A little detailing goes a long way

Whilst Kevin and I were in the US a few weeks ago, I became rather obsessed with the houses that we saw as we drove around. It was my second trip to Poplar Grove, Illinois, so I was curious to see how much the development that I saw last September had moved on. The results of the credit crunch were very evident: half-finished houses that looked like they were never going to be completed; finished homes standing empty; land marked out for foundations but remaining unbroken.

But whilst this was interesting, I was more curious about my own reactions to the houses we saw. Many of them left me cold - they were soulless, heartless, cookie-cutter developments with all the personality of, well, a brick. From the road, all we could see was the backs of the houses, which featured small windows, uniform cladding and a roof that looked like it had been made using the Photoshop ‘clone’ tool. Deeply unattractive.

When you drove into these housing estates, or ’subdivisions’ as they call them in the US, you could see that a little bit more effort had gone into making the front look attractive, usually through the use of false shutters, but the sides and back of the houses were extremely plain.

In this house, you can see that the central front windows have false shutters, but all the lesser windows are don’t. The backs of these houses were even worse - they looked just like giant shipping containers. This example also shows one of the other design tricks that American mass housing developers use to try and create an ‘interesting’ look: cutting up the roofline as much as possible. Personally, I think this is hideously messy and entirely unappealing.

Here’s another example of a house with a rather overdone roof featuring dormers and gables aplenty:

It’s got soulless windows too, and I think that the almost wrap-around porch is out of proportion and does nothing to enhance the look of the house.

Now, I’m not a design expert, so I spent a lot of time wondering why I hated these houses so much, trying to put my finger on what it was that made them so unappealing. Whilst I can generally articulate why I dislike houses in the UK, it was harder to figure out the problems in the US because the style of building over there is very different. I started taking photos, but a lot of the worst offenders were seen at a distance from a moving car. Here are a couple more examples for you:

Don’t be surprised by the size of these houses - they were a part of a subdivision attached to a small airport. The bit that looks like an oversized garage is, in fact, a light aircraft hanger. Nevertheless, this does highlight another ugly trend I noticed, which is the prominence given to the garage. Many of the normal houses I saw put their garages front and centre, giving them more prominence than even the front door. Ignore the size of this house, and just look at the placement of the garage compared to the front door:

I mean, I know that some people love their car, but is your garage really the most important part of your house?

Contrast this to some of the older houses the US has produced, which are truly lovely. This is the Baldpate Inn just outside of Estes Park, Colorado:

A house in Lake Geneva, Wisconsin:

And a farmhouse near Kev’s parents’ place, which possibly goes a bit far with the rearing stallion, but its simplicity proves that you don’t need to be big and flash to be nice:

So, what are the key things that I don’t like about the mass produced houses?

• Cladding. Ground to eaves cladding, of any sort but especially the cheap crap used in mass developments, is awful. It’s uniformity is entirely uninspiring.
• Windows without ornamentation. Some sort of ornamentation - and I don’t mean false shutters that don’t shut - makes a really big difference to how a house looks. Windowsills, surrounds, lintels - anything to add a bit of character. Small windows also put me off, because I really prefer lots of light in my house.
• Cut up rooflines. There’s nothing wrong with a simple roof that’s in proportion to the building it sits upon. There’s no need for multiple dormers, gable ends, faux porch roofs, or tiny ‘rooflets’ stuck all over the place. It doesn’t look nice, it just looks messy.
• Prominent garages. Garages are a utilitarian space, they are not the face you show to the world. Don’t make your garage door more noticeable than your front door.
• Boring colours. Modern American houses seem to only come in various shades of drab. I don’t know how people can come home every day to something so dreary.

It was definitely an educational trip in which I learnt a lot about what I do and don’t like. I also realised that I don’t need to go so far to learn about housing design. America has a lot of land, a lot of people, and a lot of opportunity to create awful housing development that suck the joy out of life by their very existence. The UK may have less land and fewer people, but by George we’ve produced some genuinely awful houses, particularly during post-War reconstruction. Modernism has a lot to answer for.

But I also learnt that I don’t need to focus my learning on books and magazines - there are plenty of examples I can look at just outside my front door. After all, I’m not trying to become an architect, I’m trying to figure out what I want and like in a house.