Just watched this vid:
Luxurious, if not necessarily high-quality, trappings and the cheapest possible structure... does that sound familiar?
Oh, yes indeed. The big new houses being built in Palo Alto a few years ago, replacing old run-down Eichlers? All the modern amenities, much expensive shininess, but the actual structure is the very cheapest that will pass inspection.
The motivation is a bit different, though. The owner of the theater wanted it to last, but didn't budget for durability. The buyers of new rich-people houses in Silicon Valley, well... seem to me that, unlike the culturally rich (who pay for quality and durability, with the intention of spending once and keeping things in the family forever), the nouveau riche (including, it seems, second-generation nouveau riche) plan on buying ever more ostentatious things on an ongoing basis and just throwing the old stuff away. Ergo, disposable luxury homes. (There may also be a substantial DGAF factor involved, given the apparent personality type of today's tycoons greater and lesser.)
It's the overpriced, highly-polished, cheap-crap tier. Just like those overpriced boots that are very comfortable until the first time you take them out in the rain, and that wear out after a few dozen miles.
... Oog. This applies to public buildings, too. An expensive new public library, for example, is unlikely to be designed and built for the ages; instead, chances are that the architecture will follow the fashion of the moment, and that the construction will be problematic, expensive to maintain, and doomed to need replacement in a few decades - when for the same money, it could have had a timeless appearance and a structure that would last for centuries.
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