That woman is pretty good at mantling with a book, and probably a hot beverage.
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So the thing is that the vast majority of these kinds of houses aren’t designed by architects – or at least not directly. These are built by developers who use stock plans based on what style and size they think will sell in their area, and informed by what kind of zoning dimensional regs (if any) the municipality dictates.
The stock plans may or may not be created by an architect but the design goal is entirely profit maximization. This is achieved by pushing “bling” features in your face (vaulted ceilings! granite counters! 600 sq ft master suite!), and value engineering everything else. This basically means all the little details that you don’t initially see and everything inside the walls are the cheapest possible items (value engineering actually has a more precise meaning, but that’s another discussion).
Liveabily, aesthetics, energy efficiency, etc. are of no consideration.
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Apparently the problem is that caring about architecture makes you a snob while blowing seven figures on the architectural equivalent of the Homer Simpson car doesn’t.
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They’re just… ironically snooty?
Not really, the heads of household covered in The Queen of Versailles didn’t come across less snooty than architects, surely.
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variations good and bad of this
not sure I like the color or or lack of windows on the side of that one. but it is efficient for using the space.
eta this guy did an 800sq ft house in a yard he purchased.
eta another tiny pic though.
again I kinda like that style.
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Ah, apodments. Definitely a growth industry in Seattle.
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We’ve just been home shopping. I think that some of the less egregious (and smaller) examples on this persons site could sway me with features. I recognize the beauty of the good examples but practical considerations like availability must often supersede.
No?
oh no these are not apodments full houses in that kind of modern boxy style. some quite big actually. there was an undeveloped area just a block and half away that has 6 houses of that kind of style all like 4 bedroom houses.
eta as far as apodments go, well when I was single that would have been an awesome option for me at the time.
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Oh yes. Check out the 101 posts linked to in Cory’s post here.
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Oh, look who’s a snobbery snob.
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That’s what I was suggesting they examine!
turning them into affordable housing for the poor, or artist communes for recent grads.
As long as they are all related to each other, no problem. Lots of places have restrictions on the number of unrelated people that can live under one roof.
I was involved in a project in Portland where they would buy or build large-ish homes and put 6-8 retirees in them. These were people that could no longer live on their own but also didn’t want to go into a retirement home.
The project eventually failed because the red tape was almost impossible to cut through.
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There are some homes like this not too far from where I live. I’ve been in a few of them because they frequently host charity events.
The last one I was in looked something like the home in the photo for this story and I have to admit, I would love to live there. They had an indoor pool, a very big and fully equipped gym, a kitchen with commercial-grade appliances, a big library/home office, a big play room for the kids, a boat house and dock, a pretty sweet media room, and a huge detached workshop (the guy who owned the house does amazing woodwork).
If you are going to spend a lot of time in your home and have money to spare, why not build something you love?
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Sorry, I posted in the wrong place.
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Another area where could get away with just stopping with the “late-stage capitalism” caption, although I’ve personally started calling the style of the most obvious ones around me “Feudal Revival.” I do find it interesting that the developers seem to have nearly universally decided that what’s called for is the baronial look. Somehow, it isn’t Georgian or Colonial revival. I wonder whether there’s some functional reason for that, such as it making it easier to make a garage blend it or to create the features they think they need, like raised ceilings. Or maybe they just think the lord-of-the-manor symbolism is something people want? I have noticed the proliferation of little non-functional watchtowers in commercial architecture in the last decade, so maybe the defensive look is what people want?
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That I can live with.
But it could use some more thought on exterior design. It should really emphasize the vertical, not the horizontal.
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Its been done in a number of areas. Home owners associations and municipal governments typically freak the fuck out and turn it into a legal battle. Claiming HOA rules, and laws governing multi unit/multi-family housing, or even hotels to force people out. NIMBY is a strong urge. My area’s been the planned site for the largest offshore wind farm in the US for decades. 3 or 4 different plans over the years. On at least 2 bodies of water. Each time the plan is voted down or allowed to slowly die because of complaints that it will ruin the view of very wealthy residents in wealthy vacation community. Meanwhile the year round residents (who largely can not afford waterfront property at this point) suffer some of the highest electrical rates in the country. To say nothing of the job such a project would bring. The turbines would be far enough off shore to be effectively invisible. And the vast bulk of residents think it would be a pleasant addition to the view if they were visible.
But my god could you imagine if Martha Stewart had to look out her windows and think about the possibility of seeing wind turbines.
I have a family member who ran construction crews for a large developer down south. Built a lot of McMansions and whatever you would call houses in the next price/size tier down. The framing, unless its load bearing, is entirely stamped aluminium. Insulation is Styrofoam blocks. The siding is screwed directly to the framing, no plywood covering, no tyvek wrap. None of the standard stuff we would consider “a house”. He theorized once you could break into these houses with a putty knife. Lever off the siding. Chisel out the Styrofoam and dry wall. When the housing crash came he was proven effectively right. Unsold houses would basically get skinned. Thieves would strip off the exterior of the house, pretty much everything but the front facade, to steal the copper wiring and plumbing.
He warned most of his friends and family to never buy houses like this. Or really any house in a development of that sort built after the 80’s. They aren’t really designed to remain standing for longer than about 25 years.
That’s kind of the thing. Noone’s building these houses because they love them. These houses are almost universally built by developers as spec-houses. Even when some one buys an empty lot in the development they are often required to have the developer build any eventual house there. Or their builder must rely on the developers plans/style. So the neighborhood matches/is consistent in style. So these things are designed by a very large construction company based on checking boxes on a list to maximize sale price. Not livability, or to match the owners preferences/sensibilities. Actual construction is typically done as cheaply as local building codes allow. Landscaping and yard/lot sizes are kept to a minimum.
These aren’t labors of love. Nor are they really intended to be a long term home for anyone. We have some developments like this near me (building codes obviate the worst of it), often on golf courses. They’re almost universally pitched as an investment. A vacation home you can sell for MASSIVE PROFITS after a few years. A safe way to lock up your money during retirement, you heirs will MAKE SO MUCH selling the house after you die. ETC. Sadly its not really true. These houses are poorly built, not intended to last. Their price is badly inflated. And increasingly noone wants them. Most of the McMansion or Model House developments near me are now mostly empty. Spec houses never sold, people who bought lots “cheap” early on (lots are sold at a supposed discount to fund construction of spec houses), never bothered to build. Those houses that used to be occupied were dumped on a saturated market at vastly reduced prices. And they still sit.
Its the only real estate here that isn’t desirable or going up in price.
Its the “curb appeal” thing. All the, well, tchotchkes they attach to the front of these things are effectively intended to make them look more impressive and “mansiony” from the street. They basically make a judgement call over which style of house is desirable in their given market. Build their the series of boxes necessary to contain their check list of internal rooms/floor plan. Then just glue (often literally glue) superficial features of a dutch colonial, or Spanish mission, or whatever style on to the exterior. Most of the columns invoked aren’t even load bearing. I’ve seen columns that were nothing more than carved foam with a stucco coat on the exterior. Or a hollow plastic structure placed over a load bearing wood or metal post. These houses are bizarrely built.
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You need a castle to finally stage the castle doctrine of your swampland Floridian dreams.
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