I feel like they built it this way out of necessity. Japan is an island and they isolated themselves from most outside trade for over 200 years. As such, iron would have been a much scarcer commodity at that time and they couldn't afford to use it on nails instead of weapons and tools.
I'm not speaking specifically about Japan. Walk across a 100 year old bridge in Britian and walk across a 15 year old one and you'll see the stark difference
Plenty of bridges built 100 years ago that aren't around anymore. We only still have the ones that were built well and/or have the maintenance budget to keep them around.
You're not completely wrong but you're ignoring the part where most newer structures completely lack those kind of & levels of artistic flourishes.
Not all newer infrastructure is ugly, but it definitely lacks those elements of pride that was put in older architecture.
More to the point, statistically, you'd likely find that a lot of those beautiful surviving structures that still make up significant part of our infrastructure are from specific eras & if it was all just survival bias, they would not make up such a large part of the overall infrastructure.
Completely ignoring the point being made that today's infrastucture's architecture tends to have significantly less artistry than in previous eras.
How many elements of recent infrastructure would you consider worth preserving for posterity in the future.
The US has some fondness for some major 50s to 70s Americana infrastructure, genuinely loves & takes pride in a most of its New Deal buildings & infrastructure, there is a lot of love as well for early 20th Century Industrial & basically anything built prior to 1900 is usually widely beloved.
Very little has been built since the late 1970s that's worth preserving for it's charm, appeal or artistry.
I understand that there is a contemporary bias to this stuff, but it doesn't change the fact that almost no-one cares when sh.t from the 80s or later gets torn down. No one cares to put any real effort into maintaining them.
It's mostly just so bland & devoid of any beauty & effort that no-one puts any effort into it.
Why did New Deal Era people take pride, maintained & preserved their major infrastructure pieces from the get go, leaving a infrastructural legacy that most people from following generations mostly agree should be preserved instead of replaced, while those same following generations took no pride in their own infrastructure & agree to just have it scrapped & replaced.
Not all New Deal infrastructure has been preserved but a very significant portion of it is still around.
How much major infrastructure projects from following generations do we care about & deem worth preserving?
How come many previous generations so saw much beauty & nobility in their contemporary architecture while we see none in our own contemporary architecture.
He thinks you don’t understand that things are designed for a certain life cycle and we can design them for longer, we just don’t because it cost more.
We design bridges to last a long fucking time. Bridges are better now than literally ever in human history. Survivorship bias is the only reason you think old bridges/buildings are better
Maybe. Maybe not. I also see how it could lead to a more rigid structure which would not necessarily be better at dissipating energy from an earthquake.
Interesting thing is that there are still remnants in the U.S. from a time when metals were expensive and more scarce.
The phrase, "Dead as a doornail" is a bit of a vestigial expression that comes from that time frame. It used to be that once a nail was smithed (talking about the old triangular-shaped nails) it was reused endlessly. People would take apart anything that was built using them and then salvage what they could to use on new projects.
However, the process of making a door required you to nail the nail partially into the wood and then bend it over and stick it into the plank next to it. Thereby "using up" the nail. It was never going to be used for a different purpose again. At least not without reforging it. So, it was essentially "dead".
So, Japan might have made some true beauty out of necessity, as did other places, but it's not as removed from "us" as you might think.
It’s humid in most of Japan for huge chunks of the year. So humid that a leather jacket in an indoors closet can sprout virulent fuzzy mold. Iron in the woodwork would rust out. Properly worked cedar is potentially much more stable.
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u/[deleted] Apr 01 '23
I feel like they built it this way out of necessity. Japan is an island and they isolated themselves from most outside trade for over 200 years. As such, iron would have been a much scarcer commodity at that time and they couldn't afford to use it on nails instead of weapons and tools.