Oh. I don't even think of them as closing. It's funny how after you've been exposed to a decoration long enough, you no longer expect It to behave like the thing it's imitating. Like when my friend had actual wood siding, it seems like vinyl from a distance.
You wouldn't believe the amount of fake attics I've built. Adding a small pitched roof with a window that can never be accessed from within the house is stupid. In fact I got a call to go build one tomorrow. Its idiotic
The US house-building industry is gable-crazy. It's second in ugliness only to that up-front gigantic garage design. That will date the house (and make it obsolete) the way Formstone and jalousie windows did.
Yeah these windows or vents and similar locations often form the perfect entry point for burglars to get around alarm systems. That's almost never an alarm's contact on the fake window or vent in the attic. So if you have one of these now you know.
What's sad to me is when still-functional elements are removed in order to be stylish. Take awnings; many homes do without them and therefore are substantially hotter than they need to be.
@@prophetzarquon I think in the age of abundant energy we willingly forgot how to build efficient homes. Shutters were meaningful. Awnings were meaningful. Porches were meaningful. And I'm just scratching the surface here, I guess.
also US homebuilders seems to only put in effort on the side of the house that faces the street. the other 3 sides often like like school children drawings - rectangle for walls, triangle for roof, squares for windows.
It's all about being low cost. If a builder offered a home that was beautiful on all sides no middle class customer would buy it because of the extra cost. It's the same reason you see hideous SUVs cruising around all over the USA, because Americans don't want to pay for something that looks nice.
Yes! Turn a corner, or drive down the street behind them and a decent looking house suddenly becomes a piece of garbage… just pvc siding and wonky windows.
I'm 66, I grew up mostly in Europe (father in the military). When we moved back to the US I was horrified by the amount of "fake" stuff in and on houses. Everything that was real and functional in Europe was fake and cheap in US homes. Fake shutters, fake fireplaces, fake wood, fake stone , fake tiles... It was actually stressful.
Europe embraced modernism as materials and building methods changed so the new materials and methods could be as they are, not pretend to be the past. North America got lost in post modernism (and the ever worsening copies of early post modernist designs). That conspires with the dreadful urban form and an irreconcilable simultaneous yearning for inexpensive and craft driven materials.
I have shutters and they are great both in summer and in winter, and best if you really want to sleep in. I don't get this one, all you need is a hinge and it adds so much more. On the other hand, I don't have AC while it gets in the 110's here, gotta love and hate Europe.
@@MtJochem yeah, I really don't understand why real shutters are never used here in the states. Maybe a building code thing? It would seem useful in the summer for reducing cooling costs and also certain parts of the states that have severe storms.
Note to viewers: Stewart's mustache is fake. 100% PVC and muskrat fur, attached with deck screws and bituthane. I'm best friends with his mustache outfitter.
sadder is that the majority of builders do this fakery badly. stone in gable ends, columns that end at the top of a foundation, larger 2nd floor windows over tiny windows on the main.... all bad and done often , creating horrble streetscapes. i worked decades in tract building and regret every compromise.
@@HisameArtworkI live rurally (USA), I'm from Europe. I went from artistic stone and brick, to vinyl and brick veneer, often together. Brick veneer to me, is as obvious and attractive as a pig with lipstick on. I can appreciate vinyl for its hideous utilitarianism, it's unsightly 🤮, but honest. Real problem imho, when there's real brick, bricklayers here are so uninspired, there's not one touch of artistry, it's like a blank canvas on a white wall.
@@pineapple8992 Sorry, but no.. the ABSOLUTE worst is river rock/pebbles on 4" posts.. also abortions like the proportional holocaust of that house masquerading as a mansion at 11:29..
I'd like to see that, too. Instead of unnecessary and out-of-place embellishments, what efficiencies could that money be better spent on? And how could it create a new definition of "attractive."
@jrdoj well all the efficiency in a net zero home is internal and not seen. Whatever you see from the outside is just like clothes on a bodybuilder. His video is pointless. Exterior features that fakes it DO NOT detract from the efficiency.
The vinyl siding, fake stone, wood frame, fake shutters, etc. doesn't even bother me.... it's the fact that they charge +$400k for a house using all this fake and cheap stuff.
I was thrilled to find out my first home, an 1910s era two-family had shutters that *actually shut*. I made a video of myself closing them once just for fun.
The fact that you only shut them once, and you only did it "for fun," demonstrates the reason why nobody bothers to put real shutters on homes anymore.
Our former family home had a great and working fireplace. So much fun in the winter evenings, using the bellows to fan the flames. And for cleaning it my father just called a chimney sweeper. Don't know if they are still around nowadays though.
The thing that disturbs me the most is that the houses are too big - and especially too big for the plot. There is no gardening or interesting outdoor activities happening on such cramped spaces. No wonder the residents don't connect with the place. Suburbs like this are ultra boring. This is environmental damage in large scale.
I’d add that homes are built without being able to easily change the interior layout, meaning they are much more expensive to remodel (more material waste) and have a high amount of wasted space.
i tell my kids those suburbs are the future ghettos. streets like canyons of giant garages, with poorly built, badly planned monstrosities behind them. hate the suburbs
Yes I always think if you're going to be 1' away from your neighbours and have no yard, it might as well be an apartment which is a much more efficient use of space, and cheaper.
Some are, others have bigger plots to compensate. The worst I saw was in New Zealand, there were bungalows with a 1 metre strip of lawn around them on a new development. Why they couldn't put an extra floor on top and give everyone a decent garden I don't know.
I live in a 1889 American Victorian house in the west coast, and I became obsessed with the building styles of the time period. Amusingly, your video also applies to the same homes built before the Arts and Crafts movement. Industrialization and the lumber mill meant that ornate embellishments can be made en masse and shipped across the country, so skilled woodworkers didn't need to be on-site to build the house. Dental moldings, ornate newel posts, scalloping, stick style, corbels, intricate scrollwork, and ridiculous paint colors were barfed all over these houses. People faked excessive opulence because it was cheap to do it now. Arts and Crafts became a reaction to that and tried to bring things back to intentional woodworking. I love flipping through the 1897 Sears, Roebuck & Co. Catalogue. Shopping at home and having it delivered? What an amazing concept.
Great point. We have been "faking" it for longer than we have had cheap plastic siding. Other examples: rustications on 19th and 20th century stone and brick buildings, or cast figurines and gargoyles on early sky scrapers.
Good comment. I live in a house that was built in the 1920s, in a neighborhood that was established between 1850 and 1880 or so. My house is effectively a foursquare, but they put a lot of Victorian embellishments on it to, I presume, better fit in with other houses in the neighborhood. Oh, and the siding is all wood clapboard and cedar shingles - vinyl just wouldn't look right on it.
I would much rather have mass produced details made of real wood/quality materials than cheap plastic versions. It does make me wonder though, in 100 years from now are we going to be lamenting the loss of the “craftsmanship” of houses built today?
@@TwistedCyclonix I can see a world where all building materials are made of extruded composites and resins with foam sheets for structure and we'll miss the good ol' days of 2x4s and nails.
We’re finishing building our own house. It’s “not too big” at 1800 sq ft and we’ve done about 80% of the labor so we could save on that cost and afford really good materials … we overbuilt and did things like used all plywood instead of osb, rockwool insulation with upper floor ceiling r-42 (adding a reflective heat barrier added even more and we designed for no attic … we did high ceilings and loft spaces within the second floor instead), real hardwood instead of lvp, James Hardie siding, heavy duty framing, etc … it makes a huge difference in how the house feels and functions. I see tons of houses going up that are built super fast and to the very minimum of code and they look like they’ll be lucky to last 15 years … starting at $500k. We need to build things to last and not be more than we need. The Not So Big House book is an excellent reference for that philosophy.
Sounds great. I would like to see that quality over quantity with added adaptations to inviorment of the build for efficiency, durability and comfort. I hope changes in climate will inspire new creativity, problem solving and affordability.
Then make them real and enjoy the many benefits: lower cooling costs in summer, lower heating costs in winter, and added protection in storms.@@FreedomTalkMedia
Two things I absolutely HATE are uninsulated attics, and watertanks in attics. All the dog-shit home builders here in Tennessee are all evil for doing these things.
In the south it's also common to put the hvac unit and ducts in the hot attic of all places. Makes no sense and very few builders seem to even question this practice
Where else do you put the water tank? Many appliances aren't rated for full mains pressure, so having a reservoir feeding from a fixed, low height is assumed for these to be installed. Also extremely useful when there is an issue with the water supply as the toilets still work until the attic tank empties.
Unconditioned attics (the insulation is beneath the floor) are _much_ cheaper and easier to build than conditioned, liveable attics with complex rooflines and dormers everywhere. It's literally better to just build a second or third floor with full walls. Until you get to "Curb Appeal" and "HOA" and "Height Limits" and fakery; Some custom homes even install dormers facing a sealed-off attic in order to comply with the neighborhood aesthetic demands. In the North, unconditioned attics with simple rooflines are also basically the only natural way to get proper roof venting - almost anything else causes problems, big or small, with ice damming.
In Germany, they actually build out the attic into livable, well ventilated areas. In America, its a jungle gym of trusses littered with blown-in insulation so boxed in that its hotter than it is outside. That's what I hate.
I live in a townhouse complex that was built in the 70s. The were all originally built with vertical wooden siding painted with earthtones. Over the years, many of them had switched over to cream colored vinyl siding. I get why people did that, because in what is a relatively budget townhouse neighborhood, it is cheap and easier to maintain. That being said, I also think it is pretty ugly. It is why I have still kept the wooden siding on my house (with upgrades in material where appropriate), as well as the original color, which is one of the few green homes left in my neighborhood.
I spent a good portion of my childhood living in a house with deep red real cedar shingles for siding. It was beautiful. Recently drove by the house, and the cedar shingles had been replaced with fake vinyl clapboard siding. It was such a massive downgrade. Bummed me out.
Because blinds exist. They're way more convenient. The "fake shutters" are actually functional, their function is to make the house look nice. You don't actually have to complain about stuff just cos it's different than it used to be.
Basically what this stupid videos says. Don't make your house looks good because ITS FAKE. Cedar shake looks good but are inefficient and maintenance is high. Thus make your FaKe material looks like it. I don't see the issue
I didn't know shutters in the US were fake! Shutters (real ones) are still very much a thing in France. I often take the Eurostar to London and you can tell if you crossed the Channel by looking at houses, they're not as common in the UK. My previous flat didn't even have curtains, I would open and close my shutters every day, which is symbolic to me.
I grew up in the US in a tiny 18th century cape house that had real shutters. The world is full of things that started out as functional but are retained now of aesthetic reasons, and it's not just the US.
It's not just the lack of shutters that is wrong with the windows on the island side of the channel The windows themselves with their oprimisation on minimising possible air flow are also just plain wrong. On the other hand, I find it surprising that you wouldn't figure having made the crossing from the tunnel and darkness between the both sides...
Not really. Watch his video about ACP's. Vinyl is like the siding version of that. Even the mimicking of lap siding serves a purpose- it allows for ease of application by creating a locking system
@@davidsorensen2808 Lapping is a functional water-shedding strategy. If not vinyl siding, then what? The thing is that all your alternatives are more expensive or more maintenance-intensive.
@@TrogdorBurnin8oraluminum. More expensive, kinda, but essentially maintenance free for eternity, and you aren’t stuck with that awful fake wood texture. If you can find anyone to install it.
@@EyeMWing Funny thing, my neighbor has aluminum siding with an embossed wood grain. My vinyl siding is a smooth clapboard, no grain at all. There are choices.
@@EyeMWing They can wood-texture aluminum almost as easily as vinyl if they want; Or if there's a market somebody could easily sell vinyl without the texture; The texture costs little. With aluminum, it's more expensive (the huge thing), you have to paint it periodically (the big thing), and it dents easily (the small thing).
The visual aesthetics make sense to me. It's the same reason our phone apps still look like their older counterparts: the camera app is still a camera icon, the alarm app still uses an analog clock, etc. Comfort & Familiarity.
Yeah most people can’t even afford to buy this shit anymore. Are we all supposed to find a cool million for materials? I live in a small home built in the 50’s and would love to upgrade some things but there is no way I can afford it.
I find the shutter piece both interesting and sad as the function that real shutters provide could potentially help with today's changing climate and a builder's poor window placement in a suburb.
I would be interested in knowing more about modern designs that are not faux traditional. If a person wanted a new home with all of the comforts and efficiencies but not the fakery what would they chose? Are there any mainstream builders bucking the trend of plastic shutters, fake chimneys, and stone veneer?
find a custom builder with heritage experience. ask why they choose elements that way. do not build to building code minimums.... choose the appropriate methods for your location. the right builder is the most important choice. educate yourself as best you can. you get the final say and can make or break your project.
Usually comes down to budget or availability of craftsmen. A wood framed house with brick exterior is still a solid construction typology. Most savvy home buyers will pursue a brick exterior home over a vinyl siding home. Otherwise, building holistically with stone, CMU or concrete just isn’t as common in the US. 3D printed mortar homes is the next big promise of the home building industry, but it’s currently plagued with technical issues that make it not desirable.
Sometimes building techniques change in a way that it is no longer possible to effectively use some finishes. Older construction was designed without added insulation aside from sheer mass, and to effectively release moisture to prevent mold and rot. Because of the requirement for interior barriers and insulation that are not permeable by water, many exterior finishes like stucco, brick, and wood that need to "breathe" in order to effectively release moisture over the long term are very not compatible with current general building practices. You can see the exterior effects of this in action on the surface of old buildings with soft brick that has been painted with acrylic paint. The face of the brick eventually flakes off with a freeze/thaw cycle because the layer of paint (a plastic film) blocks it from releasing any infiltrated moisture. On the inside, if you wrap the outside of the walls in plastic, and then breathe and bathe inside, water vapor can't escape the way it was designed to slowly through the walls, so it condenses on windows and inside the walls, causing sometimes invisible damage over time. Continuous venting and other methods can help, but it's an ongoing and serious issue!
Moving from Europe to the us 10 years ago, I’m still bothered to this day by the lack of shutters. Shutters are absolutely essentials. They block the lights , I love dark rooms at night. In summer they greatly reduce the need for AC. They also protect the house from intrusions. Real wooden shutters especially on the first floor make it very hard for people to break in easily
@@iamhis5580 outside shutters. Can be wood and new European build (at least in France) all come with what they call here in the us “European rolling shutters” Google it. It’s so crucial and amazing and I’m sure it’s a missed business opportunity here. Also want to say in France 50% or more of the population lives in suburbs, individual homes built less than 30 years ago, very similar looking to the US except they make them with concrete. Also all have ac/ and floor heating. Usually I find their build way more durable than Us wooden home. Way more insulated from cold or heat, and outside noise as well.
We removed ours. The house was so dark. We have the highest level of tinting and room darkening drapes on the west and south. We are planning to grow a green wall on the south where there is only one windows. But the wooden shutters would have been very easy to break off.
Surprised you didn't touch on the use of foam in McMansions. Very common to make foam columns that look like they're made from a hard material like rock or marble.
Fakery is kind of a time honored tradition in building (old west facades, doors painted to look like mahogany, etc) but vinyl troubles me because my understanding is that it doesn't have a great lifespan. Even a fake feature should be built to last in a home.
Fakery can be seen in 300 year old manor houses in the UK. Rich people would design houses to look like medieval castles with crenellated roof lines and turrets, despite the fact they served no defensive purpose.
Vinyl is a garbage material, but it's main edge is being very cheap. Therefore even if it doesn't last people can just redo their siding if they have the right skill set. For people who don't have the skills to do their own siding though...I don't understand why people choose vinyl. The stuff is fragile.
biggest lie from the home building industry and construction industry in general is how much corners are cut on many projects. our roofing crew has showed up to homes that dident have good attic ventilation and then we have to replace the plywood because its rotted. a few times we have almost gotten hurt do to shitty framing or plywood that was straight up not nailed down and i once recall finding extra shingles left under the outer layer when we were tearing up a roof probably because the previous crew dident feel like getting rid of them properly. the worst part is that lots of this shit happens on new build houses, especially the shitty frame work. when a home is built well by people who dont cut corners it will last a lifetime regardless of the esthetic design. unfortunately this is not the case for the majority of homes made today because no one is holding the builders accountable.
That is because neighborhoods in the usa are built by developers and then rarely change much instead of the decisions being made by individual property owners regarding how they want to use their land and what structures to have
@@coreymichaels9452 i work roofing and ive seen shitty framing and plywood installation on homes that were not part of a major project just as much as the ones that are
As I have gotten older and become a home owner, I've noticed my priorities have changed in what I strive for with my home. I'm less concerned with how it looks and care more about how it will perform, its efficency and usefulness. I see homes with steep pitched roofs and think about how hard they are to replace. I see beautiful landscapping with lots of ornimental objects decorating a yard and think about how hard it will be to run a lawnmower and weed trimmer around each object. I think it would be neat to see a video on what the most efficient, long lasting and easy to build home would look like.
For me it is just the opposite. When I was young I just needed a dry and warm place. When I got older I started to appreciate the unnecessary beauty of architecture. Beauty, freedom, play, fun, it is all about going beyond the necessary.
@@christopherzehnder Touché, my comment was under the assumption of wanting to have some standard ammenties in life. When looking at a home I now consider 2 bathrooms and a garage to be must have items. Exploring what features people would now consider escential would make for Interesting side topics within such a video I asked for.
The thing that prompted my comment were the details he provided on siding. My previous home had that plastic siding like what was shown. I had to pressure wash that siding annually to keep the mold off of it and there were several places that the siding became brittle from the direct sunlight and it had to be replaced. I now have a brick home and my brick home's exterior is mantenance free and insulates better from the weather. I wouldn't trade my brick for anything.
Steep roofs definitely serve a purpose if you are in an area that gets a lot of snow. If you've ever had to deal with ice dams, you appreciate a nice steep roof. As far as yards go. I'm working on killing all my grass, so no need to worry about maneuvering a mower around. Just native plants and raised bed gardens.
Don’t know how widespread these techniques are in the U.S., but I’m kind of mind-blown how different this is from how houses are built here in Norway. It’s like two completely different “products”.
I was a builder for 42 years and every home I built was designed by an architect (such as yourself). You guys are the ones who specified all these fake elements to compliment your designs. We got vinyl and aluminum siding because homeowners got sick of having to paint their house every five years or the old wood siding was rotting away. New products like LP Smartside or fiber cement offer reasonable alternatives if architects still insist on clapboard siding. None of those things remotely affect the structural integrity of a modern well build house. I’ve remodeled countless older homes with sagging roofs, poor insulation, leaky windows and crumbling foundations. None of the things you mention are lies. Many of these choices are consumer driven. How about you guys send us better designs with better material choices.
Amen. I thought the vid was going to make a point or give some onsite. Instead it was just how people decorate their houses which we've been doing forever. People love to romanticize old homes but forget about lead, asbestos, electric that can't charge an iPhone, poor insulation, basements that are swamps. The list is never ending.
Don't you love how This Old House tends to replace or even add a lot of "gingerbread" and doodads to make the house more "interesting," most all of which require frequent maintenance and repainting? Then there are the multiple gables, each with two nice valleys just begging to eventually leak.
It's a massive shame, but vinyl siding is a good choice for cladding mass-produced homes. Looks like shit, but performed very very well. If I were to describe the ideal siding material it would be a non-permeable, positively lapped, modular material that doesn't degrade in the weather, and has a vented airspace behind it. That describes commercial grade metal paneling, cement board cladding with a rain screen, and vinyl siding. In my work we warranty all types of building envelope work, and the vinyl siding does not fail (barring extreme weather). Sucks that it looks so bad and is made of the material that is destroying the world.
Where I am at some of the areas that are close to the forest can not have wood or vinyl on the outside of the house. Too much of a risk of the building burning down if there is a fire.
@@sm3675 Love it! The original rain screen design. But it's not common up in British Columbia. More multi-family projects are using it, so it might raise the skill pool and rate of use.
Even though it was a brief mention during the ad read, I'm glad you mentioned the environmental impact of vinyl. America's overuse of vinyl building materials is HORRENDOUS for the environment. Vinyl is very polluting to manufacture, and it isn't economical to recycle, so it ends up in landfills. Vinyl siding and windows exposed to the sun begin to oxidize after a few years and turn into a powder, and on top of leaving the vinyl brittle and failure-prone, I don't even think the environmental consequences of the powder are being studied yet! Vinyl windows thermally expand and warp so much that they lose efficiency and mechanically fail in only a matter of a decade or two. It's hard to find a better choice for the environment than good old wood, and we absolutely need to be bringing real wood back into the mainstream.
I can show you plenty of homes from the 80s and 90s with vinyl siding and vinyl clad exterior windows that are doing just fine with an occasional power wash. One of the oddest ways to sell the anti-vinyl crusade is that "everything fails within a decade" Yea, sorry, but no it doesn't.
@@kerrykerry5778 That doesn't make the manufacture and disposal of vinyl any less awful for the environment, and doesn't change the fact that vinyl degrades through oxidation, and that most vinyl windows mechanically fail in less than 20 years. I'm sure there's a climate aspect to it, and maybe vinyl lasts longer in the region that you're in. But the oxidation properties and short lifespan of vinyl building products are well known and fairly well documented (with further research needed). As a child in 2006 my family moved into a new-build house with vinyl siding, and by the time we moved out in 2014 it was already developing powder. I was becoming interested in architecture and construction around that time and had started to take notice of the house's shortcomings. And more recently, my previous rental apartment had approximately 15-year-old vinyl replacement windows that were warped and chipping and the landlord re-replaced them while I was living there. It's safe to say they're sitting in a landfill somewhere now. Wasteful as hell. I do building surveying professionally for Section 106 and historic district projects, and I've seen plenty of examples of wood and vinyl siding. I can say with the utmost certainty that wood siding is a much, much more durable and healthy choice for buildings.
This is an amazing video on how not to build a modern home. I recently watched the documentary 'Blue Vinyl' about plastic siding and we are literally building ourselves plastic toy homes that we actually live in with no sense of irony.
It's hardly a new phenomenon, centuries ago we built in a style reminiscent of roman classical architecture, just without the native environment materials or technologies that informed that architecture, we also did it in stark whites and bare marble or stone because that's whe roman classical architecture looks like to us, not the decorated many colored reality of the era.
@@DrewLSsixThe issue is all those previous style reminiscent of the past at least somewhere payed homage to the original in more than just appearance. They used high quality, long lasting material. Today these plastic toy homes only have a thin veneer of what it tries to represent. They also are far worse for the environment
@@DrewLSsix I also think it comes from some skepticism of anything looking more honest. Housing being wrapped in plastic is not true... anywhere else! Like, yes, homes made of brick and mortar can look "poor" and plain, but they are honest. There really isn't much to it other than paint. I have been told that it is because brick and mortar in the US is absurdly expensive, but then the issue isn't on the material, it is on the systemic issues that raise the cost of everything; poor countries still have homes made of brick and mortar. America homes sometimes sound so artificial. No paint, just wallpaper. No brick, just foam. No concrete, just wood and drywall. Nothing can get wet, so its covered with plastic sheets. Every wall, floor and ceiling is texturized with vynil and PVC. What is this absurdity?
@@NothingXemnasAll the substitutes you mentioned can be mass manufactured remotely in some factory and delivered on site with easier installation so less manpower that's why.
This video smells elitism.. Cool guy with a hipster moustache with a design and arts degree from NYU comes to town to shit on your cheap ass houses.. Losers!
People who complain about this affordable, cute houses should be forced to live in a soviet style apartment block in Belarus for 5 years.. Disgusting coastal elitists
Asphalt shingles are a similar example to vinyl siding. It’s interesting how we hold onto the “look” of items and are so resistant to any change. Another issue with these changes are that we affect the burn time and toxicity of a house fire. With so many fast to melt building materials, compared to plaster walls and wood exterior, the burn rate can be much quicker and the smoke deadlier.
Now imagine if people felt a serious and deeper connection with their homes, because they were actually involved in the process of making it. This is the promise of vernacular architecture and it's something we've lost in the past 150 years.
I would love the return of custom build homes. If you buy a new home in a subdivision you can pick and choose options from the builder's catalog but your house will generally look the same as the other 50+ in the subdivision. Only way to really get a custom home now is to buy a dirt plot outright and do the whole process through a custom home builder, even involving an architect if it's really fancy. First home buyers just don't have that type of knowledge, money, or time to do that. And there's not enough land to put everyone on a new plot of land for their next house.
often the buyers are involved in decisions that make it worse. budgets don't allow proper use of stone veneer so the just stick it on at random. land shape or postion mean windows and balconies are used wrong fitting into an ideal vision means forcing elements that don't belong. buyers without knowledge, led by sales people without knowledge, sending demands to construction teams who don't have a voice to fix it. its about to get worse as governments panic build.
The problem is if you remove these decorative items, you end up with the bland boxes punched with window holes that are peppering our suburbs as cheap apartment complexes. No character whatsoever. Depressing. Prison-like. These elements provide nostalgia, joy, comfort, playfulness, etc.
Funnily enough, I feel exactly the opposite. All I can see is how fake and vain it all is. I think it'd be better if we took pride in our new materials and construction abilities and showed them off for what they are instead of shamefully pretending we never left the 20th century.
These just make them look like plastic doll houses instead though. The siding and false stonework (provided it's made with stone and not molded plastic) is fine, but the rest is just tacky. I've never seen a false fireplace that looked good and, unless it's actually burning gas, it isn't as satisfying without the direct heat source.
What gets me is that they don't *need* to be decorative items. Shutters are still useful today, in many places arguably more so than in the past, due to climate change! But instead of building shutters that actually work, people build imitations that just _look_ like shutters and provide none of the functionality...
The problem is that most of the modern processes and materials used in home building are inherently not beautiful. Thus, these modern materials and processes have to be conformed to things we view as inherently beautiful.
Maybe I missed it, but what solution is this video pointing to, what's the argument? Sure I get features that are natural and not just decoration are the way to go, but what then? Live in modern homes free from any ornamentation that is not functional? Only build houses with traditional building materials that are purely functional? Build modern homes with no ornamentation made to look traditional?
Totally agree. I love the ornamentation. It allows the homes to look different without spending a fortune. Most of our existence is superficial and fake. Hair, nails, eyelashes, etc…
I think it's just garnered a bunch of complainers. But it was interesting, if relatively useless, information, just like the items described. Who's gonna build houses differently? Far as i know companies bid for huge areas of land and bid for builders, then people buy that.
Yeah I got the same feeling - kind of anti-climatic ending. Yea I hate the fake stuff, and agree there's a lot of cringe out there - but there are ways to embellish homes in a way that is tasteful and not overly ornate. In fact that skill is what keeps me in business as a designer - how to 'get your house right' so to speak. I used to be obsessed with the whole 'materials must be shown as their real thing and never should be embellished' dogma but then I realized all you could build was ugly cheap modern buildings that were just plain and uninspiring. There is something to be said for classically composed and detailed buildings, and something inhuman about modernism. Form follows function is somewhat of a dead philosophy - in the extreme it produces things like a Pizza Hut, which is so purpose built that once the business goes bankrupt the building in unsuitable for anything else and must be torn down. Contrast that with a three-story building in the old downtown, with a simple facade with three windows on each floor, a storefront below... this building can be many different functions and can be adapted to many things over the years. Anyway I could go on but there's a lot more to the conversation than this...
Surprisingly to me our family's houses vinyl has survived multiple hurricanes and hailstorms. Only after hurricane Irene did we have to replace a few pieces closer to our foundation. I can believe that plastic coating a home is a dumb idea. But for our home at 20 years now I'm quite happy to see its lasted.
@@ShouPow It really comes down to the quality, you can have good vinyl siding that lasts 20+ years and you can have vinyl siding that fails in 5. It really is a you get what you pay for.
Vinyl Siding is an entire type of siding with hundreds of different options, costs, etc Higher end Vinyl siding is far better than any wood siding and can be just as durable as metal. If you’re going to get the cheap vinyl it’s going to fail, no different than if you got cheap wood or cheap pig metal.
I worked at Sherwin Williams when I was younger and more than once someone came in to complain that their vinyl siding or shutters curled up and fell off their house after I warned them not to paint it a very dark color.
I live in a very humid, hot area in SC, the best material for houses here is concrete blocks, the problem with that is that a lot of small old houses were block because they were cheap at the time, and people consider them for the poor, meaning a stick built vinyl clad home makes southerners feel like they are moving up.
The siding that you showed at first was clapboard siding, albeit made out of cement and wood fiber, but it lasts well and holds paint far longer and better than wood siding.
I grew up in a brick Greek Revival house in NYC, built in 1831. The house certainly had its quirks, and it was unusual for Manhattan in that it was free-standing, so we had windows on the sides of the house, which most NYC houses of the period did not. The interior had been altered quite a bit, with a kitchen addition along with bathrooms, servants' rooms in the attic (since converted into a separate apartment), indoor plumbing, etc, but enough of the original interior detail and even some furniture remained to get that 19th century sense of dignity and proportion. Our dining room table was Swiss modern surrounded by Empire-style gondola chairs. It worked! Because of this, I developed a love of old buildings that remains with me to this day, over 60 years later. For the same reason, I strongly dislike typical American suburban houses, such as those you show in the video, with their fake clapboards or half-timbering, faux-stone finishes, shutters that don't shutter, etc. The old-school modernist architects had it right, in this respect. Let buildings be what they're going to be. Let the materials appear to be what they are. Include traditional forms and materials if they function as they always have. Pitched roofs are still good for shedding snow and rain water. Working window shutters still help keep the interior cool and private, even if you have air conditioning. But don't be afraid to be frankly modern either. I love Frank Lloyd Wright's Usonian houses of the 1930s-50s. They still look modern to this day, and they are well-suited to modern lifestyles (except their kitchen are a bit pokey). In other words, it's possible to be traditional and adventurous. We don't have to settle for "little [or not-so-little] boxes on a hillside made with ticky-tacky."
Northern european here. Can someone tell me why the chimney is OUTSIDE THE HOUSE ?? A chimney inside the building releases heat to every floor. 5:18. this is just a waste of energy.
They're never used for heating, like ever. Just a cozy decoration. Central heating has been the main way of doing things in almost all US homes for well over 100 years afaik
It depends a lot of old homes actually have the chimney through the middle of the house I lived in a 1920s house for a while and it's chimney went through the middle. The chimney on the side is often because it imitates colonial style, the chimney was on the side because that was the fireplace used for cooking. During the summer you didn't want the heat from cooking in the house. So there often one in the middle for heating the home and one on the side for cooking food. However, since kitchens now are often the meeting place of homes, the kitchen/living room fireplace is what most people think of. Kitchens in the past were considered gross and pushed to the outside of homes, while as now they are more in the main space.
Houses in maritime western Europe very often have a gable end fireplace and chimney. But the farther east into Continental Europe/Russia or into Scandinavia the fireplace moves to center of home. Simple adaptations to the need for winter heat. Ireland, Wales,southern England and Atlantic France just don't have the long intense cold like someone in Slovakia or central Sweden. Earliest European settlers to America simply brought over the style of building they were used to. They were overwhelmingly from British Isles.
My sister's old house in Seattle was built in 1908 and was 2 stories plus a basement..the chimney is in the center of the home and had fireplace in the basement and 1st floor and 2nd floor.. So heat of the chimney structure radiated into about all rooms. Our Indiana used house we lived in had a fireplace in the basement and 1st floor and the chimney was in the center of the house built say 1963.
Where I live at you have to fight tooth and nail to get real wood approved for an exterior project. In certain areas, they just straight up refuse to approve ANY wood outside. This includes Class A, Wui approved, California certified wood products. I imagine a lot of wildfire areas that deal with Wui probably deal with the same problem.
What a great exposè on form and function! It is really a timely conversation given the cost of homes in my country. I think the cost of the 'bells and whistles' today fuels some form of minimalism.
I call these "Cul-de-sac", or "Code minimum" homes. There's a real of problem in the single family home industry where almost every new product is cheaper and faster, not better. Clients ask me why we need to spend $400/sf for construction, while they see new homes for sale for $200/sf INCLUDING the property. The banks also have a hard time discerning quality creating more issues for clients.
Agreed. People, especially bank people, have no idea what they’re looking at. Both the real thing and the plastic facade look the same when the house is turned over but the reality is that these plastic houses deteriorate and break down faster. They also suck the soul out of wherever they sit.
I have a wooden ruler with marketing on it of a window framing company that probably stopped existing before the space race (David Lupton's Sons Company) and I found catalogs of their products on the Internet Archive. They made window casings for industry and residential use. They made those lite & muntin window frames. I love seeing these on old buildings but whenever they're imitated now, it looks tacky, especially where the genuine article is broken and replaced with the new product. It's usually plastic strips glued onto the outside pane.
There's a house in my neighbourhood that has those fake stick-on muntins, and the adhesive has failed so you can see the dividers drooping. It looks terrible!
The worst thing is fake muntins on the inside only. From the outside you see a large expanse of glass with an unbroken glossy surface and some white strips on the inside. Fake muntins on the outside look fine when they're done properly.
People make choices based off of all sorts of needs and desires I find it disturbing that some would criticize others for making decisions simply because they don't like them
This inspires a philosophical question in my head that makes me cringe with how pretentious it sounds: How to build an organic world in a world where it's functionally unnecessary?
there would have to be a paradigm shift: a society that values external appearances will prefer plastic houses, perhaps a society where people have more self concept would have a society where each house has its perks and personality.. . the house as a character
There's something symbolic about leaning out of your window in the morning, getting a blast of fresh air, throwing back the shutters and greeting the world!
People like the look of older construction materials and methods, but don't want to pay for that kind of craftsmanship and they also don't want to pay for the regular maintenance and upkeep that these materials require. This is just the homebuilding industry responding to market demands. No one is being ripped off or lied to. You can still have all that old school stuff, but it's gonna cost a lot more to build and maintain.
Agreed. Like dam, let people have some shutters. I don’t see the big deal with fake shutters. They make the window look good, and maybe they don’t need actual shutters
Not just homes. So many "luxury" cars have silver plastic everywhere rather than real metal. That's part of the reason I had a custom car built for me. In my car, if it looks like metal, it's metal. If it looks like glass, it's glass. Others may be satisfied with fakery, but I'm not.
Honestly, as someone who had always lived in the ghetto I would much rather live in the suburbs where the biggest problem is the neighbor complaining about me not recycling or too loud of music rather than me getting robbed or shot at again
I’ve lived my entire 62 years in the suburbs of NYC, Chicago, and Dallas. It’s been wonderful. All great houses. In Connecticut (suburban NYC) we had 2 acre zoning so a home could not be built on less than 2 acres. It was lovely.
Quite simply, it's too expensive in most cases to build traditional styles as authentic in materials as possible, as it's labor intensive and natural materials are scarcer these days. Imagine building a Victorian style house using the same materials and craftsmanship as the originals, it would be thrice as pricey per square foot than conventional construction! In fact, even with modern materials and techniques of construction, building a Queen Anne Victorian house would be insanely expensive. Mainly because of the complex shape of the house's footprint, the detailing and the steeply sloping roof A lot of features common in the houses of the 19th century and earlier only have economic viability in limited areas. For example, basements and walk-up attics used to be near ubiquitous in middle class abodes, but nowadays, tack on another 20 to 30% to the construction cost, so they tend to only be added in the more northerly inland areas where the ground frost line is deep enough to necessitate a basement and where heavy frequent snowfall requires roofs to be steep.
My favorite examples of shutters was a house in my neighborhood that was built in a contemporary style and featured a number of shallow horizontal strip windows, probably in bedroom to provide a window above a bed. Someone decided to make the house look more traditional by adding shutters at both ends. Thus the house displayed four foot wide windows with tiny shutters.
Supplies were expensive and labor was cheap bc you basically built your house by yourself using the materials in your environment. Or the whole family would work together to build their house with tools from the local blacksmith. We’re not allowed to do that anymore without excessive bureaucracy.
Faking quality is how so many homes were and are being built post-WWII. A development might look nice initially but elements like vinyl siding quickly degrade and look terrible. For a short period I lived in a development where the siding on many of the houses was warping. Hardiplank might be more expensive initially, but it's a far superior material on many levels.
What you are describing is simply human nature. Nothing new - just new materials and updated stylistic preferences. George Washington's home was clad in wooden blocks painted white to look like marble and inside they also painted the wood fireplace surrounds to look like marble. The interior pine doors were painted to look like figured mahogany. Gold leaf has been applied to wood furniture and decretive features to give the appearance of solid gold since medieval times. Hell, cleopatra wore glass jewelry to emulate gemstones. Humans have always and will always find ways of taking less expensive materials and making them look like more expensive and desirable ones.
Attics are there for the hot air to have a place to go. That was the original purpose in Attika, the polis around Athens in Greece. We have also used them for low storage in every house we owned, meaning that we have installed retractable steps to the attic in each house where I was raised. It only takes a few days to install. :-)
It’s be interesting to see a house, or an entire suburb, of equivalent cost to the ones you showed but without all the “fake” elements. Would it look super modern? good/bad?
I’m 70 years old on a fixed income. I wish I could have real cedar shingles on my home, but that expense - and maintenance! - is not in the cards for me. Besides, I’m not getting on 40’ extension ladders anymore for painting. I make no apologies for having sided my home in vinyl siding. At some point, one has to balance several options and realities and select that which works for them.
Functionally, our houses today are much better than houses from 100 years ago and before. Also, structure and appearance are not coupled anymore. Regardless of how it is constructed, we can make it look like however we want. These 2 explains all, without using negative qualifiers like “fake” and “superficial”. These houses are good after all, and look nice. No issues with them. (This is NOT about how they cut corners to save money on flipped houses, that’s a different topic)
One way in which they are almost always less functional is that they are not readily repurposeable, if at all, and their lifespan will likely be much shorter than that of a poorly constructed 1920s bungalow. Almost every rancher/rambler with a basement can easily be made into two units, and so can most two-story houses with stairs on an exterior wall.
@@Michaelfatman-xo7gv You expect to not have electricity going forward? “Breathing house” just means you are spending a fortune on heating. And by the way, no. Modern houses have well designed insulation, without thermal bridges and cold corners, so they have no mold at all. Old houses have cold wall which attracts condensation, and you need constant draft to dry it. It is both uncomfortable to live in, and expensive to heat.
@@juzoli No I don't. Either because use will be minimalized by rising costs or infrastructure breaks. As for modern house design, what is on a blueprint does not transfer well to reality. Things that look good on paper become very expensive on site. Force grown pine is absolutely shit, weak . I've seen entire subdivisions that I've been part of building, destroyed by high winds...not even a tornado. Keep your new designs...by the time I moved in, the actual problems had been sorted out back in the fifties.
I agree all this fakery is depressing, but the video does not offer a single alternative solution. I suppose it implicitly says either buy an older home without any of this fakery (a dwindling supply, and naturally comes with its own set of problems) or build a new home that is essentially devoid of now-unnecessary features - essentially a painted box with a roof - but using only natural materials? Yes I’d love to be the weirdest house on the block and spend $500k for the privilege.
Now I'm curious if there are any successful home designs that DON'T imitate the comforting features of obsolete building techniques. It's sort of crazy how long we've had fireplaces.
I wish newer homes actually had walk up attics. Most of them just have pitched roofs for looks which can't be converted to liveable and/or useable space.
When you visit the US as a British person, the more modern houses feel uncanny and plastic. There's something you can't put your finger on which makes them feel flimsy. That said, we have our own problems with new build homes, usually to do with build quality, limited outdoor space and so on, but the houses are at least built from concrete blocks and brick.
I love this! My partner and I bought an 1900 farmhouse, in terrible condition, slowly over 12 years we have rehabilitated it with reclaimed material from old houses. It is solid and beautiful. And we are in our 70’s.
It would be nice if modern building styles really capitalized on the affordances of modern materials, leaning in to ornamentation and aesthetics made possible by what we use today, rather than badly mimicking styles and materials of the past.
I think you mean _contemporary_ building styles, not modern. Modern is a design style that ended in the 60’s. Everything after that is post-modern, which incorporates elements from the past to hit the nostalgia center of our brains. Well, everything except Brutalism…
I'm sorry if I fail to understand the point, but shouldn't we be happy people still make the effort to give homes a look that goes beyond a concrete cube? Who cares if things are made to make the home look sturdier than it actually is if the base design is solid enough? Craftsmanship is expensive and there aren't enough craftsmen anyway. Not everybody wants to spend the tens of thousands of dollars on "proper" embellishment when these options do the job just fine. Don't forget the vast majority of us only see these homes at a distance. Where I live in France almost all new houses constructions are souless concrete rectangles because people go for the least expensive option. I don't mind urbanisation when it's done tastefuly but what's happening here is completely ruining the place and I wish the small effort that's being put into what you're showing here was being made (though with local characteristics). It all feels like complaining that somebody got better after taking a placebo because they didn't have the real medication. The man or woman is better, who cares? I'd say let people be contempt with what they have. If you think something is lame just because it's not the real deal, my opinion would be that you're the one actively ruining it for yourself. PS: I mean no insult with this comment. It's just my opinion.
A lot of Europe went through that in the mid 20th century, dreary concrete apartment blocks that were brutally functional. Many have been knocked down, mainly because they were badly built, but also because they were incredibly ugly.
@@Croz89 those "commie blocks" were maximum efficiency built by the government. People talk about affordable housing but when the solution is presented they recoil.
I care because these plastic piece of shit homes aren’t built to last more than 20 years and will go up in flames at a drop of a hat. Construction stands for an immense amount of emissions globally and we should be building homes that last 100 years minimum
Ornamentation isn't superficiality. Architecture is supposed to look good, not just cover our head. A perfect example of a house without unnecessary frills is a prison.
It always seemed so funny to see people boarding up windows in hurricane country with fake shutters on either side. You live 50 miles from the ocean in SC, build in shutters.
I have not lived in wood residences in 40 years. I prefer block. One home doesn't even have interior wood/steel framing and plaster board. All block including interior walls.
Are we sure this isn’t 1953? I mean, this is the kind of video that would have ben pushed on us back then - “Oh, our buildings don’t need these utilitarian/decorative features any more, so let’s just build square boxes!” And we’ve been working to undo this damage ever since.
I've always been fascinated by the bad design of a lot of the roofs in these McMansions. Unbelievably high ridges due to the oversized floorplan , quite often the space under the roof is not even used. Slants , gables going into eachother, angles of roof changing, I'm not surprised they're high maintenance and that they start leaking soon after they're built.
This video, to me at least, drives home how differently we build here in The Netherlands/Europe These "average" American houses would be so out of place here
@@Thim22Z7 I would love an European version of this. While it is true that we have a lot of old houses still standing - maybe less so in the Netherlands, but very true in France for example - current building practices aren't much less 'fake'. Rows of houses that look like one big house, brick facades that don't serve any structural purpose in high-rises.
@@MtJochem American homes are kind of a concentrate of the fake building practices we see popping up in recent construction. However it's nowhere near as bad here, even though things obviously haven't been progressing in the "right direction". For instance fake wood/bricks/stone PVC hasn't really become popular siding. You'd be more likely to find real-but-not-structural siding in my experience (i.e. real bricks/stone laid on top of insulation on top of concrete). Or if going cheap then the ol' reliable crépis/plaster, but that's just a perfectly sensible modern solution that doesn't pretend to be something it isn't. Here in Belgium Eternit tiles and their non-asbestos-y equivalents were also ubiquitous on cheap housing until recently, and those don't really try to look like an antique building method either. Anyways new houses must be insulated so you can't get exposed structural bricks/stone and I would certainly prefer a brick siding to a PVC siding... Roller shutters have been the norm forever where I live so fake shutters are unheard of, new houses either have roller shutters or no shutters at all (which is really dumb on a south-facing facade, even if you have A/C that's just so energy inefficient). Broadly I'd say we kind of have the opposite problem to Americans... the default new detached house is often a featureless white/gray cube with gray windows. Which is a shame when timber frames and bricks siding isn't so much more expensive (when compared to all the other costs) but unfortunately with current housing prices corners are being cut everywhere.
They are built for very high fire standards and to be quick and cheap to repair. House fires caused by the same reasons as other countries are very low as electrical standards reduce the odds of electrical fires to practially nothing and the materials are mostly fire resistant. There is a lot of survivorship bias for older buildings and people forget about when the entire town burned to the ground 3 or 4 times before they got it right for the conditions. A lot of highly durable building materials don't work across a lot of the US like brick. Brick basically can't withstand even minor earthquakes but wooden structures built from wood to modern earthquake standards are practially immune to the shaking and would require ground seperation to be damaged at all.
Hear me out, instead of needing to buy cheap siding, we move the houses closer together to share a sound and fire proof demising wall to cut the amount of siding required in half!
@@roninnder If it's 250k to buy a townhome vs 300k for a house, i think there's a good market for people that don't want a huge lawn, and would like to save 50k
My Aunt's home in Mexico City is like that. The houses share side and back walls, but she has a small fenced front yard and her flower garden. The flat roof also gave her space for maid's quarters, pets and other uses. The car entrance was a fun play area.
the shutters not shutting have always pissed me off even as a little kid
😂 I feel ya.
They're literally called SHUTters! 🤣🤣🤣
Oh. I don't even think of them as closing. It's funny how after you've been exposed to a decoration long enough, you no longer expect It to behave like the thing it's imitating. Like when my friend had actual wood siding, it seems like vinyl from a distance.
Big same. And now as an adult, the fact that I might have to make my own just to have *shutters that will shut is infuriating.
Hahaha… me too!!!
You wouldn't believe the amount of fake attics I've built. Adding a small pitched roof with a window that can never be accessed from within the house is stupid. In fact I got a call to go build one tomorrow. Its idiotic
Yeah seriously! And the windows get painted black from the inside! It's ridiculous!
The US house-building industry is gable-crazy. It's second in ugliness only to that up-front gigantic garage design. That will date the house (and make it obsolete) the way Formstone and jalousie windows did.
I had no idea this was a thing. 😂
Yeah these windows or vents and similar locations often form the perfect entry point for burglars to get around alarm systems. That's almost never an alarm's contact on the fake window or vent in the attic. So if you have one of these now you know.
@jdrissel I'm a burglar, and business has been a little slow - thanks for the tip!
What's sad to me is when still-functional elements are removed in order to be stylish. Take awnings; many homes do without them and therefore are substantially hotter than they need to be.
Technology Connections has entered the chat.
@@amicaaranearum Wanted to comment something very similar! :D
And shutters! Fake shutters are pointless (& stooopidly trashy looking), but real shutters _are still useful!_
@@prophetzarquon I think in the age of abundant energy we willingly forgot how to build efficient homes. Shutters were meaningful. Awnings were meaningful. Porches were meaningful. And I'm just scratching the surface here, I guess.
@@prophetzarquon Functional shutters are still available in hurricane zones. But they definitely cost a lot more.
also US homebuilders seems to only put in effort on the side of the house that faces the street. the other 3 sides often like like school children drawings - rectangle for walls, triangle for roof, squares for windows.
It's all about being low cost. If a builder offered a home that was beautiful on all sides no middle class customer would buy it because of the extra cost. It's the same reason you see hideous SUVs cruising around all over the USA, because Americans don't want to pay for something that looks nice.
This is like when subdivisions put so much effort into the entrance.
Low key North Korea vibes, lol.
That's not new at all and actually makes sense. 19th century homes and buildings were built like that too most anywhere in the world.
Yes! Turn a corner, or drive down the street behind them and a decent looking house suddenly becomes a piece of garbage… just pvc siding and wonky windows.
I'm 66, I grew up mostly in Europe (father in the military). When we moved back to the US I was horrified by the amount of "fake" stuff in and on houses. Everything that was real and functional in Europe was fake and cheap in US homes. Fake shutters, fake fireplaces, fake wood, fake stone , fake tiles... It was actually stressful.
FAKE CIVILIZATION!!!!!
well that's b/c those houses in Europe have been there for hundreds of years, while the US, many areas are relatively new to development.
@@itsgoingtobeok-justbreathe4808 Even new houses in Europe aren't this fake. I've never seen fake shutters in Germany for example. Or a fake attic.
@@schrodingerskatze4308 yeah I've never seen half of this fake stuff in Germany even in brand new houses. It's an American thing.
Europe embraced modernism as materials and building methods changed so the new materials and methods could be as they are, not pretend to be the past. North America got lost in post modernism (and the ever worsening copies of early post modernist designs). That conspires with the dreadful urban form and an irreconcilable simultaneous yearning for inexpensive and craft driven materials.
>shutters
>they don't shut
21st century in a nut shell
I have much hatred for shutters that don't shut. Lol
I'm currently rebuilding my house and I'm planning on making my own shutters that actually shut.
"CURB APPEAL" *jazzhands
i dream of real shutters 🥰
I have shutters and they are great both in summer and in winter, and best if you really want to sleep in. I don't get this one, all you need is a hinge and it adds so much more.
On the other hand, I don't have AC while it gets in the 110's here, gotta love and hate Europe.
@@MtJochem yeah, I really don't understand why real shutters are never used here in the states. Maybe a building code thing?
It would seem useful in the summer for reducing cooling costs and also certain parts of the states that have severe storms.
Note to viewers: Stewart's mustache is fake. 100% PVC and muskrat fur, attached with deck screws and bituthane. I'm best friends with his mustache outfitter.
His glasses may also be fake.
Lol
I'm scandalized!
Hair plugs.
I was convinced it had an important structural function. What else is keeping his face together?
sadder is that the majority of builders do this fakery badly.
stone in gable ends, columns that end at the top of a foundation, larger 2nd floor windows over tiny windows on the main.... all bad and done often , creating horrble streetscapes.
i worked decades in tract building and regret every compromise.
Exactly. The absolute worst is clapboard on exterior, free-standing structural columns, e.g., gas station roofs, etc.
I lived 5 years in Michigan. I thought our 80's communist buildings were bad ... then I saw your twig houses and their bills. Lunacy.
@@everydazetuesday You said it, man! There’s a lotta badly built housing out there.
@@HisameArtworkI live rurally (USA), I'm from Europe. I went from artistic stone and brick, to vinyl and brick veneer, often together.
Brick veneer to me, is as obvious and attractive as a pig with lipstick on.
I can appreciate vinyl for its hideous utilitarianism, it's unsightly 🤮, but honest.
Real problem imho, when there's real brick, bricklayers here are so uninspired, there's not one touch of artistry, it's like a blank canvas on a white wall.
@@pineapple8992 Sorry, but no.. the ABSOLUTE worst is river rock/pebbles on 4" posts.. also abortions like the proportional holocaust of that house masquerading as a mansion at 11:29..
Maybe do an opposite video essay: what is the most authentic well-built house for a particular region?
American four square in the Midwest
I'd like to see that, too. Instead of unnecessary and out-of-place embellishments, what efficiencies could that money be better spent on? And how could it create a new definition of "attractive."
@jrdoj well all the efficiency in a net zero home is internal and not seen. Whatever you see from the outside is just like clothes on a bodybuilder.
His video is pointless. Exterior features that fakes it DO NOT detract from the efficiency.
@@jrdoj Architects have been giving us a new definition of "attractive" for decades, and our world is now full of ugly-ass buildings.
All wood houses in Florida... with an open floor plan. Strong and ready for any huge storm or hurricane.
The vinyl siding, fake stone, wood frame, fake shutters, etc. doesn't even bother me.... it's the fact that they charge +$400k for a house using all this fake and cheap stuff.
I was thrilled to find out my first home, an 1910s era two-family had shutters that *actually shut*. I made a video of myself closing them once just for fun.
Ha ha ! :)
Wonderful🤗 Glad you could get such a great house🌈
The fact that you only shut them once, and you only did it "for fun," demonstrates the reason why nobody bothers to put real shutters on homes anymore.
Our former family home had a great and working fireplace.
So much fun in the winter evenings, using the bellows to fan the flames.
And for cleaning it my father just called a chimney sweeper.
Don't know if they are still around nowadays though.
and never closed them again, I'm guessing?
The thing that disturbs me the most is that the houses are too big - and especially too big for the plot. There is no gardening or interesting outdoor activities happening on such cramped spaces. No wonder the residents don't connect with the place. Suburbs like this are ultra boring. This is environmental damage in large scale.
I’d add that homes are built without being able to easily change the interior layout, meaning they are much more expensive to remodel (more material waste) and have a high amount of wasted space.
i tell my kids those suburbs are the future ghettos. streets like canyons of giant garages, with poorly built, badly planned monstrosities behind them.
hate the suburbs
american houses are the perfect size for the three to four families that have to co-live in them in order to be able to afford housing
Yes I always think if you're going to be 1' away from your neighbours and have no yard, it might as well be an apartment which is a much more efficient use of space, and cheaper.
Some are, others have bigger plots to compensate. The worst I saw was in New Zealand, there were bungalows with a 1 metre strip of lawn around them on a new development. Why they couldn't put an extra floor on top and give everyone a decent garden I don't know.
I live in a 1889 American Victorian house in the west coast, and I became obsessed with the building styles of the time period. Amusingly, your video also applies to the same homes built before the Arts and Crafts movement. Industrialization and the lumber mill meant that ornate embellishments can be made en masse and shipped across the country, so skilled woodworkers didn't need to be on-site to build the house. Dental moldings, ornate newel posts, scalloping, stick style, corbels, intricate scrollwork, and ridiculous paint colors were barfed all over these houses. People faked excessive opulence because it was cheap to do it now. Arts and Crafts became a reaction to that and tried to bring things back to intentional woodworking.
I love flipping through the 1897 Sears, Roebuck & Co. Catalogue. Shopping at home and having it delivered? What an amazing concept.
Great point. We have been "faking" it for longer than we have had cheap plastic siding.
Other examples: rustications on 19th and 20th century stone and brick buildings, or cast figurines and gargoyles on early sky scrapers.
Good comment.
I live in a house that was built in the 1920s, in a neighborhood that was established between 1850 and 1880 or so. My house is effectively a foursquare, but they put a lot of Victorian embellishments on it to, I presume, better fit in with other houses in the neighborhood.
Oh, and the siding is all wood clapboard and cedar shingles - vinyl just wouldn't look right on it.
I would much rather have mass produced details made of real wood/quality materials than cheap plastic versions.
It does make me wonder though, in 100 years from now are we going to be lamenting the loss of the “craftsmanship” of houses built today?
@@noleftturnunstoned Bring back the gargoyles. And batman
@@TwistedCyclonix I can see a world where all building materials are made of extruded composites and resins with foam sheets for structure and we'll miss the good ol' days of 2x4s and nails.
We’re finishing building our own house. It’s “not too big” at 1800 sq ft and we’ve done about 80% of the labor so we could save on that cost and afford really good materials … we overbuilt and did things like used all plywood instead of osb, rockwool insulation with upper floor ceiling r-42 (adding a reflective heat barrier added even more and we designed for no attic … we did high ceilings and loft spaces within the second floor instead), real hardwood instead of lvp, James Hardie siding, heavy duty framing, etc … it makes a huge difference in how the house feels and functions. I see tons of houses going up that are built super fast and to the very minimum of code and they look like they’ll be lucky to last 15 years … starting at $500k.
We need to build things to last and not be more than we need. The Not So Big House book is an excellent reference for that philosophy.
Sounds great. I would like to see that quality over quantity with added adaptations to inviorment of the build for efficiency, durability and comfort. I hope changes in climate will inspire new creativity, problem solving and affordability.
My house was built in 1871 of real wood and stone. The faceless of everything today is disgusting. Throw away houses for a throw away society.
Golden comment!!
Yeah my parents 1920 house I grew up in will never leaving my family!! Houses today are soulless
Fake shutters are heinous
Yes. Yes, they are.
Boost your curb appeal 🤢fuck that
Fake shutters the wrong size are doubly heinous.
But the house looks worse if it doesn't have them
Then make them real and enjoy the many benefits: lower cooling costs in summer, lower heating costs in winter, and added protection in storms.@@FreedomTalkMedia
Two things I absolutely HATE are uninsulated attics, and watertanks in attics. All the dog-shit home builders here in Tennessee are all evil for doing these things.
In the south it's also common to put the hvac unit and ducts in the hot attic of all places. Makes no sense and very few builders seem to even question this practice
Where else do you put the water tank? Many appliances aren't rated for full mains pressure, so having a reservoir feeding from a fixed, low height is assumed for these to be installed. Also extremely useful when there is an issue with the water supply as the toilets still work until the attic tank empties.
Unconditioned attics (the insulation is beneath the floor) are _much_ cheaper and easier to build than conditioned, liveable attics with complex rooflines and dormers everywhere. It's literally better to just build a second or third floor with full walls. Until you get to "Curb Appeal" and "HOA" and "Height Limits" and fakery; Some custom homes even install dormers facing a sealed-off attic in order to comply with the neighborhood aesthetic demands.
In the North, unconditioned attics with simple rooflines are also basically the only natural way to get proper roof venting - almost anything else causes problems, big or small, with ice damming.
@@peglorin my part of Texas the garage is the most common place for a water heater.
In Germany, they actually build out the attic into livable, well ventilated areas. In America, its a jungle gym of trusses littered with blown-in insulation so boxed in that its hotter than it is outside. That's what I hate.
I live in a townhouse complex that was built in the 70s. The were all originally built with vertical wooden siding painted with earthtones. Over the years, many of them had switched over to cream colored vinyl siding. I get why people did that, because in what is a relatively budget townhouse neighborhood, it is cheap and easier to maintain. That being said, I also think it is pretty ugly. It is why I have still kept the wooden siding on my house (with upgrades in material where appropriate), as well as the original color, which is one of the few green homes left in my neighborhood.
The wood siding also adds some extra strength, which is obviously a plus.
I spent a good portion of my childhood living in a house with deep red real cedar shingles for siding. It was beautiful. Recently drove by the house, and the cedar shingles had been replaced with fake vinyl clapboard siding. It was such a massive downgrade. Bummed me out.
The useless fake shutters is the one that's always gotten me. Shutters are so practical. How the he11 did we turn them into only decoration!
Because blinds exist. They're way more convenient. The "fake shutters" are actually functional, their function is to make the house look nice. You don't actually have to complain about stuff just cos it's different than it used to be.
@@wootsat Take a seat and stop being condescending because somebody doesn't share your dumb opinion.
This is why I did my new house’s exterior in just Flex Seal. It shows a level of practicality and strength.
Lol
Calm down Phil Swift
Added bonus: you can now use your house as a boat.
Basically what this stupid videos says. Don't make your house looks good because ITS FAKE. Cedar shake looks good but are inefficient and maintenance is high. Thus make your FaKe material looks like it. I don't see the issue
😂😂
I didn't know shutters in the US were fake!
Shutters (real ones) are still very much a thing in France. I often take the Eurostar to London and you can tell if you crossed the Channel by looking at houses, they're not as common in the UK.
My previous flat didn't even have curtains, I would open and close my shutters every day, which is symbolic to me.
I grew up in the US in a tiny 18th century cape house that had real shutters. The world is full of things that started out as functional but are retained now of aesthetic reasons, and it's not just the US.
It's not just the lack of shutters that is wrong with the windows on the island side of the channel The windows themselves with their oprimisation on minimising possible air flow are also just plain wrong.
On the other hand, I find it surprising that you wouldn't figure having made the crossing from the tunnel and darkness between the both sides...
The downside of that is that almost all windows in French homes open inwards, often depriving a room of space.
In Florida they are real, and don't look at all like New England style shutters.
Indoor plantation shutters are real.
Vinyl siding is to houses what chromed-plastic is to sports cars.
Not really. Watch his video about ACP's. Vinyl is like the siding version of that. Even the mimicking of lap siding serves a purpose- it allows for ease of application by creating a locking system
@@davidsorensen2808 Lapping is a functional water-shedding strategy. If not vinyl siding, then what? The thing is that all your alternatives are more expensive or more maintenance-intensive.
@@TrogdorBurnin8oraluminum. More expensive, kinda, but essentially maintenance free for eternity, and you aren’t stuck with that awful fake wood texture.
If you can find anyone to install it.
@@EyeMWing Funny thing, my neighbor has aluminum siding with an embossed wood grain. My vinyl siding is a smooth clapboard, no grain at all. There are choices.
@@EyeMWing They can wood-texture aluminum almost as easily as vinyl if they want; Or if there's a market somebody could easily sell vinyl without the texture; The texture costs little. With aluminum, it's more expensive (the huge thing), you have to paint it periodically (the big thing), and it dents easily (the small thing).
I've been living in my 140 y/o house for two years now and I already feel a connection to it. I just feel like it has a soul.
That's probably the resident ghost 👻
@Vandus-ds ooh spooky
@@Vandus-dsSo long as it’s a friendly ghost! 🤣
The visual aesthetics make sense to me. It's the same reason our phone apps still look like their older counterparts: the camera app is still a camera icon, the alarm app still uses an analog clock, etc. Comfort & Familiarity.
Florida construction worker here the difference is 500,000 For the superficial or million 1/2 if you want the real brick and stone
Omg people might have to live in smaller homes that are a size they can afford. Colorado builder here.
@@cliffdweller9618 I would rather have a small home with bricks then this.
@@cliffdweller9618 I would rather live in a smaller home.
😱😱
Yeah most people can’t even afford to buy this shit anymore. Are we all supposed to find a cool million for materials? I live in a small home built in the 50’s and would love to upgrade some things but there is no way I can afford it.
I find the shutter piece both interesting and sad as the function that real shutters provide could potentially help with today's changing climate and a builder's poor window placement in a suburb.
I would be interested in knowing more about modern designs that are not faux traditional. If a person wanted a new home with all of the comforts and efficiencies but not the fakery what would they chose? Are there any mainstream builders bucking the trend of plastic shutters, fake chimneys, and stone veneer?
Just ask them, its rarely the lack of knowledge but the willingness of the customer to pay for it
find a custom builder with heritage experience. ask why they choose elements that way. do not build to building code minimums.... choose the appropriate methods for your location.
the right builder is the most important choice.
educate yourself as best you can. you get the final say and can make or break your project.
Usually comes down to budget or availability of craftsmen. A wood framed house with brick exterior is still a solid construction typology. Most savvy home buyers will pursue a brick exterior home over a vinyl siding home. Otherwise, building holistically with stone, CMU or concrete just isn’t as common in the US. 3D printed mortar homes is the next big promise of the home building industry, but it’s currently plagued with technical issues that make it not desirable.
brick facade is original fake@@StephenCoorlas
Sometimes building techniques change in a way that it is no longer possible to effectively use some finishes. Older construction was designed without added insulation aside from sheer mass, and to effectively release moisture to prevent mold and rot. Because of the requirement for interior barriers and insulation that are not permeable by water, many exterior finishes like stucco, brick, and wood that need to "breathe" in order to effectively release moisture over the long term are very not compatible with current general building practices. You can see the exterior effects of this in action on the surface of old buildings with soft brick that has been painted with acrylic paint. The face of the brick eventually flakes off with a freeze/thaw cycle because the layer of paint (a plastic film) blocks it from releasing any infiltrated moisture. On the inside, if you wrap the outside of the walls in plastic, and then breathe and bathe inside, water vapor can't escape the way it was designed to slowly through the walls, so it condenses on windows and inside the walls, causing sometimes invisible damage over time. Continuous venting and other methods can help, but it's an ongoing and serious issue!
I will use this list as thing not to install in my future home.
Moving from Europe to the us 10 years ago, I’m still bothered to this day by the lack of shutters.
Shutters are absolutely essentials. They block the lights , I love dark rooms at night. In summer they greatly reduce the need for AC. They also protect the house from intrusions. Real wooden shutters especially on the first floor make it very hard for people to break in easily
Well, we buy insulated blackout drapes now to keep out the light, and to insulate them.
Inside shutters or outside?
@@iamhis5580 outside shutters. Can be wood and new European build (at least in France) all come with what they call here in the us “European rolling shutters” Google it. It’s so crucial and amazing and I’m sure it’s a missed business opportunity here. Also want to say in France 50% or more of the population lives in suburbs, individual homes built less than 30 years ago, very similar looking to the US except they make them with concrete. Also all have ac/ and floor heating. Usually I find their build way more durable than Us wooden home. Way more insulated from cold or heat, and outside noise as well.
We removed ours. The house was so dark. We have the highest level of tinting and room darkening drapes on the west and south. We are planning to grow a green wall on the south where there is only one windows. But the wooden shutters would have been very easy to break off.
Surprised you didn't touch on the use of foam in McMansions. Very common to make foam columns that look like they're made from a hard material like rock or marble.
Fakery is kind of a time honored tradition in building (old west facades, doors painted to look like mahogany, etc) but vinyl troubles me because my understanding is that it doesn't have a great lifespan. Even a fake feature should be built to last in a home.
Fakery can be seen in 300 year old manor houses in the UK. Rich people would design houses to look like medieval castles with crenellated roof lines and turrets, despite the fact they served no defensive purpose.
Vinyl is a garbage material, but it's main edge is being very cheap. Therefore even if it doesn't last people can just redo their siding if they have the right skill set. For people who don't have the skills to do their own siding though...I don't understand why people choose vinyl. The stuff is fragile.
Sure. Fake is no problem in itself. Low quality is.
biggest lie from the home building industry and construction industry in general is how much corners are cut on many projects. our roofing crew has showed up to homes that dident have good attic ventilation and then we have to replace the plywood because its rotted. a few times we have almost gotten hurt do to shitty framing or plywood that was straight up not nailed down and i once recall finding extra shingles left under the outer layer when we were tearing up a roof probably because the previous crew dident feel like getting rid of them properly. the worst part is that lots of this shit happens on new build houses, especially the shitty frame work. when a home is built well by people who dont cut corners it will last a lifetime regardless of the esthetic design. unfortunately this is not the case for the majority of homes made today because no one is holding the builders accountable.
No speaky ingleeesh
That is because neighborhoods in the usa are built by developers and then rarely change much instead of the decisions being made by individual property owners regarding how they want to use their land and what structures to have
@@coreymichaels9452 i work roofing and ive seen shitty framing and plywood installation on homes that were not part of a major project just as much as the ones that are
As I have gotten older and become a home owner, I've noticed my priorities have changed in what I strive for with my home. I'm less concerned with how it looks and care more about how it will perform, its efficency and usefulness.
I see homes with steep pitched roofs and think about how hard they are to replace. I see beautiful landscapping with lots of ornimental objects decorating a yard and think about how hard it will be to run a lawnmower and weed trimmer around each object.
I think it would be neat to see a video on what the most efficient, long lasting and easy to build home would look like.
For me it is just the opposite. When I was young I just needed a dry and warm place. When I got older I started to appreciate the unnecessary beauty of architecture. Beauty, freedom, play, fun, it is all about going beyond the necessary.
Live in a sea container sited on a paved parking lot. Zero maintenance or soul.
@@christopherzehnder Touché, my comment was under the assumption of wanting to have some standard ammenties in life. When looking at a home I now consider 2 bathrooms and a garage to be must have items. Exploring what features people would now consider escential would make for Interesting side topics within such a video I asked for.
The thing that prompted my comment were the details he provided on siding. My previous home had that plastic siding like what was shown. I had to pressure wash that siding annually to keep the mold off of it and there were several places that the siding became brittle from the direct sunlight and it had to be replaced. I now have a brick home and my brick home's exterior is mantenance free and insulates better from the weather. I wouldn't trade my brick for anything.
Steep roofs definitely serve a purpose if you are in an area that gets a lot of snow. If you've ever had to deal with ice dams, you appreciate a nice steep roof. As far as yards go. I'm working on killing all my grass, so no need to worry about maneuvering a mower around. Just native plants and raised bed gardens.
Don’t know how widespread these techniques are in the U.S., but I’m kind of mind-blown how different this is from how houses are built here in Norway. It’s like two completely different “products”.
I was a builder for 42 years and every home I built was designed by an architect (such as yourself). You guys are the ones who specified all these fake elements to compliment your designs. We got vinyl and aluminum siding because homeowners got sick of having to paint their house every five years or the old wood siding was rotting away. New products like LP Smartside or fiber cement offer reasonable alternatives if architects still insist on clapboard siding. None of those things remotely affect the structural integrity of a modern well build house. I’ve remodeled countless older homes with sagging roofs, poor insulation, leaky windows and crumbling foundations. None of the things you mention are lies. Many of these choices are consumer driven. How about you guys send us better designs with better material choices.
What an eccentric, cranky “nuh uh, you” response. Do you think he’s faulting home builders or even insinuating any of those things are innately wrong?
@@mabybeeThe title of the video clearly says it all
Amen. I thought the vid was going to make a point or give some onsite. Instead it was just how people decorate their houses which we've been doing forever. People love to romanticize old homes but forget about lead, asbestos, electric that can't charge an iPhone, poor insulation, basements that are swamps. The list is never ending.
@@mabybeeYes!! The title speaks for itself.
Don't you love how This Old House tends to replace or even add a lot of "gingerbread" and doodads to make the house more "interesting," most all of which require frequent maintenance and repainting? Then there are the multiple gables, each with two nice valleys just begging to eventually leak.
It's a massive shame, but vinyl siding is a good choice for cladding mass-produced homes. Looks like shit, but performed very very well. If I were to describe the ideal siding material it would be a non-permeable, positively lapped, modular material that doesn't degrade in the weather, and has a vented airspace behind it. That describes commercial grade metal paneling, cement board cladding with a rain screen, and vinyl siding.
In my work we warranty all types of building envelope work, and the vinyl siding does not fail (barring extreme weather). Sucks that it looks so bad and is made of the material that is destroying the world.
Where I am at some of the areas that are close to the forest can not have wood or vinyl on the outside of the house. Too much of a risk of the building burning down if there is a fire.
Vinyl siding looks bad sure, but it looks way better than the awful fake stucco EIFS siding used on most cookie cutter houses built in Florida.
@@Dipsoid Absolutely! EIFS is a nightmare up here in Canada.
What about brick?
@@sm3675 Love it! The original rain screen design. But it's not common up in British Columbia. More multi-family projects are using it, so it might raise the skill pool and rate of use.
Even though it was a brief mention during the ad read, I'm glad you mentioned the environmental impact of vinyl. America's overuse of vinyl building materials is HORRENDOUS for the environment. Vinyl is very polluting to manufacture, and it isn't economical to recycle, so it ends up in landfills. Vinyl siding and windows exposed to the sun begin to oxidize after a few years and turn into a powder, and on top of leaving the vinyl brittle and failure-prone, I don't even think the environmental consequences of the powder are being studied yet! Vinyl windows thermally expand and warp so much that they lose efficiency and mechanically fail in only a matter of a decade or two. It's hard to find a better choice for the environment than good old wood, and we absolutely need to be bringing real wood back into the mainstream.
I can show you plenty of homes from the 80s and 90s with vinyl siding and vinyl clad exterior windows that are doing just fine with an occasional power wash. One of the oddest ways to sell the anti-vinyl crusade is that "everything fails within a decade" Yea, sorry, but no it doesn't.
@@kerrykerry5778 That doesn't make the manufacture and disposal of vinyl any less awful for the environment, and doesn't change the fact that vinyl degrades through oxidation, and that most vinyl windows mechanically fail in less than 20 years.
I'm sure there's a climate aspect to it, and maybe vinyl lasts longer in the region that you're in. But the oxidation properties and short lifespan of vinyl building products are well known and fairly well documented (with further research needed).
As a child in 2006 my family moved into a new-build house with vinyl siding, and by the time we moved out in 2014 it was already developing powder. I was becoming interested in architecture and construction around that time and had started to take notice of the house's shortcomings.
And more recently, my previous rental apartment had approximately 15-year-old vinyl replacement windows that were warped and chipping and the landlord re-replaced them while I was living there. It's safe to say they're sitting in a landfill somewhere now. Wasteful as hell.
I do building surveying professionally for Section 106 and historic district projects, and I've seen plenty of examples of wood and vinyl siding. I can say with the utmost certainty that wood siding is a much, much more durable and healthy choice for buildings.
This is an amazing video on how not to build a modern home. I recently watched the documentary 'Blue Vinyl' about plastic siding and we are literally building ourselves plastic toy homes that we actually live in with no sense of irony.
It's hardly a new phenomenon, centuries ago we built in a style reminiscent of roman classical architecture, just without the native environment materials or technologies that informed that architecture, we also did it in stark whites and bare marble or stone because that's whe roman classical architecture looks like to us, not the decorated many colored reality of the era.
can you link to the documentary?
@@DrewLSsixThe issue is all those previous style reminiscent of the past at least somewhere payed homage to the original in more than just appearance. They used high quality, long lasting material. Today these plastic toy homes only have a thin veneer of what it tries to represent. They also are far worse for the environment
@@DrewLSsix I also think it comes from some skepticism of anything looking more honest. Housing being wrapped in plastic is not true... anywhere else! Like, yes, homes made of brick and mortar can look "poor" and plain, but they are honest. There really isn't much to it other than paint. I have been told that it is because brick and mortar in the US is absurdly expensive, but then the issue isn't on the material, it is on the systemic issues that raise the cost of everything; poor countries still have homes made of brick and mortar. America homes sometimes sound so artificial. No paint, just wallpaper. No brick, just foam. No concrete, just wood and drywall. Nothing can get wet, so its covered with plastic sheets. Every wall, floor and ceiling is texturized with vynil and PVC. What is this absurdity?
@@NothingXemnasAll the substitutes you mentioned can be mass manufactured remotely in some factory and delivered on site with easier installation so less manpower that's why.
It's hard to justify hating these things when it's what is affordable to it's occupants.
This video smells elitism.. Cool guy with a hipster moustache with a design and arts degree from NYU comes to town to shit on your cheap ass houses.. Losers!
Indeed. It was either cheap vinyl or no siding at all for most home owners.
People who complain about this affordable, cute houses should be forced to live in a soviet style apartment block in Belarus for 5 years.. Disgusting coastal elitists
Asphalt shingles are a similar example to vinyl siding. It’s interesting how we hold onto the “look” of items and are so resistant to any change.
Another issue with these changes are that we affect the burn time and toxicity of a house fire. With so many fast to melt building materials, compared to plaster walls and wood exterior, the burn rate can be much quicker and the smoke deadlier.
Burning PVC makes Dioxin a terrible toxin.
Now imagine if people felt a serious and deeper connection with their homes, because they were actually involved in the process of making it. This is the promise of vernacular architecture and it's something we've lost in the past 150 years.
I would love the return of custom build homes. If you buy a new home in a subdivision you can pick and choose options from the builder's catalog but your house will generally look the same as the other 50+ in the subdivision. Only way to really get a custom home now is to buy a dirt plot outright and do the whole process through a custom home builder, even involving an architect if it's really fancy. First home buyers just don't have that type of knowledge, money, or time to do that. And there's not enough land to put everyone on a new plot of land for their next house.
often the buyers are involved in decisions that make it worse. budgets don't allow proper use of stone veneer so the just stick it on at random. land shape or postion mean windows and balconies are used wrong fitting into an ideal vision means forcing elements that don't belong.
buyers without knowledge, led by sales people without knowledge, sending demands to construction teams who don't have a voice to fix it.
its about to get worse as governments panic build.
@@matthewshultz8762I'm gay too buddy lol
The buyers often are involved, they just get carried along by the builder and told if they change anything it costs a fortune
@@aaff2999 I'm gay too buddy
The problem is if you remove these decorative items, you end up with the bland boxes punched with window holes that are peppering our suburbs as cheap apartment complexes. No character whatsoever. Depressing. Prison-like. These elements provide nostalgia, joy, comfort, playfulness, etc.
Funnily enough, I feel exactly the opposite. All I can see is how fake and vain it all is. I think it'd be better if we took pride in our new materials and construction abilities and showed them off for what they are instead of shamefully pretending we never left the 20th century.
These just make them look like plastic doll houses instead though. The siding and false stonework (provided it's made with stone and not molded plastic) is fine, but the rest is just tacky. I've never seen a false fireplace that looked good and, unless it's actually burning gas, it isn't as satisfying without the direct heat source.
What gets me is that they don't *need* to be decorative items. Shutters are still useful today, in many places arguably more so than in the past, due to climate change! But instead of building shutters that actually work, people build imitations that just _look_ like shutters and provide none of the functionality...
And people still have record high depression rates and suicides in suburbs. It's like putting makeup on a pig.
So let's make homes that actually look good instead of creating an IRL barbies dream house.
The problem is that most of the modern processes and materials used in home building are inherently not beautiful.
Thus, these modern materials and processes have to be conformed to things we view as inherently beautiful.
Vinyl siding doesn't look the greatest, but it's a godsend when it comes to replacing windows or doors.
Love the term "Structural Theater"! It's a perfect way to describe those "Tuscan Kitchens" that blighted suburban homes in the early 2000s.
Maybe I missed it, but what solution is this video pointing to, what's the argument? Sure I get features that are natural and not just decoration are the way to go, but what then? Live in modern homes free from any ornamentation that is not functional? Only build houses with traditional building materials that are purely functional? Build modern homes with no ornamentation made to look traditional?
I think he’s just trying to shed light on the phenomenon and attempts to explain why this is
Totally agree. I love the ornamentation. It allows the homes to look different without spending a fortune. Most of our existence is superficial and fake. Hair, nails, eyelashes, etc…
@@robertd..17Yes most of our existence is superficial and fake and it sucks dicks. Everything is inauthentic and I'm tired of it.
I think it's just garnered a bunch of complainers. But it was interesting, if relatively useless, information, just like the items described.
Who's gonna build houses differently? Far as i know companies bid for huge areas of land and bid for builders, then people buy that.
Yeah I got the same feeling - kind of anti-climatic ending. Yea I hate the fake stuff, and agree there's a lot of cringe out there - but there are ways to embellish homes in a way that is tasteful and not overly ornate. In fact that skill is what keeps me in business as a designer - how to 'get your house right' so to speak.
I used to be obsessed with the whole 'materials must be shown as their real thing and never should be embellished' dogma but then I realized all you could build was ugly cheap modern buildings that were just plain and uninspiring. There is something to be said for classically composed and detailed buildings, and something inhuman about modernism.
Form follows function is somewhat of a dead philosophy - in the extreme it produces things like a Pizza Hut, which is so purpose built that once the business goes bankrupt the building in unsuitable for anything else and must be torn down. Contrast that with a three-story building in the old downtown, with a simple facade with three windows on each floor, a storefront below... this building can be many different functions and can be adapted to many things over the years.
Anyway I could go on but there's a lot more to the conversation than this...
Vinyl siding . . . gets shredded in a hailstorm, and then replaced with more . . . you guessed it! Great video Stewart.
Surprisingly to me our family's houses vinyl has survived multiple hurricanes and hailstorms. Only after hurricane Irene did we have to replace a few pieces closer to our foundation.
I can believe that plastic coating a home is a dumb idea. But for our home at 20 years now I'm quite happy to see its lasted.
@@ShouPow It really comes down to the quality, you can have good vinyl siding that lasts 20+ years and you can have vinyl siding that fails in 5. It really is a you get what you pay for.
Vinyl Siding is an entire type of siding with hundreds of different options, costs, etc Higher end Vinyl siding is far better than any wood siding and can be just as durable as metal. If you’re going to get the cheap vinyl it’s going to fail, no different than if you got cheap wood or cheap pig metal.
I worked at Sherwin Williams when I was younger and more than once someone came in to complain that their vinyl siding or shutters curled up and fell off their house after I warned them not to paint it a very dark color.
I live in a very humid, hot area in SC, the best material for houses here is concrete blocks, the problem with that is that a lot of small old houses were block because they were cheap at the time, and people consider them for the poor, meaning a stick built vinyl clad home makes southerners feel like they are moving up.
The siding that you showed at first was clapboard siding, albeit made out of cement and wood fiber, but it lasts well and holds paint far longer and better than wood siding.
Growing up in USSR concrete apartment complex that was stained with black mold along each edge, these faux american houses aren’t bad at all.
I grew up in a brick Greek Revival house in NYC, built in 1831. The house certainly had its quirks, and it was unusual for Manhattan in that it was free-standing, so we had windows on the sides of the house, which most NYC houses of the period did not. The interior had been altered quite a bit, with a kitchen addition along with bathrooms, servants' rooms in the attic (since converted into a separate apartment), indoor plumbing, etc, but enough of the original interior detail and even some furniture remained to get that 19th century sense of dignity and proportion. Our dining room table was Swiss modern surrounded by Empire-style gondola chairs. It worked! Because of this, I developed a love of old buildings that remains with me to this day, over 60 years later.
For the same reason, I strongly dislike typical American suburban houses, such as those you show in the video, with their fake clapboards or half-timbering, faux-stone finishes, shutters that don't shutter, etc. The old-school modernist architects had it right, in this respect. Let buildings be what they're going to be. Let the materials appear to be what they are. Include traditional forms and materials if they function as they always have. Pitched roofs are still good for shedding snow and rain water. Working window shutters still help keep the interior cool and private, even if you have air conditioning. But don't be afraid to be frankly modern either. I love Frank Lloyd Wright's Usonian houses of the 1930s-50s. They still look modern to this day, and they are well-suited to modern lifestyles (except their kitchen are a bit pokey). In other words, it's possible to be traditional and adventurous. We don't have to settle for "little [or not-so-little] boxes on a hillside made with ticky-tacky."
Imagine living in a plastic box with a wood frame that looks like a plastic box with a wood frame.
Northern european here. Can someone tell me why the chimney is OUTSIDE THE HOUSE ??
A chimney inside the building releases heat to every floor. 5:18. this is just a waste of energy.
They're never used for heating, like ever. Just a cozy decoration. Central heating has been the main way of doing things in almost all US homes for well over 100 years afaik
Also people rarely use them lol
It depends a lot of old homes actually have the chimney through the middle of the house I lived in a 1920s house for a while and it's chimney went through the middle. The chimney on the side is often because it imitates colonial style, the chimney was on the side because that was the fireplace used for cooking. During the summer you didn't want the heat from cooking in the house. So there often one in the middle for heating the home and one on the side for cooking food. However, since kitchens now are often the meeting place of homes, the kitchen/living room fireplace is what most people think of. Kitchens in the past were considered gross and pushed to the outside of homes, while as now they are more in the main space.
Houses in maritime western Europe very often have a gable end fireplace and chimney. But the farther east into Continental Europe/Russia or into Scandinavia the fireplace moves to center of home.
Simple adaptations to the need for winter heat. Ireland, Wales,southern England and Atlantic France just don't have the long intense cold like someone in Slovakia or central Sweden.
Earliest European settlers to America simply brought over the style of building they were used to. They were overwhelmingly from British Isles.
My sister's old house in Seattle was built in 1908 and was 2 stories plus a basement..the chimney is in the center of the home and had fireplace in the basement and 1st floor and 2nd floor..
So heat of the chimney structure radiated into about all rooms.
Our Indiana used house we lived in had a fireplace in the basement and 1st floor and the chimney was in the center of the house built say 1963.
I’d love to see a follow-up video providing alternative, functional approach to building a modern-day home (vs just pointing out “what not to do”).
Then what would he sneer at? Isn’t that the point?
Where I live at you have to fight tooth and nail to get real wood approved for an exterior project. In certain areas, they just straight up refuse to approve ANY wood outside. This includes Class A, Wui approved, California certified wood products. I imagine a lot of wildfire areas that deal with Wui probably deal with the same problem.
What a great exposè on form and function! It is really a timely conversation given the cost of homes in my country. I think the cost of the 'bells and whistles' today fuels some form of minimalism.
I'm struggling to find a thesis here.
Your house is dog shit
I thought it was just me.
@@jasonfischer8946that makes three of us.
Is it not obvious?
2:17-2:34
I call these "Cul-de-sac", or "Code minimum" homes. There's a real of problem in the single family home industry where almost every new product is cheaper and faster, not better. Clients ask me why we need to spend $400/sf for construction, while they see new homes for sale for $200/sf INCLUDING the property. The banks also have a hard time discerning quality creating more issues for clients.
Agreed. People, especially bank people, have no idea what they’re looking at. Both the real thing and the plastic facade look the same when the house is turned over but the reality is that these plastic houses deteriorate and break down faster. They also suck the soul out of wherever they sit.
Banks care about you repaying your loans, not you (or your architect) winning style awards.
The concern is not about design, it’s about construction quality. No one deserves a house that is going to rot in 10 years.
200k??? Where? I live in an “affordable” area and 3 bedroom homes like these being built are starting at 400k.
@@GangstarComputerGod $200/sf, not $200k total.
I have a wooden ruler with marketing on it of a window framing company that probably stopped existing before the space race (David Lupton's Sons Company) and I found catalogs of their products on the Internet Archive. They made window casings for industry and residential use. They made those lite & muntin window frames. I love seeing these on old buildings but whenever they're imitated now, it looks tacky, especially where the genuine article is broken and replaced with the new product. It's usually plastic strips glued onto the outside pane.
There's a house in my neighbourhood that has those fake stick-on muntins, and the adhesive has failed so you can see the dividers drooping. It looks terrible!
@@ChristianBehnke I have some on my bedroom window 😭😂 they don't droop at the very least
@@mrmaniac3 I have real ones in the windows of our home, no drooping there either. Like most things in life, YMMV. 😉
The worst thing is fake muntins on the inside only. From the outside you see a large expanse of glass with an unbroken glossy surface and some white strips on the inside. Fake muntins on the outside look fine when they're done properly.
People make choices based off of all sorts of needs and desires I find it disturbing that some would criticize others for making decisions simply because they don't like them
Has this man ever showed where he lives? I’d love to hear him explain what he loves about his home. Assuming he loves his home.
The size of that road is absolutely absurd.
In the USA the towns are built for cars, not people
We call them "stroads" and they are terrible
This inspires a philosophical question in my head that makes me cringe with how pretentious it sounds: How to build an organic world in a world where it's functionally unnecessary?
there would have to be a paradigm shift: a society that values external appearances will prefer plastic houses, perhaps a society where people have more self concept would have a society where each house has its perks and personality.. . the house as a character
+1 to the "fake shutters are a disgrace" crowd
There's something symbolic about leaning out of your window in the morning, getting a blast of fresh air, throwing back the shutters and greeting the world!
People like the look of older construction materials and methods, but don't want to pay for that kind of craftsmanship and they also don't want to pay for the regular maintenance and upkeep that these materials require. This is just the homebuilding industry responding to market demands. No one is being ripped off or lied to. You can still have all that old school stuff, but it's gonna cost a lot more to build and maintain.
I... Don't see what the issue is? Yeah, it's largely purely decorative.
...ergo "fake"? Meh
Agreed. Like dam, let people have some shutters. I don’t see the big deal with fake shutters. They make the window look good, and maybe they don’t need actual shutters
@@jimmynuetronrblx8628just looks kind of silly when the shutters arent even big enough to cover the Windows
Not just homes. So many "luxury" cars have silver plastic everywhere rather than real metal.
That's part of the reason I had a custom car built for me. In my car, if it looks like metal, it's metal. If it looks like glass, it's glass. Others may be satisfied with fakery, but I'm not.
Because real chrome is a hella toxic process, and it rusts and stuff too.
If you have big money it really is inexcusable to have such an ugly house. The McMansion is irritating to me for exactly this reason.
Honestly, as someone who had always lived in the ghetto I would much rather live in the suburbs where the biggest problem is the neighbor complaining about me not recycling or too loud of music rather than me getting robbed or shot at again
I’ve lived my entire 62 years in the suburbs of NYC, Chicago, and Dallas. It’s been wonderful. All great houses. In Connecticut (suburban NYC) we had 2 acre zoning so a home could not be built on less than 2 acres. It was lovely.
Quite simply, it's too expensive in most cases to build traditional styles as authentic in materials as possible, as it's labor intensive and natural materials are scarcer these days. Imagine building a Victorian style house using the same materials and craftsmanship as the originals, it would be thrice as pricey per square foot than conventional construction! In fact, even with modern materials and techniques of construction, building a Queen Anne Victorian house would be insanely expensive. Mainly because of the complex shape of the house's footprint, the detailing and the steeply sloping roof
A lot of features common in the houses of the 19th century and earlier only have economic viability in limited areas. For example, basements and walk-up attics used to be near ubiquitous in middle class abodes, but nowadays, tack on another 20 to 30% to the construction cost, so they tend to only be added in the more northerly inland areas where the ground frost line is deep enough to necessitate a basement and where heavy frequent snowfall requires roofs to be steep.
You've attacked the sense of superiority of the snobs this channel attracts (trainload of them).
Bad man. Bad!
This sounds snarky and insulting. Maybe the narrator doesn't want it to come across that way, but this is what I hear.
My favorite examples of shutters was a house in my neighborhood that was built in a contemporary style and featured a number of shallow horizontal strip windows, probably in bedroom to provide a window above a bed. Someone decided to make the house look more traditional by adding shutters at both ends. Thus the house displayed four foot wide windows with tiny shutters.
“Form follows function” was never a feature of any but a very few contemporary houses. I’m surprised you bring it up at all.
Supplies were expensive and labor was cheap bc you basically built your house by yourself using the materials in your environment. Or the whole family would work together to build their house with tools from the local blacksmith. We’re not allowed to do that anymore without excessive bureaucracy.
So what would a more "authentic" home look like?
Like a London slum row house? "Authenticity" is the battle cry of the snob.
Faking quality is how so many homes were and are being built post-WWII. A development might look nice initially but elements like vinyl siding quickly degrade and look terrible. For a short period I lived in a development where the siding on many of the houses was warping. Hardiplank might be more expensive initially, but it's a far superior material on many levels.
What you are describing is simply human nature. Nothing new - just new materials and updated stylistic preferences. George Washington's home was clad in wooden blocks painted white to look like marble and inside they also painted the wood fireplace surrounds to look like marble. The interior pine doors were painted to look like figured mahogany. Gold leaf has been applied to wood furniture and decretive features to give the appearance of solid gold since medieval times. Hell, cleopatra wore glass jewelry to emulate gemstones. Humans have always and will always find ways of taking less expensive materials and making them look like more expensive and desirable ones.
Attics are there for the hot air to have a place to go. That was the original purpose in Attika, the polis around Athens in Greece. We have also used them for low storage in every house we owned, meaning that we have installed retractable steps to the attic in each house where I was raised. It only takes a few days to install. :-)
It’s be interesting to see a house, or an entire suburb, of equivalent cost to the ones you showed but without all the “fake” elements. Would it look super modern? good/bad?
*WHY WOULD YOU COVER YOUR HOUSE IN PLASTIC...???* the outgassing must be horrific
I’m 70 years old on a fixed income. I wish I could have real cedar shingles on my home, but that expense - and maintenance! - is not in the cards for me. Besides, I’m not getting on 40’ extension ladders anymore for painting. I make no apologies for having sided my home in vinyl siding. At some point, one has to balance several options and realities and select that which works for them.
Functionally, our houses today are much better than houses from 100 years ago and before.
Also, structure and appearance are not coupled anymore. Regardless of how it is constructed, we can make it look like however we want.
These 2 explains all, without using negative qualifiers like “fake” and “superficial”.
These houses are good after all, and look nice. No issues with them.
(This is NOT about how they cut corners to save money on flipped houses, that’s a different topic)
One way in which they are almost always less functional is that they are not readily repurposeable, if at all, and their lifespan will likely be much shorter than that of a poorly constructed 1920s bungalow.
Almost every rancher/rambler with a basement can easily be made into two units, and so can most two-story houses with stairs on an exterior wall.
Your modern house, without electricity, is a mold machine. It can't breathe. I made sure I bought a old house....1898.
@@Michaelfatman-xo7gv You expect to not have electricity going forward?
“Breathing house” just means you are spending a fortune on heating.
And by the way, no. Modern houses have well designed insulation, without thermal bridges and cold corners, so they have no mold at all. Old houses have cold wall which attracts condensation, and you need constant draft to dry it. It is both uncomfortable to live in, and expensive to heat.
@@juzoli No I don't. Either because use will be minimalized by rising costs or infrastructure breaks. As for modern house design, what is on a blueprint does not transfer well to reality. Things that look good on paper become very expensive on site. Force grown pine is absolutely shit, weak . I've seen entire subdivisions that I've been part of building, destroyed by high winds...not even a tornado. Keep your new designs...by the time I moved in, the actual problems had been sorted out back in the fifties.
I agree all this fakery is depressing, but the video does not offer a single alternative solution. I suppose it implicitly says either buy an older home without any of this fakery (a dwindling supply, and naturally comes with its own set of problems) or build a new home that is essentially devoid of now-unnecessary features - essentially a painted box with a roof - but using only natural materials? Yes I’d love to be the weirdest house on the block and spend $500k for the privilege.
Every passing year my jealously towards Europe‘s brick homes with natural insulation and quality materials and thoughtful design grows twice as big
Now I'm curious if there are any successful home designs that DON'T imitate the comforting features of obsolete building techniques. It's sort of crazy how long we've had fireplaces.
What they're imitating isn't obsolete. It works, and people know it works. That's why it's being imitated. Nobody LARPS as a loser.
I wish newer homes actually had walk up attics. Most of them just have pitched roofs for looks which can't be converted to liveable and/or useable space.
When you visit the US as a British person, the more modern houses feel uncanny and plastic. There's something you can't put your finger on which makes them feel flimsy. That said, we have our own problems with new build homes, usually to do with build quality, limited outdoor space and so on, but the houses are at least built from concrete blocks and brick.
Fantastic generalization…..
I love this! My partner and I bought an 1900 farmhouse, in terrible condition, slowly over 12 years we have rehabilitated it with reclaimed material from old houses. It is solid and beautiful. And we are in our 70’s.
"I'm a cynic...... Btw here's my sponsor use this code lmao"
Wow dude
It would be nice if modern building styles really capitalized on the affordances of modern materials, leaning in to ornamentation and aesthetics made possible by what we use today, rather than badly mimicking styles and materials of the past.
I think you mean _contemporary_ building styles, not modern. Modern is a design style that ended in the 60’s. Everything after that is post-modern, which incorporates elements from the past to hit the nostalgia center of our brains. Well, everything except Brutalism…
I'm sorry if I fail to understand the point, but shouldn't we be happy people still make the effort to give homes a look that goes beyond a concrete cube? Who cares if things are made to make the home look sturdier than it actually is if the base design is solid enough? Craftsmanship is expensive and there aren't enough craftsmen anyway. Not everybody wants to spend the tens of thousands of dollars on "proper" embellishment when these options do the job just fine. Don't forget the vast majority of us only see these homes at a distance.
Where I live in France almost all new houses constructions are souless concrete rectangles because people go for the least expensive option. I don't mind urbanisation when it's done tastefuly but what's happening here is completely ruining the place and I wish the small effort that's being put into what you're showing here was being made (though with local characteristics).
It all feels like complaining that somebody got better after taking a placebo because they didn't have the real medication. The man or woman is better, who cares?
I'd say let people be contempt with what they have. If you think something is lame just because it's not the real deal, my opinion would be that you're the one actively ruining it for yourself.
PS: I mean no insult with this comment. It's just my opinion.
A lot of Europe went through that in the mid 20th century, dreary concrete apartment blocks that were brutally functional. Many have been knocked down, mainly because they were badly built, but also because they were incredibly ugly.
while i could pick a bit at your comment i still like it anyway. sometimes things are 6 of one, a half dozen of the other.
@@Croz89 those "commie blocks" were maximum efficiency built by the government. People talk about affordable housing but when the solution is presented they recoil.
I care because these plastic piece of shit homes aren’t built to last more than 20 years and will go up in flames at a drop of a hat. Construction stands for an immense amount of emissions globally and we should be building homes that last 100 years minimum
Ornamentation isn't superficiality. Architecture is supposed to look good, not just cover our head. A perfect example of a house without unnecessary frills is a prison.
Sure, but that doesn't mean ornamentation needs to pretend to be something oldy worldy.
@@YourLocalGP the fact beauty seems oldy worldly is the failure of modernity, not ornamentation
@@Thanos_Kyriakopoulos It can also just be the failure of house builders to be creative
@@YourLocalGP the point exactly isn't to be creative all the time, but conservative.
Too bad that said ornamentation in the US looks like dogsh*t most of the time
Anyone who owns an actual nice house is probably pretty happy with contemporary building products that are superior to old ones.
It always seemed so funny to see people boarding up windows in hurricane country with fake shutters on either side. You live 50 miles from the ocean in SC, build in shutters.
Everyone has a shed with pieces of plywood with numbers spray painted on it to match a particular window on the house for when the storm comes.
I have not lived in wood residences in 40 years. I prefer block. One home doesn't even have interior wood/steel framing and plaster board. All block including interior walls.
The whole point of this video could have simply been stated as "homes nowadays are made cheaply compared to the past" and taken maybe 3 or 4 minutes.
Are we sure this isn’t 1953? I mean, this is the kind of video that would have ben pushed on us back then - “Oh, our buildings don’t need these utilitarian/decorative features any more, so let’s just build square boxes!” And we’ve been working to undo this damage ever since.
I've always been fascinated by the bad design of a lot of the roofs in these McMansions. Unbelievably high ridges due to the oversized floorplan , quite often the space under the roof is not even used. Slants , gables going into eachother, angles of roof changing, I'm not surprised they're high maintenance and that they start leaking soon after they're built.
american houses are insane
This video, to me at least, drives home how differently we build here in The Netherlands/Europe
These "average" American houses would be so out of place here
@@Thim22Z7 I would love an European version of this. While it is true that we have a lot of old houses still standing - maybe less so in the Netherlands, but very true in France for example - current building practices aren't much less 'fake'. Rows of houses that look like one big house, brick facades that don't serve any structural purpose in high-rises.
@@MtJochem American homes are kind of a concentrate of the fake building practices we see popping up in recent construction. However it's nowhere near as bad here, even though things obviously haven't been progressing in the "right direction".
For instance fake wood/bricks/stone PVC hasn't really become popular siding. You'd be more likely to find real-but-not-structural siding in my experience (i.e. real bricks/stone laid on top of insulation on top of concrete). Or if going cheap then the ol' reliable crépis/plaster, but that's just a perfectly sensible modern solution that doesn't pretend to be something it isn't. Here in Belgium Eternit tiles and their non-asbestos-y equivalents were also ubiquitous on cheap housing until recently, and those don't really try to look like an antique building method either. Anyways new houses must be insulated so you can't get exposed structural bricks/stone and I would certainly prefer a brick siding to a PVC siding... Roller shutters have been the norm forever where I live so fake shutters are unheard of, new houses either have roller shutters or no shutters at all (which is really dumb on a south-facing facade, even if you have A/C that's just so energy inefficient).
Broadly I'd say we kind of have the opposite problem to Americans... the default new detached house is often a featureless white/gray cube with gray windows. Which is a shame when timber frames and bricks siding isn't so much more expensive (when compared to all the other costs) but unfortunately with current housing prices corners are being cut everywhere.
They are built for very high fire standards and to be quick and cheap to repair. House fires caused by the same reasons as other countries are very low as electrical standards reduce the odds of electrical fires to practially nothing and the materials are mostly fire resistant.
There is a lot of survivorship bias for older buildings and people forget about when the entire town burned to the ground 3 or 4 times before they got it right for the conditions.
A lot of highly durable building materials don't work across a lot of the US like brick. Brick basically can't withstand even minor earthquakes but wooden structures built from wood to modern earthquake standards are practially immune to the shaking and would require ground seperation to be damaged at all.
@@MtJochemI agree, Europe has its fair share of generic identikit suburbs.
Hear me out, instead of needing to buy cheap siding, we move the houses closer together to share a sound and fire proof demising wall to cut the amount of siding required in half!
My man invented the townhome, which sucks compared to the freestanding house
@@roninnder If it's 250k to buy a townhome vs 300k for a house, i think there's a good market for people that don't want a huge lawn, and would like to save 50k
Or even go for a small but well made 10 flat building and make a massive community garden
Go big or go home. Let's glue all the buildings together and make a modern Kowloon Walled City.
My Aunt's home in Mexico City is like that. The houses share side and back walls, but she has a small fenced front yard and her flower garden. The flat roof also gave her space for maid's quarters, pets and other uses. The car entrance was a fun play area.