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Ignoring completely of course the staging, the slab doors including cabinetry and invisible/inset base detailing and no crown seems appropriate for the overall design theme but cannot really know from these two distorted images. The lighting however is completely unimaginative, the static ceiling planes and complete lack of windows in these images leads me to believe this is a flat in multi-unit building or a “modernization” of an older, simpler scale and inward designed house.
Typically these modern white boxes have very generous window or folding/sliding door walls and some vaulted ceiling areas if newly constructed. A modern minimalist style can be very well executed. A proper one would have grand and intimate spaces both indoors and out, quality construction and finishes to support its clean aesthetic with both simple and rich textures and decorated with old and new pieces of art and furniture. Done right it can work.
Baseboardless walls are anything but cheap looking.
Not that baseboards look cheap, the most opulent houses in the world have them, but going without baseboards requires premium building skills that don't come cheap.
the may not "be cheap" but to me, they absolutely yes do LOOK CHEAP. as in unfinished. as in a cheap closet. it doesn't matter how much "skill" it takes, to me it still looks slapdash and cheap.
I think anyone who lived as a young person in cheap crummy efficiency apartments wtih no baseboards, everything in one room, and everything painted stark white, will want their house to look like someplace grown-up successful people live, not like a large version of the 300 sq.ft. efficiency.
The modern styles that involve lots of wood (Lloyd Wright) are inviting. The pre-modern styles with ornate trim, or the restrained use of high quality trim, are inviting. The modern styles where surfaces are extremely plain but obviously of the highest quality and a great deal of serious design work went into the house (see Gropius House in Lincoln, Mass.) are inviting. At least to me, a house that looks like it was built in the cheapest possible corner-cutting way, and/or looks like it was decorated to mimic a Hampton Inn lobby, is not inviting to me. It looks like builders and designers are working together to flimflam the public, with the help of TeeVee and slick magazines, into buying a cheaply built tract house box of drywall, and believing it's something special.
Ever watch the trim carpenters in one of these new houses? See how many tubes of painter's caulk they go through? See, if you paint all the trim you can just pooky it up and paint over it and the homeowner won't notice the crappy miter joints and copings till the house shifts a bit or the caulk shrinks. If you have stained and varnished wood, you've actually got to make good, accurate joints. Same thing with siding or fake stucco foam board on the outside rather than brick. Brick requires skilled workmanship, siding and foam board far less. Now they've got people believing "brick is ugly" or even worse "brick is outdated" and they've got the suckers paying more for a cheaper exterior cladding that doesn't last as long and requires more maintenance. Same with painting brick; that's what you do to hide crappy bricklaying.
The all-open concept is a lot easier to design because you don't have to worry about getting natural light to rooms - if you don't put up walls then your kitchen window can be your dining room and den window too. And fewer interior walls means less framing, less drywall, fewer hung doors, fewer framed openings, easier wiring and plumbing if it's all on exterior walls only. Never mind you can't put an upright piano. Never mind that you have to hide out in the bedroom if you don't want to hear every single thing done by anyone anywhere in the house.
These "modern minimalist" styles all look to me like using the fad-ridden nature of the public to convince them that a lower quality product of less durability and higher maintenance is better because it's as seen on TeeVee.
Give me my damn baseboards, and moldings around windows, and moldings around doors, and interior walls with doors that close, and brick veneer outside! (Stone is OK too, as I have on my current house...)
I like it. I’m opposed to clutter and find serenity in a simple unified look. I’m one of those haters who finds dark wood oppressive. I would want to add some color via artwork, accessories and plants, but I could easily live in that house except for the price tag.
the may not "be cheap" but to me, they absolutely yes do LOOK CHEAP. as in unfinished. as in a cheap closet. it doesn't matter how much "skill" it takes, to me it still looks slapdash and cheap.
Well, I can't argue with opinion.
The picture in the OP is what a lot of people try to acheive with cheaper architecture and Ikea furniture. So it may come off as cheap if you are not used to seeing it done well.
But the same dichotomy of cheap vs. well executed exists in more detailed architectural/design styles.
Like those which take inspiration from Neo-Classical or Empire style. Overly roccoco, lots of marble, molded plaster, everything gold plated. It just looks like a poor man's idea of what a rich man's house should look like.
In the picture below, we see that style very well executed (but poor taste in my personal opinion). Despite the superior craftsmanship and materials, and the exorbitant cost of this apartment, when I see it, I am reminded of the Wayfair version adorning inumerable McMansions across the land
I hate the place. It's sterile and uninviting and looks cheap to build. And what's with the "COVID-19" circles on the floor that serve to remind us of the horrid times in which we live, where we have to stand far apart.
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