Comment by analog31
8 hours ago
Modern materials and production methods eliminated the need for ornamentation to prove a craftsman's skill and attention to detail.
I'm thinking of something like a violin. You can't pick up a violin and judge the perfection of the fitting between the wood surfaces that are glued together. If that work isn't perfect, the instrument will eventually fly apart. But you can look at the "scroll" and "bees sting" which are unforgiving of tiny errors. These kinds of features persist to this day due to traditionalism, but have disappeared from most industrial products.
Today, I don't expect an ornamented house to be of any better quality than a plain house.
There's plenty of traditional architecture that's not baroque, and is therefore not very rich in ornamentation. An austere brick home with a tiled roof still wins over a modernist cube house in both form and function, if not cost.