We stopped building like this because we stopped believing in transcendence.
These structures were temples in disguise, monuments to beauty, order, and the divine hierarchy of being. Every curve, every column whispered: there is something higher than you, and it is glorious.
But modernity replaced meaning with utility. Beauty became “inefficient.” Soul gave way to scale. Truth was deconstructed into taste. And architecture, once a mirror of cosmic order, was hollowed into boxes of function and cost minimization.
We didn’t just lose craft.
We lost the will to aim at heaven.