[itopaloglu83]

Yes, some of it is due to lack of safety etc. must I must say the majority of it is the complete lack of competence in modern times because it’s now being built by normal folks.

I assume it was a limited number of people how knew how to make things and they kept roaming around setting new sites etc. Similar to bridge engineers etc. most of what they make just disappears in the background but they keep building things that makes our modern life possible.

[clickety_clack]

It’s not lack of competence. There is an unbelievable weight of regulation in construction now. It would probably take 2 years of planning consultation just to get the idea approved. Then, each facet of the design would have to be coordinated and iterated between several different specialist teams and contractors, with the tree of contractors increasing as each layer of design takes shape. At the end, you also have the labor laws that people are talking about here.

If we weren’t too worried about things falling down and killing people, or about damaging peoples conception of the vibes in a city, we could have the kinds of developer/architect/engineer/foreman outfits that used to build this kind of thing.

[itopaloglu83]

Yeah, definitely regulations affected the effectiveness, but also good things happened as well, we have a lot more power tools to use and we're not likely to lose our head just because we didn't deliver a job on time.

We have a lot more infrastructure around now, so much that we don't even see the wonders that tame the nature and make it comfortable for us.

[rsynnott]

I mean, it flat-out wouldn't be approved today, and for good reason. Bear in mind that it _burned down_. And, like, see the See Also section on its Wikipedia page; there were a bunch of similar structures, which mostly also burned down.

It just wasn't a good design.

[rsynnott]

Clearly they didn't know how to build things very well. Crystal Palace type structures look impressive, but they are _bad buildings_, both in terms of practicality (what would you use one for?) and safety, and no competent modern engineer would design one, even if it were legal, which it is not. There were a bunch of things like the Crystal Palace built in the 19th century, and the reason you don't see many these days is that they mostly burned down, often within a few years of construction (the Crystal Palace was actually an unusually long-lasting example of the genre, likely because it was mostly lightly used or completely disused).

Like, "why are more people not building impractical fire hazards? It must be because people these days are incompetent" is a pretty weird take.