So new build designs are fine because they're exactly what kids want??! Surely they draw houses like that because that's what they see around them? If they were asked to draw, for example, a picture of war, and they did, would that mean they WANT war?
— Jenny Worstall 💕🌻 (@JennyWorstall) September 7, 2021
Solid walls of brick? Like the new houses over the road from me, looks like the Berlin wall.
It looks like they’ve gone for modern sensibilities of high ceilings inside, but not built the “holes” through the walls to match, going for post-war low-height windows.
I seriously dislike houses with those gable ends and meagre roof overhangs. They look cheap. And a high proportion of penetrating damp problems start where the wall:roof junction is poorly protected from driving rain. Better hope the highly skilled craftsmen who built these units were on top of their game the day those roofs were put on.
Question is, is the design following function or function following design. Historically, the vast majority of houses were built for function. And that’s what the viewer sees as the design. Which is the design the viewer’s accustomed to. It looks right because it is right.
Personally, I’d have changed the pitches on the side roof on the shack in the photo. Got rid of the return at 1st floor level & the stuck on shed roof. Increases the size of the relevant bedroom & preserves the protected front door, if you must have that feature. Although just doing a simple pitched roof & coming out to the building line would optimise the footprint & save a helluvalot of construction time & money. And result in an entirely traditional house.
Architects should be drowned in bunches of ten. Saves on rope.
Where does the water go? No drains and nothing but tarmac road and pavement, barring a token piece of show-home greenery. So brilliant is the design that the cars are parked up on the kerb.
Er, the logic is rather ropey too!
Oh & kids draw houses sideways with the front door on the end because it’s the only way they can illustrate a pitched roof. Same as the sky gets a blue line across the top of the paper. You’re going to get FA information out of how kids draw houses apart from the limits to kid’s drawing skills.
Children do want war.
“It looks like they’ve gone for modern sensibilities of high ceilings inside”
Only at the front. The roof pitch indicates the rear are lower.
What I’ve never understood is the limit to two floors. Why not go to three & get a bigger house with minimal extra cost & materials? Brit addiction to 2 storey boxes, I s’pose.
Actually, I can answer my own question. Most of the stuff went up late C19th to C20th was spec built rubbish. Since the land cost was relatively low it was to get more houses for less bucks. Where the land cost was relatively higher they went 3 high. Centres of most cities. There’s a sort of limit at three because past that, solving the load bearing requires more structure lower down.
“Question is, is the design following function or function following design.”
For the builder, the function is generating maximum profit…
The 2 storey limit for this kind of development is usually a Planner’s imposition. Gotta be ‘in keeping’ with all the neighbouring tat.
Yep, decnine. That’s the bit I don’t understand. Especially with the underlying rational behind the neighbouring tat. We have to preserve a tradition of money grabbing cvnts, even when it costs money.
Kids draw houses a certain way because they’re easy to draw. They’re not going to draw some Lutyens designed building.
The idea of government getting involved in the aesthetics of houses horrifies me, though. It’ll just mean more excuses for the NIMBYs to slow down development.
um i think big bad Jenny built a straw-house for her to puff down with worstallian logic. The housebuilder’s point was not that’s what kids want: it’s what people want. Yes he linked this with kids’ drawings- this is what that kids see as a house. So if Jenny’s right and it’s because that’s what they see around them, a reasonable inference would be that people want houses that look like other houses. i.e. don’t stick out like sore thumbs.
Hmm, I’m wondering if Jenny is to Tim, what Carrie* is to Gary.
* that fugly Glaswegian bloke in a dress
People want bay windows, at the very least. Can’t begin to imagine how dark it must be in there.
The best designed house I’ve lived in was a Georgian flat. The next best was a converted Victorian farm labourer’s cottage. You buy from what’s on sale, constrained by what you can afford. Much like other things, in fact.
Newbuild houses seem to have a reputation for lousy craftsmanship resulting in numerous flaws that the builders are reluctant to correct. Our present house was at least built by good brickies, according to the chap who surveyed it for us. It’s one of a small set: the one with the biggest garden was for the builder himself.
It’s not what people want. It’s what they end up buying, after they’ve figured out where they need to live versus where they would prefer to live.
They are different things.
Had a couple of hours to kill one day last week, so ended up walking around a new build estate. It’s about one third built, may be 60 to 80 dwellings completed, possibly a quarter to a third currently occupied. There are about two, possibly three designs per dwelling type, chalet bungalow, three bed terrace or semi, four bed semi. Each is laid down in series, two of those, four of these, three of the other.
It was about as exciting as you’d imagine.
The place is hanging off a motorway junction. Over the road is the services. Handy if you fancy a burger, or a hellish mark-up on fuel. Town centre is about 50~60 minutes walk away. That’s a mall and pedestrian precinct, so that’s doing well. Good luck navigating the junction on foot. Major employment area, and the retail estates, are further north. Nearest set of high street shops is 40 minutes walk, about ten minutes drive.
So, even the four beds have one off-road parking space. With only a quarter of the dwellings occupied, cars are already parked on the road.
Spoken to people who have moved into these new build estates over the years. It’s always “more bang for the buck” on the house. But it’s always an extra 30 minutes on the commute, shops are further away, and so are the schools. Roads are parked up, and the buses (if there are any) can barely navigate them as a result. The “community centre” gets finished about three years later.
“Want” is a fucking joke.
Yes, it’s the roof that makes it look odd. Especially with modern houses not using that space, so why have the roof so steep just to have a load of empty wasted space? And it usually *is* wasted because the rafters are so flimsy the roof space is filled with horizontal struts blocking any access to any use.
If you’re going for unusable roof space, make the pitch less steep. If you’re going for a steep roof, make it habitable and put a gable window and a couple of nice dormers.
When I was almost three decades younger I had an enjoyable summer stripping off and replacing the roof of my 1895 terrace, getting an appreciation for the engineering going into it to create a stable structure with usable space inside.
An interesting contribution to the debate (interesting ‘cos it’s not mine 🙂 )
https://policyexchange.org.uk/publication/strong-suburbs/
“why have the roof so steep”
So that when global cooling sets in and England gets 20 feet of snow per storm, the roof will shed the snow (onto the foundation so you’ll have leaks, but no one said the architect was completely competent…)
The housebuilder’s point was not that’s what kids want: it’s what people want.
The fuck it is.
“The housebuilder’s point was not that’s what kids want: it’s what people want.
The fuck it is.”
We’ve had 300 “houses” built on the outskirts of town. Every fortnight the parish council planning agenda includes an application from a new owner to extend/restructure/rebuild one.
This is how we design cars and aeroplanes, of course
“Why not 3 stories?”
Because then you’d need a fully enclosed stair well: fire regs, building regulations, don’t you know!
And new houses are exempt from the Sale of Good Act,(or indeed, any concept of Contract Law, misrepresentation, fitness for purpose etc.) so good luck with trying to get any redress for your £300k purchase that is full flaws.
Now try putting air-source heat pump more than 2m from any neighbour’s window. Not possible. I forsee your future is full of cut wires and sabotage.
As Ducky McDuckface points out–vast numbers of new houses depend on the car and most peoples illusion that the future will be the same as today just with leccy cars.
Wrong.
Leccy cars = no cars for plebs and millions of houses in places with hours of walking and bus commuting to shops. So that you can carry your weekly shop for 4 or 6 home on your back.
And get your loved ones to medical help in am emergency. Cos u know there will never be enough ambulances. Esp electric shitwagons.
Blojob J has already announced far to little wind-wank electric gen capacity to charge more than a tiny fraction of today’s number of vehicles. So we know its no cars for plebs.
Now we have to beat the little green shitehouse and his eco-mates or have the future of poverty and misery he/they plans for us.
Johnson–like the rest of the world’s political shite–needs CCP-style social credit tyranny to force a dark (in every sense) future on us. It must be our job to defeat his vax pass step 1 of that planned tyranny.
Don’t make a mistake. If this collection of Govt cunts get the soc credit tyranny they seek they will rule. So we must stop that. No excuses this time about how they will bungle. They only need a working beginning. We must deny them their chance to fuck the rest of us up for good.
jgh said:
“When I was almost three decades younger I had an enjoyable summer stripping off and replacing the roof of my 1895 terrace”
Must have been a hot summer, but didn’t the neighbours complain about you being naked on the roof?