Outside my window is the "Hop Cat" building [it has another name]. I don't know when it was built, but it has a brick facade on west side with a paneling only on the top floor. The front does have the paneled material, but it also has ceiling to floor windows and "Juliette Balconies" for each apartment. The higher quality materials make the rather simple design look much nicer than it might. The Merriott also seems to be from the same era, I don't really like the building so much, but they used brick on the whole building. It looks like there was a time in recent history that developers built better high-quality buildings. I would like if they would add something that makes the new buildings unique to Lansing, these new buildings look the same all over the world. The base reliefs on many older Lansing buildings are a feature that says Lansing, or maybe something like the three stacks being incorporated into the design with three tapered columns. Oldsmobile and REO nameplates through the years are really cool, maybe they could be part of making a building a Lansing Michigan building. I know! just dreaming!
The Hopcat building was built around 2010 +/- a few years. Marriot was before I remember, mid 80's to early 90's I think. The difference between the Hopcat building and your is that the former is a reinforced concrete structure (or steel???) and the latter is made of cold formed steel panels. CFS construction just doesn't offer as much design flexibility, with steel beams or concrete you can do just about whatever you can pay for. Not so with CFS or wood panels. They also can't always support masonry/stone facades all the way up or across the whole building.
It all comes down to money. In the big picture, "Baumol's cost disease" is the best explanation I've ever read for why labor intensive things have gotten so expensive. I have my fingers crossed that AI, robotics and 3D printing will combine to make ornate and beautiful buildings economically feasible again in the not-too-distant future.
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It all comes down to money. In the big picture, "Baumol's cost disease" is the best explanation I've ever read for why labor intensive things have gotten so expensive. I have my fingers crossed that AI, robotics and 3D printing will combine to make ornate and beautiful buildings economically feasible again in the not-too-distant future.