Cold, unforgiving facades adorn buildings all across North America. Most Americans can only admire flowing, ornate architecture within media from places like Europe. While I walk around unadorned expanses of concrete and glass, I wonder what happened to beauty in architecture. The lack of beauty surrounding architecture in the U.S. is often attributed to the fast-growing colonization mentality of the settlers. The focus was to take over as much land as possible, and that left no time for dilly-dallying about the unimportant details of looks. In addition to this, in the past, European royalty and rich spent their money hiring people to create ornate buildings with the purpose of display their wealth. Buildings are boring today because our values as a society have changed. There have been attempts in America and Europe to create acts ensuring you can only build beautiful buildings, but the issue is that beauty is subjective. What one person finds beautiful could seem gaudy or cold to another. Is it possible to return to a society that values grandiosity, is it important? I might be alone in the wish for architecture for people. Through research, tough, it has been found that our surroundings have a great impact on mental health. Studies have shown that people who live in beautiful places are, on average, happier than those who don't. As beauty is subjective, there is unfortunately no sustainable way to ensure the construction of beautiful buildings, but if we want to decrease the increasing mental health issues in America, we should really consider building prettier buildings.
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