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.
To chime in, even in places where people are willing to pay a premium for construction materials and architecture (like in sismic areas) there is numerous cases of the builder cheaping out and osometimes illegally trying to get away with fewer material.
The last months there was again a case of a building constructor using less structural elements than it was legally required to, also violating the number specified in the blueprintS.
It seems like one of those cascading series of perverse incentives up and down the value chain. The subcontractors want to cut corners with the contractor. The contractor wants to cut corners with the developer. The developer wants to cut corners on the project in general, passing the headache onto the buyer at some point after the eventual sale. Almost no one in this mess has incentives aligned with doing things correctly.
If buying and moving homes were a more frequent event, buyers would play more "rounds" of this game and eventually become wiser to the ground rules of it. Reputation would start to matter, and developers, contractors, et al., would need to work harder to ensure they didn't get dinged. As it now stands, except in the luxury market, really, where people custom build homes, no one cares about a developer or contractor's reputation. So they don't have any reputational risk on the line. So they happily cut corners wherever they can get away with it.
(And I'm willing to bet that even the luxury/custom buyer barely has a clue when it comes to evaluating the quality of construction and materials.)
Some of them "roll" their business over every few years - starting a new company, transferring to it all assets (and maybe some liabilities), rehiring the workers, and then shutting down the old company. This way they get a new name and reputation as often as most people get a new house.
Back in 1999, an acquaintance of mine bought a $2.3MM home in an exclusive neighborhood. As he was driving me and a few friends through his neighborhood, he explained that all the houses could be knocked down and rebuilt if desired. The price included location, security (theater really, but hey, it sells), footage, looks and fancy appliances. Not quality.
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.
>"...less of the home-buying market is savvy enough in the "handyman" sense to tell the difference"
True. I don't know how the market works in the US but in the UK what typically happens is a developer owns the land but borrows short term money to build on it.
The incentive, therefore, is to complete the project as quickly and cheaply as possible. Residential houses are designed for ease of building not for quality.
A typical buyer will have a 90-95% mortgage and the completed house is signed off by a surveyor who is engaged by the mortgage provider. The only real concern is if the house will still be standing in 25 years time and nothing else. In effect it's a rubber stamping process.
The buyer is often too emotionally involved in the concept of owning a home to care less.
No sane person would complete the purchase of a new car if defects in build quality were so glaringly obvious but the same people do it with houses every day?
Yeah, that's roughly how it works in the US. Pre-WW1, though, there was much more of "buy land and materials, build a house yourself" going on. Like, sometimes you'd basically clear the trees from a plot and use the lumber from that to build the house.
That's what I meant by labor specialization - on the home-buying side, much fewer people can build a home or participate meaningfully in construction and remodeling.
I think a key difference is that you drive the car everyday. Even if you have no clue about the inner workings of the car, you have a direct, frequent, operating relationship with it. You understand its basic principles and functionality in a hands-on way (literally). If unseen defects are present in a car, they'd reveal themselves to you in short order.
The same cannot be said for houses. You live in a house everyday, but you don't have a true working or operating relationship with it unless you're very handy (which many home buyers these days are not). The car has a direct input/output operating cycle that you control; the house does not. It's harder to suss defects out because the house doesn't 'run' on them per se. You only learn about the defects when the house fails in one way or another. That may be two days into the inspection period, or it may be two years after closing.
Yup. When Hurricane Andrew blew through South Florida in 1992, homes in the direct path that were built prior to modern building standards survived, while more modern homes (I think post-1980) were unlivable (or totally gone, depending on the area).
Part of that was declining building standards (go too long between hurricanes and yes, people get complacent).
But another aspect, I think, is a shift in home ownership---we no longer "own" a home for an extended period of time (average length of owning a home in the US is seven years). Yes, my grandparents eventually paid off their mortgages, but nowadays I think that's pretty rare. Why buy quality when you aren't going to own for very long?
I've heard this hypothesis before, but I don't think frequent moving is the correct explanation. After all, moving out of a house means moving into another one. Furthermore, Europeans today continue to build with brick and other masonry and, if I were to guess, relocate at rates that are comparable enough to those in the US. The more likely explanation has to do with American culture. Not only do Americans value quantity relative to quality to a higher degree than Europeans, but when American land was being settled, it was a. heavily wooded and b. occurred during the 18th and 19th centuries, a time when stone and brick urban fortifications were being torn down in Europe. By contract, Europe was by this time heavily deforested (e.g., England imported its wood from countries such as Poland to meet the needs of its growing navy).
The theory of ownership in the Washington area, as explained by a realtor at the end of the 1980s, but probably commonly held for 15 or 20 years before that, was that you bought, held for a few years to get back your closing costs and let the property appreciate some, then moved on to something more expensive. One can see why a realtor might think well of this idea.
The one thing I will say for modern houses is that the wiring will generally be better and with outlets better spaced. They might be better insulated. But my goodness, the quality of the workmanship and often materials. We watched a house going up next to us, and had to think that big is a lot cheaper than good.
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.
Mostly I'm amused that Americans never got the end of the Three Little Pigs story and still build houses out of wood.
I read once that buildings are the best thing to cheat on the construction of because each layer of underspecced materials is hidden by the next layer.
Wood is a renewable and a carbon trap. On site, dirt is a good choice for a building material. You can also use it to bulk mass. You just need a digger and some grunt work. See building with rammed earth.
I've a friend who has just added to his 17th century thatched cottage with like materials: oak timber frame, timber cladding and wattle and daub, which is dirt and wood/hay/hair. It's lovely and solid. Sadly planning officials insisted on an over the top concrete foundation that negated all his hard work with his sympathetic build.
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.
Well not just physical products. Flights are another good example.
> Compare that with many flimsy, plastic machines today
... that are available at a cheap accessible price. It's still entirely possible to buy espresso machines that are built like tanks, or ones that have lots of expensive electronics, and so on. The high-end of the market has not disappeared...
> it's no wonder there is a market for these older machines.
Market being the operative word here. We've seen a spread in the market to where the cheap end is now affordable by everyone, and the expensive end is even better than (and more expensive than) the best of the best was 20 years ago. Hard to see how this isn't a good thing, except from an environmental perspective.
> the expensive end is even better than (and more expensive than) the best of the best was 20 years ago
I'm not sure about this part, unless you are very careful in what you're shopping for, and knowledgeable about it. One Achilles heel of a lot of current appliances is that there are now circuit boards everywhere, which are a common point of premature failure. If the computerized part of your appliance fails (due to a power surge, capacitor aging, etc.), the device is effectively bricked in a difficult-to-repair way, even if all the mechanical parts are still fine. One option is to buy all-mechanical high-end models, which works with some appliances (espresso machines) but is basically impossible with others (washing machines).
You couldn't buy a washing machine 20 years ago that was anywhere near as energy efficient, kind to your clothes, could figure out the right amount of detergent or softener to use, or had features like remote operation so your clothes don't sit damp all day. Durability is not the only mark of quality.
I hope you know that energy efficients often means using motors with less Watt so that e.g. your washing machine will take longer to complete the washing cycle and with less hot water. The same with vacuum cleaners, eletronic kettles, etc. Eletro motors aren't a new invention, even brushless motors are there for some decades. Not every energy saving idea is a good idea. Often it's better to buy a few photovoltaic panels yourself and buy high quality brands that last decades (e.g. Miele washing machines). I would buy a 2000W vacuum cleaner that can clean my house in 30min than a 1000W vacuum cleaner that is less efficient in cleaning the floor so it takes at least twice as long to really clean the floor. In the end you often trade time for peak power usage. Sure, power grid operators like that.
In published tests, cleaning ability is not correlated at all to power over a certain level. Most 2000W cleaners are older models, since research and development has focused on energy efficiency for the past decade, so they are even likely to be worse. I could easily construct a 10 kW model for you, and it's going to run very hot.
(There was this EU introduced power cap for domestic vacuum cleaners the other year, accompanied with articles how you should hurry up and buy one of the powerful ones before they were forbidden. I was in the market for one, and scoured every independent test I could find where I understood the language, and the result were the same: the modern ones using less power picked up small particles better. As soon as you have a powerful enough engine other things start to matter. That's when I sighed deeply about journalistic integrity and bought one of the newer models.)
You describe an important problem. Consumers keep buying older models, which are objectively worse, because they want a scalar value for "betterness". It's just like megapixels, where you stuff a 20 megapixel sensor behind a plastic lens and consumers buy it because big numbers are good.
Some devices like a electric kettle are incredibly simple in how the works and you can't beat the real world physics, less Watt means more waiting time. You can only improve the design of vacuum cleaner and washing machines so much, a half as powerful device (Watt) won't make up the loss by a far superior design. Don't get me wrong I am for energy efficient devices, but I have an engineering degree and know a lot of the little tricks, and the average Joe falls for every marketing trick. These recent laws that were introduced by lobby-orgs aren't that great.
Don't let your engineering degree stand in the way of finding out the facts. You claimed a 2 kW vacuum cleaner would clean in half the time, and there's plenty of data that suggests otherwise.
The claim that cleaning time is linear to motor effect is unrealistic at best. There is an optimum effect for the nozzle. A 10 kW engine wouldn't clear your floors any faster than a 1 kW one, and definitively not ten times faster. The best (household, not for garages or anything like that) vacuum cleaner commercially available on the market is likely closer to 1 kW than 2 kW.
You think only "average" people falls for marketing tricks, but this superficial knowledge of the engineering involved actually makes you an easier prey for the marketing trick that more powerful motors makes for a better product. That bigger numbers are better is one of the easiest marketing schemes ever.
...my dad's top-end washing machine bought 25 years ago is still going strong, working without a hitch. Had simple maintenance once. All the while I'm about to get my third model in 14 years.
Survivorship bias. People point to a 25-year old washing machine and say "look, it still works!" but are unaware of millions of other 25-year old washing machines that are currently in our landfills.
I'm talking about a specific model of washer. My dad did his research, talked to a bunch of maintenance guys who repaired machines for a living, and ended up buying the best built machine that was being sold. Recently I bought a couple of used Snap-on hand tools that were made in the early 90's. I know how tough they are. They are just pretty damn well built. In 20 years if I remark how great they're still going, that's not actually survivorship bias. Some things are supposed to last this long.
Fair enough, but this also has a lot to do with cost - your dad probably spent a large chunk of his monthly salary(if not all of it) on a washing machine, but I spent literally 2-days worth on a brand new one when I got one couple months ago. If it dies in 3 years I won't even bother repairing it - I'll just get another one, it's too cheap not to.
Snap-on is fantastic. If anyone ever sees any for sale at yard sales - even broken, rusted-up, mostly junk tools, buy them. If you can find a distributor, they honor the lifetime warranty.
Craftsman tools used to be the same, although you have to be careful - they've started mixing in the cheapo junk lines and putting the Craftsman name on them, and those don't necessarily have the same warranty policy.
More specifically, anything branded Craftsman Evolv is guaranteed to be garbage. I've seen Craftsman Evolv tools that are identical to ones at Harbor Freight, but at twice the price.
I've only tried once, but I wasn't able to find anyone who could do that when mine died. It's possible the repair people I tried were just not knowledgeable, but they claimed you can't get those kinds of parts for older discontinued models (it was somewhere around 8-9 years old at the time it got knocked out by a lightning storm, while a washing machine mechanically should last ~15-20 years).
I do know someone whose entire business is reverse-engineering bricked old devices, sticking in a new circuit board with custom software. But it's expensive enough to hire him that his customers are all businesses with expensive equipment they want rescued, mostly 1990s vintage produced by now-defunct companies.
We've seen a spread in the market to where the cheap end
is now affordable by everyone, and the expensive end is
even better than (and more expensive than) the best of
the best was 20 years ago.
I've worked for a household-name European electronics manufacturer about 10 years ago (as an embedded programmer). Afaik their high-end offering differed from the low-end ones mostly or entirely in cosmetic details.
Came here to say exactly that. Not sure why folks wouldn't think that the same philosophy which overtook manufactured goods post-war wouldn't also apply to construction.
I mean, I'm sat here in my living room, place was built 1798 (relatively modern), near as damnit everything is original. Stone floors. Stone fireplaces. Stone walls. Lath and plaster ceilings. Lime plaster.
They knew what they were doing, this shit is built to last.
These days, they also know what they're doing, but a house has a shelf life of 30 years, so you can tear it down later, not feel bad, and stimulate the construction industry. In theory. I. Practice people live in leaky shoeboxes made of twigs, paper and tar.
Finally, the insurance industry drives this. Ever try insuring a 100 year old slate roof in America? Good luck with that. They'll insist you rip it off and replace it with tar shingles, because no roof more than 20 years old can be any good.
My other property has a 13th century stone roof (limestone, stacked), and it's barely been maintained and is in perfect nick after 600+ years.
I've never understood why people put asphalt shingles on new houses, instead of putting on steel roofing. It might be a hair cheaper, but the difference between shingle and the screw-on steel panels is not that much.
A.) Snow doesn't come off of shingles worth a damn unless you have a wicked pitch on your roof. So you have to get up and shovel off the roof, or risk icedams, leaks, and potentially the whole roof collapsing if you have really heavy snowfall.
B.) Shingles only last about 20-30 years. Steel roofing lasts a lifetime. You might have to repaint it once in a great while.
Steel roofs are a lot louder when it's raining and such, so it might have something to do with that. Also, they don't look as good (not so much for me personally, but in general) as a shingled roof. No question that they last a lot longer. I very often see large garages and barns built with steel roofs.
You should never have to shovel your roof; you should have a vented attic or enough insulation to avoid ice dams, and the structure should be strong enough to support the snow load.
That would be a great ideal, but I've never seen it in practice. Probably with the truss-style roofs that are used commonly now, the snow weight is less of a problem than with the older rafter-style.
I'm unclear what point ventilation or insulation in the attic would have to do with ice dams... In my experience, it's caused by snow that doesn't get removed, which then melts, seeps down to the roof, and refreezes, with the texture of the shingles providing a greater surface area to freeze against.
All things being equal, it's nice to have a steel roof that will warm up on a sunny day and have all the snow slide off.
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.
Maybe that's DC, then? I dunno. I live in Southern California, and I haven't seen a home built here in the last 30 years that was remotely well constructed. They're all made out of ticky tacky, as the song goes. And it seems to be getting worse year over year, especially in homes built after the Great Recession. The only exceptions seem to be the double-digit-million-dollar luxury homes.
As for the pros and cons of old construction...
Pros: generally more durable, more attention to detail, nicer materials used. Will suffer from age-related maintenance issues, but unlike modern construction, is unlikely to suffer from issues related to fundamental structural or design failure.
Cons: design and layout choices that no longer fit a contemporary lifestyle (small or no closets; tiny bathrooms and kitchens; closed floor plans; etc.). Generally poorer insulation. Depending on the age of the home, it may also have issues with old plumbing and, having not been designed for central heating or A/C, will sometimes be a bear to deal with in that department.
All things considered, having lived in a c. 1920s home and a series of c. 2000s and c. 2010s homes, I'd take the older house 9 times out of 10 and just gut/retrofit as necessary to remedy layout issues (not construction-quality issues). I don't enjoy living in a drywall box with a superficially nice looking kitchen.
And I say all of this as someone who, all things being equal, greatly prefers a hyper-modernist aesthetic. I just have to accept that I don't get a Tony Stark house until I have Tony Stark money. :)
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.
True, but a wood frame doesn't have to imply stick-built, green and wet 2x4 construction.
Even in modern times where big timbers are scarce, you can still get straight, true, kiln-dried douglas fir in large (8x8, 8x12) sizes relatively cheaply.
I think one of the issues with the better woods in particular is sustainability of growth. Basically every house built today in NZ will be using Pinus Radiata, which is a less dense wood that grows very very quickly, and is very sustainable. In the past, e.g. 1960 and earlier, houses used Rimu, and potentially Kauri - both of which are very hard, very dense woods that will test even the best drill bits - but they're not sustainable.
There are two approaches to sustainability:
1. Use quality material that is slow to come by, but build stuff that lasts for decades, or even centuries.
2. Use "sustainably" produced material, but build utter shit that doesn't last and that you expect to throw away in a few years.
For stuff like houses, I prefer the first approach.
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.
But the Toyota vs Mercedes-Benz is a poor comparison
> The most reliable engines came from Honda, with a failure rate of just 1 in 344, with Toyota in second (1 in 171) and, maintaining some honour for the German brands, Mercedes in third (1 in 119).
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.
I've lived in Europe for almost 30 years, and have never seen the plaster fall off the wall/ceiling without some serious other cause, like a leaking roof or serious subsidence.
My mum's house was built in 1908. A water leak in the summer meant part of the ceiling was ruined. The plasterer said it was original lath and plaster, and gave her a discount as he said it was a pleasure to work with.
21% of dwellings in England were built before 1919.
> 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.
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.