worth remembering that modern 2x4s are tend to be farmed in sustainable fashion using fast growth species like Douglas fir or Southern yellow pine. The stuff we were building with in the 30s and 40s? Quite a lot of that came from old growth forests, now irrevocably gone.