We used to build infrastructure as if it mattered, not just as if it had to function and remain within budget, but as if it would be seen, admired and remembered. Today, too much of what we build feels optimised for the spreadsheet rather than the human eye.
Our predecessors built sewers, waterworks, bridges, train stations, factories, houses and pubs with an almost irrational sense of civic pride.
Crossness Pumping Station in London is an obvious example. It was part of Joseph Bazalgette’s (he also designed Hammersmith Bridge) sewage system, but its interior looks less like a utility asset and more like a cathedral with red, green and gold columns, patterned cast iron, decorative arches and stunning machinery. An industrial utility treated as something worthy of ceremony - now known as “The Cathedral of Sewage”.
Crossness Pumping Station
The same instinct appears in the Ouse Valley Viaduct in Sussex. It is not just a bridge carrying a railway across a valley. It is an elegant sequence of brick arches and voids. Even its weight saving measures (hollowed arches) contribute to its visual quality. The structure solves an engineering problem, but it also improves the landscape.
This instinct even predates the Victorians. Medieval and Renaissance Europe built as though utility, symbolism and beauty were inseparable. A cathedral was not just a large room for worship, it was a engineering and spiritual achievement. Chartres Cathedral in France, built from 1145, is not merely impressive because of its scale, but because stone, glass, light and load bearing structure were made to work as one composition.
Chatres Cathedral
In Florence, Brunelleschi’s famous dome for Santa Maria del Fiore, completed in 1436, was a feat of engineering, but also an act of civic identity. It solved a difficult technical problem while giving the city a form by which it could recognise itself. These places were not designed by spreadsheet, they were designed to last, to represent something, and to make people look up.
Florence Cathedral
Compare that with much of the built environment now: anonymous glass boxes, identikit housing blocks, retail parks, distribution sheds, grey chain restaurants and offices designed to look and feel the same whether you’re in London, Liverpool, Dubai or Delhi. The modern objective is not usually beauty, its leaseability, cost certainty, speed, standardisation and ease of maintenance. Those are legitimate engineering and commercial constraints, but they have now become the whole design brief.
This blandification is not limited to architecture. McDonald’s is a small but telling example. The restaurants of the 90s were not refined, but they had identity - red roofs, yellow arches, playgrounds, colour and a sense of fun. Most branches now feel like waiting rooms with ordering screens, grey cladding, dull wipe-clean interiors and corporate neutrality. They are probably easier to maintain and less embarrassing to adults on their lunch break, but something has been stripped out.
Similarly, the iconic red phone box, designed by Sir Giles Gilbert Scott in 1935, was a mass produced item of public infrastructure. Yet it had presence with cast iron, a domed roof, glazed panels, the crown, and a colour chosen to be instantly visible in the street. It wasn’t a palace or a monument but it still contributed to the character of a village green or high street. Modern examples moved towards more anonymous, vandal-resistant and commercially efficient booths. Ok, they’re more accessible and easier to maintain, which matters, but they rarely generated affection
Iconic red phone box next to a modern example
The red phone box shows that standardisation and beauty are not opposites. It was mass produced, cost-conscious and technically functional, yet still became one of Britain’s most recognisable pieces of industrial design. What is produced today that we could say the same of in 90 years time?
Offices have followed the same path. The grand lobby, the stone facade, the staircase and the sense of institutional permanence have been replaced by exposed pipes, glass partitions, hot desks, neon slogans and “collaboration zones”. The modern office often feels less like a place of work and more like a brand marketing exercise wrapped up in a landlord’s yield KPI.
The defence of all this is usually cost. I get it, ornament is expensive, skilled labour is expensive, maintenance matters, planning is difficult and consumed by nonsense quango policy. But beauty is not simply decoration added after the real engineering is complete. Beauty can come from proportion, materials, structural clarity, local identity and attention to how humans actually perceive space.
Encouragingly, there are signs that this mindset may be starting to change. Earlier this year, the UK government (via DSIT) partnered with the Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA) to launch a design ideas competition exploring how future data centres could contribute positively to their surroundings. The initiative challenges architects and designers to rethink these highly functional and utilitarian structures, considering not only technical performance but also architecture and landscape.
The problem is not that everything modern is bad, or that everything old is good. The problem is that we have allowed procurement logic to become cultural logic. We measure capital cost, programme risk and lettable floor area, but rarely measure whether a place lifts the spirit, creates memory or earns affection.
If we continue to build only what is cheapest, fastest and least offensive, we should not be surprised when the result is a world no one feels attached to.
My personal plea is simple: let us make things beautiful again.
Not extravagantly expensive, not needlessly ornate, but thoughtful, distinctive and worthy of the people who use them. Whether we are designing a bridge, a housing estate, an office, a restaurant, a data centre or a public square, we should aim for more than mere functionality. We spend our lives surrounded by the things we build. They shape our moods, our memories and our sense of place. We owe it to ourselves, and to future generations, to create a world that inspires affection rather than indifference.
