The Gaslight District | completed

[cherrypark]

Yeah. There ought to be some sort of way to ensure that a building is architecturally acceptable. An issue with doing that, though, is that it can act as a hinderance to developers. If a developer can't afford a really good architect or materials, a building may not get built. For affordable housing or just smaller projects, this can be an issue. But for something of this scale, they should have done a better job at the design. They can afford it.

I am not an architect (although I do love architecture). But I suspect that this kind of post-design cost-cutting by the developer is bound to produce sub-optimal results.

A good architect would likely be able to make a better (but different) design if the final cost constraints were to be clear at the start, rather than being foisted upon the architect once the original design had already been completed.

I think thats part of it too. Some of the more affordable rentals in town (Drewlo, et al) are not architecturally stunning but they seem to do a clean, simple job of what they are intended to be. The ones that seem to worst off are the marketed as upper mid-scale but then cut corners after the flashy marketing has done its job to get the speculative buying in the door. Not sure there is a clean way to manage it, but almost that certain cost per sq ft or rental rate should dictate a degree of architectural right-sizing.