k2aggie07 said:
Quote:
You call it a quibble but what you are saying here and 'luxury' items are completely different conversations.
One is a noun, the other is the related adjective. If something is a luxury, then having it is luxurious.
And even if you want to talk about luxury in the other sense -- comfort, richness, costliness, grandeur... you don't think these new schools fit that bill? Opposite would be poor, austere, spartan. Which word describes these new high schools better?
When you talk about luxuries in buildings, I'd say some of these imposing elevations, multiple external finish designs certainly qualify. Functional design choices like huge, open spaces, single-purpose rooms, modern small and large theaters with expensive acoustics and lighting, field houses, multiple gyms and single-purpose athletic spaces all add tremendous cost. The list goes on and on. You don't need those things, and even the way we do them is luxurious. And yes, the internal appointments of these buildings is luxurious. My kid goes to a private school that has normal interior finish. Finished concrete floors, sheetrock walls. Guess what? Education doesn't suffer.
Here's the deal -
Most of those things you speak of really don't add that much cost, because the vast majority of them are pre-designed and come as part of a package. In many cases, it costs more to not have them because you are going from a relative standard package to a custom package now, which changes a whole lot of things on engineering, construction, etc. that have to be uniquely included or excluded in the package cost. Not always, but some.
The materials that you are describing as "luxurious" really aren't, outside of the aspect that we simply have better materials to choose from in 2019 than we did in 1970, that the per unit cost of those materials is not all that different when you look at the value of a dollar from then to now, and that you want to spend more money in certain materials simply because the quality is better - which translates to lower maintenance costs over time. You put a cheap floor in, guess what - you are replacing that floor early and spending a lot more money on the replacement cost than you did on the original purchase and installation cost of a much higher quality floor to begin with.
The other aspect that I disagree with you on is the aesthetics. Can we built a cinder block building with no windows and concrete floors, no paint, piss poor lighting? Sure, but why? Schools are supposed to have a high regard in the community - they have for centuries. Why? Because we put a strong value as a society on education, and for good reason. When a building has a classic look that is well maintained and is overall "nicer", it tends to be better taken care of by the students - even students recognize that if something is nice, classic and well taken care of that the destructive nature is reduced. Additionally, I want certain public buildings to have a better aesthetic appeal because it is public money and it is a better use of taxpayer dollars IMO than having the equivalent of a prison or local jail design. That doesn't mean you use gold leaf and have hand painted murals on the ceilings, but it does mean that you use classic architectural designs and quality materials so that the building itself lasts and you get a good ROI on it as a taxpayer. And I personally put value on schools looking like schools should look versus having them indistinguishable from the local county jail. We do ourselves as a society no favors by sending kids to a place that has no appeal to it on a daily basis.
Schools today aren't the schools of 1970 or 1980, just like the schools of 1970 weren't the schools of 1900. We don't have little old single room wood buildings with no air conditioning where school marms teach grades kindergarten through high school, just like the designs from 40 years ago really aren't good or relevant designs to today.
You seem to want to simply ignore the fact that we have access to much better quality materials today, and that a whole lot of actual science has gone into things you appear to think are stupid - design, aesthetics, lighting, material selection, etc. It isn't a case of people wanting to spend money like drunken sailors, you paint with a broad brush and I'm guessing you have little not no actual industry exposure on construction or related fields.
