Ohh...goodness! If he sees something of value in that, then there is no hope.

is he/she in the detroit area?...that image link mentioned michigan

if this is what he has chosen and likes, then, i see no point in trying to "enlighten" him. outside of your own (not his) predisposition regarding the placement of the garage, the house itself seems functional enough and will likely fit into whatever suburban subdivision he decides to put it in. a client who likes more designed or modern architecture is a rare bird (with an even rarer budget). if i've learned anything, it's not to try to smash a square peg in a round hole. let the guy enjoy his new house.

A garage-dominated house is known derogatorily as a "snout house". google it and you'll find lots of links talking about why its more prone to break-ins, has less "curb appeal" (I hate that term!), lower resale value, etc.

I'm also not a big fan of the double wide garage door, especially when it has occupied space above. In wood frame construction (which I assume this is) it's a big span to have no lateral bracing. At least with a traditional split two car garage you can put a pipe column between the doors to cut the spans. I wouldn't want to be in those upstairs bedrooms over the garage if there were any significant seismic or wind activity. The wide garage doors also tend to sag and bow under their own weight over time.

All that said, I pretty much agree with what jafidler said.

I like it. Just kidding, but I think aside from maybe pointing out the things 4arch mentioned, jafidler seems largely right... most people like this crap.

you could suggest they bury it. The section would be great....

or you could scare the hell out of your friend and show him Gehry's house in Santa Monica.

Just give him your useless collection of Dwell magazines. Dwell ain't great, but at least the houses don't look like the link you provided.

would you prefer something more organic?

abandon all hope - there's no competing with quoins.

How about Patterns of Home

http://www.amazon.com/Patterns-Home-Essentials-Enduring-Design/dp/1561585335

Its mostly in laymens terms with popularly accepted architecture. I would definitely emphasize how garage dominated homes are not friendly. Although if they have a narrow lot I am not sure what the alternative to a garage dominated front would be other than eliminating the garage. And the entry is pretty lame too.

<offtopic>.._. .._ _._. _._, i love this style but I really fail to see how it is organic.</offtopic>

How about a garage-dominated Phillip Johnson-esque Glass House? hur hur.

It was meant to be sarcastic while also referencing the name of the office "Habitat Organico". Personally I find these "organic" projects more frightening and offensive than the house in question on this forum.

not everyone gives a rats-ass about aesthetics, but everyone needs basic shelter.

until architects quit being elitist and take some time to design a universally affordable and appealing shelter, we should refrain from bitching about these mass produced track homes. but hey, it's a free country.

and it's hard to compete with basic shelter, especially if the builder offers "designer tile" options for your "customized home".

Any chance of leaving your poor, poor philistine friend alone about how he builds his own house and minding your own damned business?

Or does he have bad taste in friends, too?

I'm sorry if that sounds harsh, but the reputation architects have for elitism and snobbishness about how other people should behave is often as accurate as it is obnoxious.

Ugh, this is why I wish neoclassicalism never died.

if there's anything architects should be 'elitist' and 'snobby' about it is architectural design.

a good architect could take that crappy-tracty house parti and do something 100 times better and still satisfy the friends' bad taste. like aking mentioned the entry is lame - but the whole thing could be cleaned up and made into something.

you've got that narrow entry outside the garage then the narrow foyer and that type of compression can be really cool (especially leading to the potentially loft-like family/dining/kitchen area). get rid of the 45 degree bedroom entrances on the second floor, do a nice, simple stair, nice kitchen, simplify the roof .. yeah also as mentioned above just dwell it up it wouldn't be that hard.

I have to agree with FRaC on this one. Its not about "aesthetics", its about supporting the practice of good design. As architects, shouldn't we try to encourage that?

Actually, my post was more about the nature of friendship than architectural design.

Here's to friends whose aesthetic sensibilities as wonderful and enlightened as our own!

I agree with FRac too

You can find good examples of almost any style. And while I still personally despise them, they are world's better.

If you want to design it, take abstract parts and look for examples of good homes that have similar qualities.

Figure out why he likes it. Most likely, he doesn't have many reasons and if you can point out the flaws, you might get him interested in something better.


Or you could just find a new friend

the foyer is somewhat narrow, but it is a double height space. i think it may actually be one of the better spaces in the house. overall, i have no big problem with the plan (outside of the placement of the garage); it actually seems relatively modest for these types of houses.

(dear god, i'm critiquing tract houses.)

and while i'm at it, i'd like to challenge all you geniuses to take the exact same footprint and design a better floor plan. you can post your design to this thread. good luck.

ppl with bad taste also associate with anything that is mediocre... that includes selecting ppl as his friends! haha...

build a garage in the back off the house..use the square footage to add a better living room that views the street.....create a better entrance and add skylights....get rid of the ornamental siding/wood details on the exterior and spec a clean exterior application such as real bricks with 4'x4' wood panels for the upper floor........or maybe cedar siding

but then again...... who really cares.....

I think my biggest concern regarding the plan would be to make sure that these spaces are adequately sized for furniture and storage needs. If you start adding bookshelves and dvd/cd racks or a larger sofa that family room, it might get a little crowded. Same thing in the bedrooms that look like they would hold a bed, but probably not a desk, etc.

I do applaud the modest scale however I would question if this is functional enough for the size and lifestyle of the family.

give him some advice about a particular aspect - the snouthouse garage - but otherwise, unless he wants your input, don't give it.

this topic got all dear abby on us...

add some supergraphics, and a lambo on the lawn w/ some mid alpha ladies in heels. Maybe bang out a GH serpentine pavilion-esque gazebo out back.

paint everything gunmetal black and lime green. add some yellow-enameled steel shapes jutting randomly out of the sides. don't forget the pink and blue dramatic up lighting. and cover the entire interior in rosewood with brushed chrome trim.

also, the entire drive needs to be made out of corten.

wow... thats a lot of responses

I'd never tell him what I really think of the design, would just like to gently expand his horizons. No reason to take the first plan that the builder suggests. I dropped off a couple books on small home design and took a few pictures of houses in birmingham this morning.

I also suggested he google "portland snout houses." He now wants to build the house and paint a nose on the garage door.

Portland had a design competition for narrow houses witch resulted in some good proposals:

http://www.livingsmartpdx.com/home/winners.asp

i don't like the master bedroom suite with the bathroom door opening at the far end of ze bedroom and i would unify dressing area entrance keeping the one furthest away from the window. actually i would think of situating the dressing area abutting the shared laundry (?) wall with the entrance of bathroom facing it from across the room. bedroom would be a clearer though narrower space. come to think of it, kids' shared bathroom doesnt need two sinks. could be made smaller and shaft+master suite bathroom could be pushed outwards. ok, enough!!

and there are only 3 seating places in the living room? no i don't like that.

i agree, fondue. the two sinks is completely unnecessary, and the two walk-in closets are definitely "contractor luxury." one closet could have easily been used for perhaps a small terrace, instead you're stuck with a very flat, blank elevation. it also reveals that that fireplace on the first floor is fakey fakey. the plan's definitely not perfect, but i've seen worse, much, much worse.

hey, i actually drew something but it is god awful.

Wow that's ugly.

You could tell him that it's an unnecessary waste of materials (fake quoins, overlarge roof), that the roof will be a waste of energy, and that the (presumably) vinyl siding kills babies. (It's a jump but, kind of true.)

i think that design is not too bad for a nanny flat/guest quarters above the garage...but could we see the manor house and the rest of the estate? context really does help.

the outer wall setback of bedroom #2 from #3 ( 0.4m to 0.5m?) might be too small to make a decent enough visual impact recorded on elevation. maybe 0.6m? from one viewpoint, i'm not too sure whether first floor storey seems to be just slightly overpowered, proportionally and decoratively in elevation, by the ground floor storey. but it does work ok for the overall proportions of the building.

i would certainly not call this design "ugly" although one's aesthetical reaction might be one of ambivalence. contrasting it subliminally with modernism is not sufficient to qualify it as "ugly"

i like the triad elevational overlaying of pitched roofs, like three watchful sisters, the youngest being the 'monocle' of the building.

going through the same thing with two friends of mine. they shun any thoughts I give on the matter and it boggles my mind they wont even take advice on simple things. Its so surprising.

walking through a model home was enough for one friend, they just wanted to get it in the ground and built. the only changes they made. adding another garage. gotta love it. complete with fake dormer windows and a fake fireplace with a tv recessed into the wall above it. all wrapped in vinyl siding and cookie cutter.

to each his own.


"but otherwise, unless he wants your input, don't give it."
but its so hard to see friends and family do that to themselves. but thats how it is I suppose.

I had an extra two hours tonight.



So, I took most of the suggestions and the original floor plan... and uh, mixed them with my bad talent... this is what I got.

film noir?

well, actually... terrible uninteresting story.

I had gotten most of this together in rapid time... and I had knocked out a few areas of walls to replace with corriboard. But without backlighting to get that shadow effect off the studs, the corriboard just looked like white blocks stuck on the walls.

So, instead of fixing all of my lighting, I made it a "night render." But that kind of backfired on me when I realized that the property was in one of the only places in the US where you could probably never have a flat roof.

So, then I added a roof. My initial add was going to be just the frame... to "look like a roof." But functionally it was still a flat roof. so, then, I just decided that I'll cover the entire roof structure with corriboard.

I had to add more lights so you could see the framing.

To add insult to injury, I ran into a problem of not getting my translucency settings right... so I had to make them semi-transparent instead of translucent. This caused the entire scene to be filled with giant overlapping shadows.

Then I realized after all this that without enough lighting, you'd never be able to see the lambo on the lawn. So I ended up having to put in a spot moonlight to see the outside features.

So, yeah, it came out film noirish.

I still don't have a regulation image editor after whiping my computer clean... so any post processing outside of my render engine is done with basically flickr... and flickr upload seems to destroy the quality of my pictures.

I leave soon to go scouting around in Santa Fe and I needed my renderer for something else... and spending 3 hours on a bad joke was already bad.

the image actually shows up much better on my mac than it does my pc. although i can't really tell what the cladding is, the detailing needs some refinement, and i'm not really sure why there is a "lambo" flying across the front drive, i think what you've created is a nice improvement over the original, orochi. i especially appreciate that you kept the two car garage in front. the front-facing two car garage is a suburban reality. the planning and zoning changes that would have to occur to eliminate it are not realistic. that's why i found most of the houses in shuellmi's livingsmartpdx link simply to be modern fantasies. until we learn to design a two car garage in a smart intelligent way architects are only creating pretty renderings and not addressing real problems.

"add some supergraphics, and a lambo on the lawn w/ some mid alpha ladies in heels. Maybe bang out a GH serpentine pavilion-esque gazebo out back."

It was a suggestion in the thread!