Alot of the "look" of new construction comes from the technology. In 1880, you built a house out of bricks on the first floor. Three Wythes thick and then framed the top. That resulted in an amazing brick wall that had depth. All trim, windows, flooring, etc was made out of wood because that was the only option and the most cost effective one.
archanonymous, yes, that happened. I did have to answer the phone sometimes but they mostly made another chick do it cause I wasn't good at it.
But what I really meant was that clients love female architects too. They like the novelty I think. Or maybe we are cheaper. Nicer to talk to, nicer to look at, more attentive, who knows. Anyways, I think both murica and kanadian housewifes would like it if there were young women architects and trained designers who could help them with their projects for an affordable rate. The domestic realm is the domain of women anyways. Feminism isn't that old, a generation or two ago female architects were extremely rare. Maybe the women that are graduating in the programs where they can practice architecture right out of college will take this huge, vast market and create great things in it.
imagine an education that taught students about building and a system that let young designers do the most common construction in the country - single family dwelling. regardless of style at least these houses would be "designed" and most likely after many young designers of the day convinced their clients to do the best by current technology the houses would be appropriate to the time and quality expected of a designed house.....
Olaf, my undergrad program had a system where students acted as their own bosses with clients on real projects. It was a sort of design clinic with real clients and overseen by licensed professors. It's pretty much exactly as you describe it.
I remember being hired by this "clinic" but turned down the offer since I worked part-time in a real office anyways.
Feb 17, 16 2:43 pm ·
·
archanonymous
If you have a multi-tier license like a initial category of licensure without say a regular architecture degree...... lets say someone who gained by experience instead of by conventional schools. How about designers who are certified by the NCBDC and similar building design certification. Many of these people are competent and do know what they are doing.
I would think it is important to consider these people and not just arbitrary narrowing of paths to those with a degree because frankly 5 years of architecture school doesn't prepare you to prepare the deliverables. That is why you need field experience. NCBDC certification requires 6 years of Experience of which education only counts for up to 3 years because 3 years of actual experience designing buildings is required for NCBDC certification. While you may have 4 or 5 year degree but 3 years of practice is part of the preparation and garnering enough experience with projects and becoming exposed to the regulatory and practical realities of the profession which is faced when you are being the design professional in charge.
< the real question is why does the run-of-the-mill $250,000 single family home revert to a poor pastiche of historical style? >
For the same reason a Toyota Camry can't do zero to sixty in 2.7 seconds and hit 200 on the test track. The person buying the thing just wants something reliable to get their family around and will not change his mind no matter how often someone calls him stupid and uneducated about cars. Taking such a pompous attitude towards those who have different priorities I think is very damaging to the profession.
The Camry debuted in 1982, offering a maximum of 145 hp which was good for 12.4 seconds 0-60. It had drum brakes and you were likely to die in it in any accident over 40 mph.
The 2016 Camry offered a 268 hp engine good for 5.6 seconds 0-60. It has every safety feature imaginable and you are unlikely to die in it in any accident below 75 mph.
I'm fine with the safe, reliable and competent choice for the masses. It's what modernism's original goal was. Many books have been written about how and where we went wrong, but for the purposes of this discussion, let's stick to single family residences.
Richard,
I'd be fine with that, provided the most a National Council of Building Things and Drawing Plans of Buildings that Aren't Architecture but Are Still Good Buildings licensed applicant could do was "Class A" work - single family homes and very small projects. Anything requiring cultural, historical, form or aesthetic based code review, or community design review should be the purview of architects.
While I don't doubt that you can put together a set and document a building, getting a NBCDIQURST certification is essentially saying you can't/won't/don't want to be responsible for anything to do with design or life safety of the public. Fine with me.
The historic vernacular has some value as cultural resonance and is hard to change. For many people the image of a house is a pitched roof and a chimney. in New England there is a gable end and symmetry,in the south there are Greek columns, the Midwest porches and other regional variations that are cultural artifacts that modern design has failed to offer something to replace those cues that this is a home. People are trying to impose that cultural image the visual signal that this is domestic architecture.It is why we have classical details still being mass produced. Tradition has a lot more influence on home design and not because it looks the best.
I often see an attempt to impose historic vernacular design details on modern buildings, think of the 1950-60s high rise apartment towers with colonial trim and brass chandeliers in their renovated lobbies. I think this is the culture trying ti reassert the commonly accepted image of domestic architecture on to what was a very non traditional type of home that was perhaps to far removed from the domestic vernacular image that is part of the culture.
Feb 17, 16 11:52 pm ·
·
archanonymous,
I hate to burst your bubbles but there is no licensure requirement to be responsible and accountable for the services offered / performed especially when it comes to matters of health, safety and welfare. That's something anyone and everyone can legally sued and held accountable for.
Anyone who is commercially engaged in commercial activities of offering services and engages contractually to perform such services has a legal responsibility / duty of care to perform the services they offer in a competent and timely manner. That's reasonable expectation. ALL people are legally required to be held accountable for their actions.
Accountability is a mandate of everyone. You have to prove your case to the laws as they are.
Feb 18, 16 12:11 am ·
·
archanonymous,
"Anything requiring cultural, historical, form or aesthetic based code review, or community design review should be the purview of architects."
That's bullshit. Most architects are barely educated to any depth in historic preservation, historic architecture, etc. They need more architectural history from a historic preservation & restoration point of view not from a Art History / Flash cards point of view that most architects would have because that's the only required courses. If they learn more deeper architectural history and historic preservation, they learned it either as electives or as an additional degree or minor. I'm not licensed. I'm a building designer and I have more education in architectural history and historic preservation than most architects will typically have. I am probably more equipped with a deeper knowledge on historic preservation then most who are fresh out of college so if anyone is more qualified to deal with 'cultural','historical' and aesthetic based code review with connection to historic preservation, it would be me and others licensed and unlicensed who had studied about historic preservation.
Unless NAAB accreditation requires historic preservation & restoration, cultural geography and vernacular architectural study into their architectural studies more than just a course or two here and there, I wouldn't force such under purview of architects. The reality is architecture education alone doesn't mandate it.
...
Feb 18, 16 12:52 am ·
·
Just because you can recognize a style from the pure and elite high style examples, doesn't mean you necessarily have the equipped knowledge and skills.
As for aesthetic based code, that's kind of controversial. We have zoning requirements and historic districts and where I live, that's huge swaths of the entire town that I live in. I have these kinds of commissions in my town and near by towns as well. Those issues are political. Just because someone is unlicensed and is NCBDC certified or not or NCIDQ certified, doesn't mean they only know how to design non-contextual architecture or only does McMansions.
When you say, "Anything requiring cultural, historical, form or aesthetic based code review, or community design review should be the purview of architects.", I don't agree to it as it is written. These issues should be purview of those who are competently educated and skilled in matters of culture, historical architecture, and some of these other issues. Over the course of my educational background & experience, I have the knowledge and skills in these areas. Each of us have our specialty and areas we have strengths in.
At some point and scale, this gets multi-disciplinary and is the purview of not one but more than one person. We have commissions with multiple people with various disciplines in their background. They oversee and make approvals. As a designer serving my clients, I have to work within the layers of government.
Currently, NAAB doesn't really require accredited degrees to train students in those programs to be working on historic architecture, restoration, etc. That is something a person has to elect to study as most degrees have some flexibility to be tailored within some reason. Locking out people who maybe more qualified on a subject matter JUST because they are not licensed as 'architects' in my opinion is bullshit. I don't think that is what you meant or intend but how you wrote it should leave you to think a little bit more and flexibility shall be considered especially when it comes to either education they learned, prior experience doing this stuff themselves and therefore learning then, or supervised experience. A person's background should be considered.
In my opinion, I don't care if someone is licensed or not, if they have the knowledge and skills to perform the work competently, then they should not be barred from being able to perform it. We just don't have a licensing process that really measures competence. The simple fact is we implemented this system and the requirements more on political positioning in the past then about really measuring competence.
For the same reason a Toyota Camry can't do zero to sixty in 2.7 seconds and hit 200 on the test track. The person buying the thing just wants something reliable to get their family around and will not change his mind no matter how often someone calls him stupid and uneducated about cars. Taking such a pompous attitude towards those who have different priorities I think is very damaging to the profession
well said. also, a very small segment of the population is able to build their own home. The financing is different, the process is long, and the land costs are typically too high. The service model is never going to be able to cater to large majority of home buyers. We live in a consumer culture. If you develop good work for a good price people will buy it.
I always had a hunch that licensure was bullshit even before school...the foam from the mouths of the defenders gave that away....it reeked of fake concern concealing selfish motives...like those old assholes that cry about school taxes and liberty when in reality they are just cheap fucks...or the pricks who say "what about the children" when protesting marijuana legalization while taking donations from pharma...beurocratic slime bags...but the more I actually look at the incompetent, ugly, half baked plans/projects that clients show me the more I realize that my hunch was correct...licensure is no substitute for intelligence.
to re-iterate what has been said more or less, if you eliminated much of the architects bullshit education of today, reduced it to 4 years, offered tiered licensure with level 1 being licensed right out of school for single family detached dwellings, then maybe a financial model would exist to allow for architects to be involved with suburban home design and building. in these 4 years you could also learn about construction management, offering recent grads 2 options immediately for making money.........The avarage American would have better homes if this happened. The profession would actually be involved more socially instead of this delusional political stance, where everytime an architect does what Habitat for Humanity and Red Cross have been doing for decades becomes a paradigm shift in the profession and worth publishing over the architects like Duo Dickenson who get published in mainstream, I mean mainstream, not BIG design journalist junkie media........
You missed my point. Cars are great analogies for houses because they are both big ticket items that (most) buyers are very practical about, and that buyers in certain price ranges are only going to care about certain features is what I'm trying to illustrate.
Jla-x,
The reason licensure gets held up in such esteem is because the architecture community has long been trying to model itself on the medical community, thinking that extensive schooling and internships will get them the high salaries and social status medicine has. But architecture is a lot more like composing, they can teach you to read sheet music all day long in school, but they can't teach you how to come up with catchy tunes. A degree from Julliard or even an official composer license won't make your song any better.
"Tradition has a lot more influence on home design and not because it looks the best."
But the kicker is that is DOES look the best to legions of highly-educated professional people who travel all over the world to see preserved and rebuilt old towns, neighborhoods, and city centers. Does anybody go to Crystal City, Virginia, to look at the architecture and breathe in the ambience? Also it is difficult to transmit culture if you tear it down and replace it with Gehry chain-link fences and pieces of plywood.
But you have to keep it in perspective – most of these preserved historic old towns were lived in by people who were fairly wealthy in their day, the average person back then got a hut with a thatched roof. I'd take the modern suburban house any day over that.
Not true, many of the villages in Italy that are big tourist draws are essentially the same as they were several hundred years ago, same for France as well. And the governments of those countries are very protective of their historical buildings. And if you are going to build in the vicinity of an historical building don't you have the obligation to respect it and the fabric around it by building something in sympathy with what is there?
We must be referring to different kinds of villages, but again, most people don't want to live in those because the practicalities of life have changed so much.
Except they haven't. In the U/K, just for one example, people are leaving London for places like Bath, both for the historical ambience and because it is much less expensive. People want to embrace their heritage and the failure of modern architecture to recognize this fact may be its seminal failure.
Volunteer ^ people are leaving London for historical ambience? bullshit cause Bath and places like Cambridge are just as expensive with less job opportunities. The only ones leaving London are the low salaried, those on the dole and retired folks.
It is exactly the same here, the old restored central cities and neighborhoods are the most sought after as in New Orleans, Charleston, SC, Savannah, GA, Asheville, NC, Denver, and many other cities that haven't destroyed their center core with modernism.
Now how much does it cost to live in those core cities? As in how much does a four bedroom 2000 sqft house run in the historic district? Do places like Asheville and Savannah have the kind of job opportunities you find in Chicago?
"The math of monthly mortgages is a driving force behind a veritable exodus of Londoners cashing in on their homes in the British capital and moving out. And a top choice has been the Georgian city of Bath, perhaps best known as the setting for Jane Austen’s “Northanger Abbey.” According to the Hamptons International estate agents, almost half of all homes sold in Bath are going to former Londoners, who spend an average of $1.2 million on their new home.
"When the London market was red hot, property owners there were thinking to themselves: “If I wait another year, prices will have gone up again,” said Johnny Morris, head of research at Hamptons International. “Now that prices have cooled [Londoners] think it is time to make the big move. And because the gap between house prices in London and the rest of the country is so big, that move is even more tempting.”
Advertisement
Bath is decidedly family friendly. “People tend to move to London in their early 20s to start their careers,” Mr. Morris said. “By the time they are in their 30s and early 40s, they start to move out just before or just after they have children, when space, schools and quality of life become more of a factor to them.”
Adding to its appeal is a project to electrify the railway line between London and Bath, scheduled for completion in spring 2019. The upgrade will cut travel times between the two cities from the current 83 minutes to just over an hour."
Part of a Wall Street Journal article, Jan 21, 2016, 'Londoners Beat a Path to Bath'.
Within the US, the new urbanists are really the only people capable of doing good design that the public enjoys.
Sophisticated developers who do cool buildings market to a wealthy crowd.
Architects who do single family also for the most part do $1mil plus homes.
Someone like Peter Calthorpe or Christopher Alexander are people who can reach a general audience and influence the public.
The Katrina experiment was interesting but never caught on. The starchitects aren't influencing the publics general understanding or appreciation of architecture.
Feb 18, 16 3:50 pm ·
·
They don't care to, either.
For the most part, starchitects are only in love of themselves, the attention on them and love of lots of money.
The problem is not with the "designers", it's with the builders and the fools with too much money who pay for them.
Plenty of excellent residential firms in Ontario who do great residential work. It's really not that hard to find them, just be ready to pay for design quality.
Or perhaps it is because whenever the law does not specifically require architectural services to be used, those services will generally not be used, as is the case with small buildings, which include most residential. As a result, architects have next to zero impact over residential design, and the influence exerted by those architects who do residential design being +/- imperceptible.
Feb 25, 16 8:36 pm ·
·
It is simple.
It is because clients don't want to spend any more money than they have to which means more money for the client to spend for themselves.
That is after all where people want to spend their hard earned money on.... themselves.
It would be little bland without the quoins. Think of the quoins as "ornament". Of course, Adolf Loos thought that "Ornament is a crime", but old Adolph Loos was a convicted pedophile also, so his opinion may not count for much.
@AdrianFGA I see what you mean, but I think Iceland falls out of the "average" country. I think cost can speak here. Do these Reykjavik homes cost close to 1$ Million? I doubt that.
What is wrong with home designs?
Alot of the "look" of new construction comes from the technology. In 1880, you built a house out of bricks on the first floor. Three Wythes thick and then framed the top. That resulted in an amazing brick wall that had depth. All trim, windows, flooring, etc was made out of wood because that was the only option and the most cost effective one.
We have so many options on materials and methods today that you could easily pick all the wrong ones when looking solely at cost and production.
archanonymous, yes, that happened. I did have to answer the phone sometimes but they mostly made another chick do it cause I wasn't good at it.
But what I really meant was that clients love female architects too. They like the novelty I think. Or maybe we are cheaper. Nicer to talk to, nicer to look at, more attentive, who knows. Anyways, I think both murica and kanadian housewifes would like it if there were young women architects and trained designers who could help them with their projects for an affordable rate. The domestic realm is the domain of women anyways. Feminism isn't that old, a generation or two ago female architects were extremely rare. Maybe the women that are graduating in the programs where they can practice architecture right out of college will take this huge, vast market and create great things in it.
+++ wurdan
They don't build 'em like they used to. Goes right back to EKE's comment about education: they don't train them like they used to either.
imagine an education that taught students about building and a system that let young designers do the most common construction in the country - single family dwelling. regardless of style at least these houses would be "designed" and most likely after many young designers of the day convinced their clients to do the best by current technology the houses would be appropriate to the time and quality expected of a designed house.....
they and they, huh? They is us. They is you.
Olaf, my undergrad program had a system where students acted as their own bosses with clients on real projects. It was a sort of design clinic with real clients and overseen by licensed professors. It's pretty much exactly as you describe it.
I remember being hired by this "clinic" but turned down the offer since I worked part-time in a real office anyways.
archanonymous
If you have a multi-tier license like a initial category of licensure without say a regular architecture degree...... lets say someone who gained by experience instead of by conventional schools. How about designers who are certified by the NCBDC and similar building design certification. Many of these people are competent and do know what they are doing.
I would think it is important to consider these people and not just arbitrary narrowing of paths to those with a degree because frankly 5 years of architecture school doesn't prepare you to prepare the deliverables. That is why you need field experience. NCBDC certification requires 6 years of Experience of which education only counts for up to 3 years because 3 years of actual experience designing buildings is required for NCBDC certification. While you may have 4 or 5 year degree but 3 years of practice is part of the preparation and garnering enough experience with projects and becoming exposed to the regulatory and practical realities of the profession which is faced when you are being the design professional in charge.
non, what school was that? or country
Olaf, this was well over 10 years ago in Ontario, Canada. Carleton University.
< the real question is why does the run-of-the-mill $250,000 single family home revert to a poor pastiche of historical style? >
For the same reason a Toyota Camry can't do zero to sixty in 2.7 seconds and hit 200 on the test track. The person buying the thing just wants something reliable to get their family around and will not change his mind no matter how often someone calls him stupid and uneducated about cars. Taking such a pompous attitude towards those who have different priorities I think is very damaging to the profession.
yes, but xian if young designers were involved maybe it would be a much better Camry.
That would depend on what exactly they learned in school...
yes yes....and for the most part they learned nothing...
xian,
I find your car analogy fallacious.
The Camry debuted in 1982, offering a maximum of 145 hp which was good for 12.4 seconds 0-60. It had drum brakes and you were likely to die in it in any accident over 40 mph.
The 2016 Camry offered a 268 hp engine good for 5.6 seconds 0-60. It has every safety feature imaginable and you are unlikely to die in it in any accident below 75 mph.
I'm fine with the safe, reliable and competent choice for the masses. It's what modernism's original goal was. Many books have been written about how and where we went wrong, but for the purposes of this discussion, let's stick to single family residences.
Richard,
I'd be fine with that, provided the most a National Council of Building Things and Drawing Plans of Buildings that Aren't Architecture but Are Still Good Buildings licensed applicant could do was "Class A" work - single family homes and very small projects. Anything requiring cultural, historical, form or aesthetic based code review, or community design review should be the purview of architects.
While I don't doubt that you can put together a set and document a building, getting a NBCDIQURST certification is essentially saying you can't/won't/don't want to be responsible for anything to do with design or life safety of the public. Fine with me.
The historic vernacular has some value as cultural resonance and is hard to change. For many people the image of a house is a pitched roof and a chimney. in New England there is a gable end and symmetry,in the south there are Greek columns, the Midwest porches and other regional variations that are cultural artifacts that modern design has failed to offer something to replace those cues that this is a home. People are trying to impose that cultural image the visual signal that this is domestic architecture.It is why we have classical details still being mass produced. Tradition has a lot more influence on home design and not because it looks the best.
I often see an attempt to impose historic vernacular design details on modern buildings, think of the 1950-60s high rise apartment towers with colonial trim and brass chandeliers in their renovated lobbies. I think this is the culture trying ti reassert the commonly accepted image of domestic architecture on to what was a very non traditional type of home that was perhaps to far removed from the domestic vernacular image that is part of the culture.
archanonymous,
I hate to burst your bubbles but there is no licensure requirement to be responsible and accountable for the services offered / performed especially when it comes to matters of health, safety and welfare. That's something anyone and everyone can legally sued and held accountable for.
Anyone who is commercially engaged in commercial activities of offering services and engages contractually to perform such services has a legal responsibility / duty of care to perform the services they offer in a competent and timely manner. That's reasonable expectation. ALL people are legally required to be held accountable for their actions.
Accountability is a mandate of everyone. You have to prove your case to the laws as they are.
archanonymous,
"Anything requiring cultural, historical, form or aesthetic based code review, or community design review should be the purview of architects."
That's bullshit. Most architects are barely educated to any depth in historic preservation, historic architecture, etc. They need more architectural history from a historic preservation & restoration point of view not from a Art History / Flash cards point of view that most architects would have because that's the only required courses. If they learn more deeper architectural history and historic preservation, they learned it either as electives or as an additional degree or minor. I'm not licensed. I'm a building designer and I have more education in architectural history and historic preservation than most architects will typically have. I am probably more equipped with a deeper knowledge on historic preservation then most who are fresh out of college so if anyone is more qualified to deal with 'cultural','historical' and aesthetic based code review with connection to historic preservation, it would be me and others licensed and unlicensed who had studied about historic preservation.
Unless NAAB accreditation requires historic preservation & restoration, cultural geography and vernacular architectural study into their architectural studies more than just a course or two here and there, I wouldn't force such under purview of architects. The reality is architecture education alone doesn't mandate it.
...
Just because you can recognize a style from the pure and elite high style examples, doesn't mean you necessarily have the equipped knowledge and skills.
As for aesthetic based code, that's kind of controversial. We have zoning requirements and historic districts and where I live, that's huge swaths of the entire town that I live in. I have these kinds of commissions in my town and near by towns as well. Those issues are political. Just because someone is unlicensed and is NCBDC certified or not or NCIDQ certified, doesn't mean they only know how to design non-contextual architecture or only does McMansions.
When you say, "Anything requiring cultural, historical, form or aesthetic based code review, or community design review should be the purview of architects.", I don't agree to it as it is written. These issues should be purview of those who are competently educated and skilled in matters of culture, historical architecture, and some of these other issues. Over the course of my educational background & experience, I have the knowledge and skills in these areas. Each of us have our specialty and areas we have strengths in.
At some point and scale, this gets multi-disciplinary and is the purview of not one but more than one person. We have commissions with multiple people with various disciplines in their background. They oversee and make approvals. As a designer serving my clients, I have to work within the layers of government.
Currently, NAAB doesn't really require accredited degrees to train students in those programs to be working on historic architecture, restoration, etc. That is something a person has to elect to study as most degrees have some flexibility to be tailored within some reason. Locking out people who maybe more qualified on a subject matter JUST because they are not licensed as 'architects' in my opinion is bullshit. I don't think that is what you meant or intend but how you wrote it should leave you to think a little bit more and flexibility shall be considered especially when it comes to either education they learned, prior experience doing this stuff themselves and therefore learning then, or supervised experience. A person's background should be considered.
In my opinion, I don't care if someone is licensed or not, if they have the knowledge and skills to perform the work competently, then they should not be barred from being able to perform it. We just don't have a licensing process that really measures competence. The simple fact is we implemented this system and the requirements more on political positioning in the past then about really measuring competence.
For the same reason a Toyota Camry can't do zero to sixty in 2.7 seconds and hit 200 on the test track. The person buying the thing just wants something reliable to get their family around and will not change his mind no matter how often someone calls him stupid and uneducated about cars. Taking such a pompous attitude towards those who have different priorities I think is very damaging to the profession
well said. also, a very small segment of the population is able to build their own home. The financing is different, the process is long, and the land costs are typically too high. The service model is never going to be able to cater to large majority of home buyers. We live in a consumer culture. If you develop good work for a good price people will buy it.
I always had a hunch that licensure was bullshit even before school...the foam from the mouths of the defenders gave that away....it reeked of fake concern concealing selfish motives...like those old assholes that cry about school taxes and liberty when in reality they are just cheap fucks...or the pricks who say "what about the children" when protesting marijuana legalization while taking donations from pharma...beurocratic slime bags...but the more I actually look at the incompetent, ugly, half baked plans/projects that clients show me the more I realize that my hunch was correct...licensure is no substitute for intelligence.
to re-iterate what has been said more or less, if you eliminated much of the architects bullshit education of today, reduced it to 4 years, offered tiered licensure with level 1 being licensed right out of school for single family detached dwellings, then maybe a financial model would exist to allow for architects to be involved with suburban home design and building. in these 4 years you could also learn about construction management, offering recent grads 2 options immediately for making money.........The avarage American would have better homes if this happened. The profession would actually be involved more socially instead of this delusional political stance, where everytime an architect does what Habitat for Humanity and Red Cross have been doing for decades becomes a paradigm shift in the profession and worth publishing over the architects like Duo Dickenson who get published in mainstream, I mean mainstream, not BIG design journalist junkie media........
archanonymous,
You missed my point. Cars are great analogies for houses because they are both big ticket items that (most) buyers are very practical about, and that buyers in certain price ranges are only going to care about certain features is what I'm trying to illustrate.
Jla-x,
The reason licensure gets held up in such esteem is because the architecture community has long been trying to model itself on the medical community, thinking that extensive schooling and internships will get them the high salaries and social status medicine has. But architecture is a lot more like composing, they can teach you to read sheet music all day long in school, but they can't teach you how to come up with catchy tunes. A degree from Julliard or even an official composer license won't make your song any better.
"Tradition has a lot more influence on home design and not because it looks the best."
But the kicker is that is DOES look the best to legions of highly-educated professional people who travel all over the world to see preserved and rebuilt old towns, neighborhoods, and city centers. Does anybody go to Crystal City, Virginia, to look at the architecture and breathe in the ambience? Also it is difficult to transmit culture if you tear it down and replace it with Gehry chain-link fences and pieces of plywood.
But you have to keep it in perspective – most of these preserved historic old towns were lived in by people who were fairly wealthy in their day, the average person back then got a hut with a thatched roof. I'd take the modern suburban house any day over that.
Not true, many of the villages in Italy that are big tourist draws are essentially the same as they were several hundred years ago, same for France as well. And the governments of those countries are very protective of their historical buildings. And if you are going to build in the vicinity of an historical building don't you have the obligation to respect it and the fabric around it by building something in sympathy with what is there?
^
We must be referring to different kinds of villages, but again, most people don't want to live in those because the practicalities of life have changed so much.
Except they haven't. In the U/K, just for one example, people are leaving London for places like Bath, both for the historical ambience and because it is much less expensive. People want to embrace their heritage and the failure of modern architecture to recognize this fact may be its seminal failure.
But America isn't England...
Volunteer ^ people are leaving London for historical ambience? bullshit cause Bath and places like Cambridge are just as expensive with less job opportunities. The only ones leaving London are the low salaried, those on the dole and retired folks.
It is exactly the same here, the old restored central cities and neighborhoods are the most sought after as in New Orleans, Charleston, SC, Savannah, GA, Asheville, NC, Denver, and many other cities that haven't destroyed their center core with modernism.
Now how much does it cost to live in those core cities? As in how much does a four bedroom 2000 sqft house run in the historic district? Do places like Asheville and Savannah have the kind of job opportunities you find in Chicago?
archiwutm8,
"The math of monthly mortgages is a driving force behind a veritable exodus of Londoners cashing in on their homes in the British capital and moving out. And a top choice has been the Georgian city of Bath, perhaps best known as the setting for Jane Austen’s “Northanger Abbey.” According to the Hamptons International estate agents, almost half of all homes sold in Bath are going to former Londoners, who spend an average of $1.2 million on their new home.
"When the London market was red hot, property owners there were thinking to themselves: “If I wait another year, prices will have gone up again,” said Johnny Morris, head of research at Hamptons International. “Now that prices have cooled [Londoners] think it is time to make the big move. And because the gap between house prices in London and the rest of the country is so big, that move is even more tempting.”
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Bath is decidedly family friendly. “People tend to move to London in their early 20s to start their careers,” Mr. Morris said. “By the time they are in their 30s and early 40s, they start to move out just before or just after they have children, when space, schools and quality of life become more of a factor to them.”
Adding to its appeal is a project to electrify the railway line between London and Bath, scheduled for completion in spring 2019. The upgrade will cut travel times between the two cities from the current 83 minutes to just over an hour."
Part of a Wall Street Journal article, Jan 21, 2016, 'Londoners Beat a Path to Bath'.
Cheers
Sophisticated developers who do cool buildings market to a wealthy crowd.
Architects who do single family also for the most part do $1mil plus homes.
Someone like Peter Calthorpe or Christopher Alexander are people who can reach a general audience and influence the public.
The Katrina experiment was interesting but never caught on. The starchitects aren't influencing the publics general understanding or appreciation of architecture.
They don't care to, either.
For the most part, starchitects are only in love of themselves, the attention on them and love of lots of money.
these magazines are a reflection of a demand.
@Non Sequitur
The problem is not with the "designers", it's with the builders and the fools with too much money who pay for them.
Plenty of excellent residential firms in Ontario who do great residential work. It's really not that hard to find them, just be ready to pay for design quality.
Or perhaps it is because whenever the law does not specifically require architectural services to be used, those services will generally not be used, as is the case with small buildings, which include most residential. As a result, architects have next to zero impact over residential design, and the influence exerted by those architects who do residential design being +/- imperceptible.
It is simple.
It is because clients don't want to spend any more money than they have to which means more money for the client to spend for themselves.
That is after all where people want to spend their hard earned money on.... themselves.
This may be similar to what the owners of the house at the top of the thread may have been looking for. It was likely not even presented to them.
slightly less shitty beige mcmansion?
what are those quoins for? would they really serve a purpose in stucco construction?
It would be little bland without the quoins. Think of the quoins as "ornament". Of course, Adolf Loos thought that "Ornament is a crime", but old Adolph Loos was a convicted pedophile also, so his opinion may not count for much.
so the quoins prevent the inhabitants from becoming convicted pedophiles?
quoins are so quotidian.
Bitcoins?
bitcoins are the currency of Liberland.
Volunteer: Adolph Loos was possibly into a different kind of ornamentation.
Some random neighbourhood here and here, in Reykjavik. To be compared with that Ontario house.
@AdrianFGA I see what you mean, but I think Iceland falls out of the "average" country. I think cost can speak here. Do these Reykjavik homes cost close to 1$ Million? I doubt that.
these magazines are a reflection of a demand.
For advertising.
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