Is that why those award-winning buildings look like that? Because the architects tried to make them cheaper?
Is 'detail' requiring highly skilled craftsmanship the only way to make pleasant buildings? Because a few of the buildings (Venice and the Italian village) the article gives as examples of beauty have only the barest, simplest of details.
Our society is quite capable of paying for artisans to restore the architectural splendors of earlier times, and does so. At the same time, expenditure on architecture for its own sake seems to have increased in the last decade or so, at least in centers of wealth (which, in modern times, is where non-utilitarian architecture has its first home, even if it likes to have a weekend place in the country.)
What has not happened is that, for the most part, the paymasters for the latter development have demonstrated little interest in adopting styles that demand highly skilled craftsmanship of the sort formerly valued (and still valued, apparently, so long as it dates to a previous era.) Today's vanity architecture reflects the values of those who commission it, rather than being a result of market prices for artisan work.
I owe a lot to this dude, because he made sure that when worker was housing was being built it would have a library on the periphery.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Passmore_Edwards
There was an explicit goal of providing education and opportunities to working people. (Well - working men. But this was over a century ago now.)
Modern philanthropy has no equivalent. There is no interest in creating high quality useful public spaces for ordinary people. So there's no architectural tradition to support that goal.
Some really beautiful structures do use minimalism, but so many big architects today strive for speed, size, and function. I think most modern beautiful, minimalist structures are usually smaller, built for fewer people, etc. Maybe?