The ugly house thread... (colonial, houses, mansion, floor)

[Chango]

This is kind of embarrassing, but this *might* just explain why I have so much fun writing ugly house critiques... I actually paid money to live in this house a few years back:



We called it "The milk carton"... I wanted to sell advertising space on the side but my wife wouldn't have it.

Critics of domestic architecture would be quick to note that cars live here, but so did a dysfunctional family with a crazy father and a stinky dog.

IT wasn't all bad though. This house was so well designed that the tiny bedroom in front with the only front facade window (West facing to boot) was PERFECT for drying beef jerky during the summer time. To think the builder actually took that into consideration when designing the place! Everything else pretty much sucked, but life's problems have a way of working themselves out when there's plenty of jerky around.

The other great thing about it was that once your jerky was dry, you could take it to the car and drive off without ever letting your neighbors see how ashamed you were to live in such an ugly house!

Now the really embarrassing part. I sold it for around 40K more than I bought it. I'm ashamed to have participated and profited from crappy architecture, and tried to join a strange religious cult for a while in an attempt to do penitence for my sins... though I had trouble finding the garage to park my car so nobody would see me:



That's a fake bell tower too. I found out the hard way... don't ask.

[E.RR.Armoneaux]

I am loving this thread.


Heres some stuff I found:



Selfexplanatory.



I really hate Suburbia, The land of cooky cutters and soccer moms; Whats not to love.



Just ... Why? Cool looking, but what function does this hold.

Ok now this is something local, I am a native of New Orleans, architecturally and historical beautiful. Though post Katrina as people began to rebuild homes in historic areas they began to make me want to find the nearest gun shop and bell tower court and just go at it.

Now this is a typical New Orleans home:



Post Katrina, your house ( if heavily damaged ) looked like this:



Instead of redesigning the home, " HISTORICALLY " many people did this:



Mind you that home ^ would be surrounded by hundreds of these;



And this is still happening; It makes me very upset.



Its like the original architecture of the city is just ignored, when in fact its one of the reasons why millions a year come to this region of the world; for the culture, history, food and ARCHITECTURE. If these non educated amateur architects continue to build these foreign designs in our historic districts well there will be no more, Creole Cottages and Townhouses etc. just cooky cutters like every where else in Bland-Land America.

[fallingwater]

Cool! I had no idea an architecture forum was made. I think I would have attached to the house forum though.

[Chango]

Here's a couple more housing horror sets, being that we are one month closer to Halloween than we were last month!



I admit I would like it except for one tiny problem... living in that house would be a lot like doing this everyday:


Weird True & Freaky: Covered in Spiders - YouTube

....while singing praises to lord satan and thinking of terrible things to do to little children (like putting them in glass case and covering them with poisonous spiders for everyone's entertainment).

But I would pick the spider queen's coven over this any day:



This could be the bastion of the Blue Knight of Chutney, Arkansas. No, even Arkansans would take time away from their bible studies to tear this thing down if it ever appeared in their neighborhood.

It probably does keep fair maidens away from handsome prices though... being there is apparently no way in... or out, except maybe if the denizens flung themselves out of one of the various random home center "damaged goods sale" sourced windows in desperation. Mwuuhaaa!!!!

[archineer]

If you try to build a modern building in 'faux' historical style you will always end up with an ugly cartoon. Why people who want to preserve the past in aspic/think all new buildings should 'fit in' don't understand this is beyond me. Btw guys you should see some developer housing in the UK. We call it 'noddy housing' after the british kids cartoon noddy. The stuff you get in the US actually looks good by comparison.

[archineer]

And there is the ever ubiquitous UPC destroying historic buildings

[T. Damon]

Originally Posted by archineer

And there is the ever ubiquitous UPC destroying historic buildings

We are fist-to-cuffs with a related thread in the House forum, Why all the white vinyl windows?- I'm firmly in your corner.

[smartygurl]

I actually like the first house, but yeah, it would be more suited to not have been build right off of a roadway like that.

[tk-design]

The last photo is quite an eyesore. We have a house in our neighbourhood that looks like the architect was into pastries - it seriously looks like some1 put on some icing on it!

[archineer]

You see this type of thing everywhere in the UK - how uPVC strips a building of any charm it once had. The first building is particularly bad, I bet there is some high quality stonework under that pebbledash render just being ruined by damp. The neo classical garden 'wall' is just ludicrous, and the original wrought iron guttering has been replaced with you guessed it - uPVC!