Perhaps so - but that's a function of what people put up with and buy anyway, rather than a defining feature. The building I lived in until recently did not have this problem.
You’re thinking of expensive or maybe region-specific “designer” homes. If you just go look at most of the kinds of new houses being built, up to surprisingly high price points (as noted in TFA), it’s exactly as described. The waste of space especially drives me nuts and it’s everywhere in most new construction. Ditto shockingly bad and cheap-feeling fixtures and doors even in very expensive houses. When they do mimic huge “open” design spaces (incidentally, the Worst Thing Ever if you have kids) these kinds of builders usually do it because it’s cheaper, and then screw it up so the flow/layout, somehow, still sucks and wastes space—because all they care about is that the house looks impressive in photos on Zillow.
OP doesn't seem mean at all, just accurate that open floorplans these days are built poorly. When I was shopping for houses, I never saw a good open floorplan. They all had weird angles, flows that didn't make sense, and zero symmetry, and the asymmetry was terrible to. Open floorplans these days aren't built to be nice, they're built to sell.
You're right in that certain buyers are going to be looking for certain elements that might not make much sense from a long-standing building point of view. Architectural shapes and trends change over time.
On the other hand, its also true that a lot of these trends are just bad architectural design. Period.
Sunken lounges of the 70's. Media-rooms and conspicuous consumpition-esque cavernous entrances and questionable elements in macmansions. These are designs that are incredibly difficult to repurpose into anything but their original purpose.
In my country (Aus), there is a now a common suburban design that almost entirely ignores long term elements and lessons of the environment that have been known for at least 100 years: see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Queenslander_(architecture). Now we have a poor relation of the generic american style: dark roofs and colours, no overhangs/shelter/verandahs, directly western facing living areas and frontages, all designed to maximize internal sq meters/price.
Now, i appreciate that my queenslander example is a style built of wood traditionally. But there is another style example of highly valued real-estate with long term potential in the urban centres: victorian terraces and townhouses. Aside from the regrettable wealth signaling effect of owning one, its an architectural form that has lasted the test of time and is arguably constructible via concrete. And one of the reasons it has done so is because that form is the complete opposite of the media room/sunken lounge/mcmansion: almost universally flexible and readjustable. A proper Victorian townhouse in its context can be reclaimed and used as a bar, as a restaurant, as a residence, as an office or a place of business. Though like all succesful architecture, this is only because it works in the context of its environment.
They're generally very large and of low-quality construction, making them expensive to heat, cool, and maintain, for little upside. They're also generally kind of impractical; you end up with either way too many rooms, or impractically _big_ rooms.
There's an element of subjectivity to the aesthetics, obviously, but I don't think you'll find many people who'll see most of the examples on that site and go "that looks good actually".
The major issue with many of these houses is their design, features and aesthetic is totally incoherent and shows no restraint.
They put every kind of shape, texture, and material all into one house, in one room.
This kind of maximalist design is trying to seem luxurious. But it ends up being overwrought, shocking to look at, and filled with unusable features like that weird fireplace in the 'dome sweet dome" house.
The historical context portion of the article is interesting and well written, but the critique of the open-concept layout at the end seemed rushed and unconvincing.
Anyone here who lives in a modern open-concept house care to comment?
I currently live with my wife, 3 children and 2 dogs in a 1200 square foot split level and we all dream of a big open-concept house some day... but apparently some people are getting tired of theirs and adding walls back in?
This is wild to me, I can't follow the author's logic here really at all. It reads like a borderline-satirical example of nostalgia for nostalgia's sake. They make such obnoxious claims like "I think most people have an intuitive sense that older homes are often special, and newer ones are often not".
Then they go on to list things that I associate much more with modern homes - not wasting floor space, and paying attention to the elements and light. A modern, open-concept design is optimizing much better for this than an old farmhouse where, for instance, the kitchen and formal dining room and living room are all closed off from each other. Modern homes often have floor to ceiling windows and sliding glass doors, old homes have tiny closed off windows. And old homes like the author uses as an example here are often just simple rectangles, so all the design decisions are constrained to be small square rooms. At least the "mcmansion" example in this post of a terrible new home has more interesting, non-perpendicular details and layout.
Maybe I just have an anti-nostalgia for this type of home, and maybe that makes me just as biased as the author in the opposite direction. I've never lived in a home like this but have been inside of a few of them, and they're often dark and closed in and kind of creepy. But I don't think I'm completely alone in feeling this way, there must be a reason so many horror movies are set in old farmhouses. To each their own, I guess.
(And on top of all this, I would argue that this kind of permeating attitude about new homes just not being special like old homes are plays a huge part in the current housing shortage crisis that much of the US faces, but I won't even go into that).
This whole article feels like the author is trying to pull something from nothing. House-poor seems like a stretch. I would suggest a more plausible theory: people, in general, just aren't that creative, especially when it comes to interior decorating.
My suspicion is less cost cutting and more designers not being allowed to do good work. A lot of the interior decisions feel like the results of edicts from the top by someone who has no design sense.
This actually demonstrates some of what I'm talking about. See the comments on some of the houses in the 6-7 range about garages or additions. Sure, they make things look unbalanced but the occupants wanted an enclosed space for their car or an extra guest bedroom or whatever. Is that really so bad?
I’m not sure there is anything objectively bad about these designs. Does it affect the utility of the house? Or is there some inherent ugliness that comes with affordable and popular things?
In the case of McMansions, that's often also true. While the author didn't address it, generally the craftsmanship follows the (lack of) design. Subpar stucco, heavy use of quarter round because cutting floors and walls that fit is time-consuming, poor use of interior space, etc.
McMansions are a great example of form over function. They meet the buyers notion how a "fancy" house should appear. But, they stop there.
May not be the reason, but building codes and taxation can lead to strange outcomes like these. Then again, it may just be superficial, since the entrance hall is the first thing people see.
I tend to agree more with McMansion hell because McMansions lend themselves to stylistic choices that serve no purpose, or actually serve an anti-purpose and make life harder.
Windows of random styles is another irritation of mine, doing so serves no purpose, and it makes the house look worse.
Ditto with random mixings of different types of siding material. Done right, changes in texture can look good, but many McMansions don't do it right, they just put a stone facade somewhere because the house needs stone on the outside somewhere as a checklist item.
And checklist describes McMansions perfectly. They are designed to have features, not to be livable spaces. I've seen 1600sqft houses with 4 bedrooms that are spacious and bright, and I've seen 2200+ sqft McMansions that are tight and narrow, with lots of wastes space on hallways.
Then again I have a near moral opposition to houses that have both formal and informal dining rooms. I can count on one hand the number of times I've seen formal dining rooms actually used for something.
I feel much the same way about family rooms and living rooms. The coastal cities have a bloody shortage of affordable housing and developers are burning square footage on 2 dining rooms and 2 living rooms per house.
Honestly I think most people look for large square footage houses because they have never seen a house under 2000sqft that is properly laid out.
Now if she wants to write an article about irritated she is with houses advertised as minimalist that have a formal dining room, a breakfast nook, an informal dining area, a family room, and a living room, and a 3 car garage, well then, I'll be out in the comments showing my full support. :)
Another trend that I think is poor design is the "open-floor" trend for newer homes.
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