Kudos to this Architect

[rach5]

Originally Posted by ormari

It's fairly nice looking and certainly much better than much of the infill we see. I think the door porch is a bit weak and detracts from the façade. Otherwise it is pleasing.

It's something of a shame they didn't consider the site for one of those Victorian duplexes that Brown offered for free through PPS (edit, $10), to be moved to a local lot with financial assistance. The lot is certainly close enough that they could have done that, and thereby reused one of those structures.

On the other hand, as Morgan notes, it is scads better than that KITE designed hunk of junk across the street. That thing is a big ol' dog. Woof!

They potentially could have sited two of those Brown houses on that very street!

Except transporting and rehabbing one of those Victorian homes would have cost much more, and still been much less energy efficient than this new smallish house. Where would you prefer to live?

[ormari]

Originally Posted by rach5

Except transporting and rehabbing one of those Victorian homes would have cost much more, and still been much less energy efficient than this new smallish house. Where would you prefer to live?

I don't know if you read the thread I linked but in that old thread I explicitly said that transporting the houses would be expensive. However, I think neither you nor I know that moving the house would have been more or less expensive than construction of the subject house. The site wasn't too far. Out west, I've seen houses moved that were far less substantial than the ones Brown offered up. But house moving does not seem common here, so that probably adds to the cost.

The energy efficiency point is debatable. Some random thoughts, not put into any coherent order: one ought to calculate how much entrained energy goes into producing the new structure when determining which structure is more green. Just how long will that new structure last? Some of the production techniques used today have unproven longevity. Net zero is all the rage right now but if you've paid attention to the building field over the decades there have been many fads that failed at delivering on their promises. LEED has largely been a disaster. Window manufacturers have largely sold the normie population a bill of goods for a short-lived product. Old growth wood isn't available any more. Real plaster (largely) isn't done anymore. etc. etc. etc.

Old structures can be upgraded to become more energy efficient. For instance, the dense packed cellulose that the architect used can easily be retrofit into an old structure. Heating systems can be upgraded. Air tightness can be improved. And many old school designs had energy in mind from the get go.

Where would I rather live? I haven't seen the inside of any of the buildings in question. But I am a sucker for houses built prior to 1930, particularly if they still have much of the craftsmanship and presently unobtainable materials that make them so endearing. If you asked me would I rather have my house, or the newly built subject house, the answer is clear: I would rather have my house.

The authentic, old architecture of Providence is one of the things that attracted me, and others with similar tastes, to the city. I have friends who think 180 degrees opposite from me, with more modern "tastes", and they live happily in the suburbs in what I think is garbage construction.

You couldn't pay me to live in the KITE designed house across the street.