*This comic was about France in 2021, but this style seems much more widespread.
This is dictated by cost and the desire to insulate. It’s possible to build well insulated buildings that look traditional, but it’s going to cost more and it’s not going to improve the quality of living inside the house.
Flat rectangular insulation panels with plaster on top placed on large flat surfaces -vs- irregularly shaped insulation with a cavity and a bespoke brick façade. Just the bricks alone, so without the labour, is going to cost about the same as the finished plaster. In the long term brick and a sloped roof should require less frequent renovations, but I doubt that it would ever offset the higher initial cost.
I live in the Philadelphia area and a lot of the row houses here dating to a century or more ago have absolutely beautiful brickwork, incredibly creative and interesting stuff, often on houses that these days barely sell for $100K. It would be completely impossible to duplicate this kind of thing today even with a construction budget of millions. The craftsmen who can do that kind of work are nonexistent now – today you’re lucky to find somebody who can lay bricks in a straight line.
If it got more people into houses I wouldn’t give a shit, but sadly, its shitty in both ways
There are a lot of high density housing being built in my city after some planning rule changes to enable it.
It’s unpopular to say the least.
I’m just happy that it means more people get to live in a house.
People sure are opinionated about architecture… I mean I think both are nice. Although the modern designs do tend to all look the same, which isn’t ideal
My beef with modern home architecture (the stuff in the US, mainly) is not that it’s different or modern, but that it’s so fucking fake in its fundamental elements. Vinyl siding stamped to look like old-fashioned wood siding but obviously isn’t because of the vertical seams and the bumps; double-paned vinyl windows with glazing dividers emulating old-fashioned casement windows that don’t even look three-dimensional; shutters that obviously can’t close; panel doors made from one block of essentially cardboard etc. etc.
I don’t really have any strong opinions on architecture, but I’ll still get mad in this instance taking it as a proxy for the French state’s efforts to wipe out regional culture throughout its history. You have tons of regional languages, with their own rich cultures and histories, and France has systematically done its best to beat them out of existence. Bréton, Gascon, Picard, Occitane and Corsican, amongst many others, are all considered to be either definitely or severely endangered, according to their wikipedia articles. Even those whose wiki page doesn’t mention this, like Alsatian, still generally mention the speakers tending to be predominantly older adults, with fewer and fewer young people learning the language. I’ve seen stuff about there being positive results with revitalization efforts and bilingual schooling for some of them, but it gets me bummed out and angry to think it might be too little, too late, and all in the name of some misguided nation building policies.
It’s kind of lame and boring if they look the same. There’s a ton of different modern styles that aren’t just black and white.
Like look up Nordic Modern, where there is often wood mixed in heavily.
A lot of modern styles just mean tons of natural light, open concepts, indoor/outdoor integration. It’s not inherently bad or boring. It’s probably more that luxury homes are being built cheap and fast with dentist office modern style that seems copy and paste, without caring about what makes it nice.
I think what people hate is the fake appearance of modernism where it’s made to look new and expensive, and not what makes modern homes modern.
A wonderful thing is the regional differences in door casing styles.
Every house everywhere have doors and all of them have trims (door casing), but they’re not the same.
In a lot of old houses/apartments, these are rarely changed. They suck to change because you’ll probably want the same for all the doors in the house or it looks weird. So if you want to change/repair just one, you’d want the same profile again and that’s not available, because every single carpenter had their own design back in the pre-1950s where stuff like this wasn’t mass produced, but made by the carpenter. So you either don’t change it or you get the same again. The design caries over either way.
In old large cities like Copenhagen where they obviously had several carpenters, you can tell to this day which neighborhood you’re in by looking at the door trims if you know how they look.
These days the new ones are all just flat. No profile. Sure, it makes it easier to maintain, but its a real loss in my opinion.
“Guess you guys aren’t ready for that yet, but your cat’s are gonna love it.”
Modern boxy homes would be pretty great if their roofs are also designed to be used as a patio area with awnings or solar panels. It just seems like a waste otherwise.
rooftop gardens would be goated
You can blame this guy: Adolf Loos, at least in part.
Major influence behind Modernism. He was mainly reacting against Art Nouveau which he was a staunch critic of.
“The evolution of culture marches with the elimination of ornament from useful objects” is the core theme of his essay “Ornamentation and Crime” .
Basically,
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ornamentation causes buildings and useful objects to go out of style.
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Things that go out of style require materials and manpower to update.
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It is the moral imperative of the designer to make useful things, things that need to be redone are less useful and are wasteful.
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Therefore it is the moral imperative of the designer to remove all ornamentation from design.
He saw ornamentation as “degenerate” and equated ornamentlessnes with moral and intellectual development. He also made it a race thing. He used the example of people from Papua New Guinea having tattoos. Paraphrasing: “these primitive savages ornament themselves with tattoos, we enlightened europeans don’t. We smart, they dumb. Therefore ornament = dumb bad, no ornament = good smart. See?”
He was a major inspiration behind the modernist movement. It helped that unadorned buildings are cheaper and easier to construct - especially with the advent of cheap glass and steel construction. So you end up with this sort of soulless architecture that gives no sense of time or place - that tells you nothing about its purpose or the people who built/use it.
He was mainly reacting against Art Nouveau which he was a staunch critic of.
“I think that thing is ugly, so I’m gonna make something even uglier!”
We can pretend he’s the main influence, whilst ignoring the fact that most people prefer square even walls for aesthetic, functional, and - most of all - cost purposes.
I do agree we could do better w.r.t to colour, and millenial grey needs to go. But don’t knock the rectangle. Rectangle is good. Rectangle is steady. You can plan on rectangle.
millenial grey
There’s nothing in the construction world that I hate more than the fake gray wood interlocking vinyl floor planks that are in every house now. I guess they’re supposed to be the color of wood on old barns or fences, but I’ve never seen real wood of that color on a floor anywhere. I bought my house a couple of years ago and it had that type of fake flooring in the living room. I deliberately left it uncovered during the renovations, assuming that it would be trashed which would force me to replace it with something I actually like – no such luck, that stuff is actually pretty indestructable, unfortunately.
But consider this:
Hexagons - bestagons
Rectangle good, sure. But rectangle that gives no sense of time or place sad, I think.
I really like some architecture inspired by modernism. Huge FLW fan - fallingwater is my favorite building. But the good modernist or modernist-derived buildings incorporate and emphasize their surroundings and give a sense of time and place by incorporating traditional stylistic elements, local materials, etc.
Also, no pretending needed - this guy was a major progenitor of the style. The style can be a very good fit for the needs of people who commission buildings to be built, and it can look cool in its own right, but regardless of any of that Loos was a pioneering force in the Modernist movement
Unpopular opinion: I never saw the appeal of Frank Lloyd Wright, honestly. I don’t know how anybody can look at Falling Water and not see a bunch of cardboard boxes somebody left at the creek.
I don’t know how anybody can look at Falling Water and not see a bunch of cardboard boxes somebody left at the creek.
I don’t have a strong opinion about this, but I find it funny that even your unflattering critique acknowledges that it does convey a sense of time and place.
Yeah, that’s unpopular alright. How do I look at it without seeing cardboard boxes? With my functional eyes
Rectangle looks like shit and is monotone
No like really, I can see it making sense for older times where it was harder to build shit but cmon we are in 2026…
I think an aspect of the problem is the modern high expectations of functionality for things like climate control and ingress protection against pests and water. It’s much easier to not make a mistake on those if you aren’t adding any “frills”. Balancing those needs with ornamentation and cost is such a difficult juggling act, most people just don’t.
It’s also a question of cost. You can probably take the layout off the modern house and have the facade look like the housing of old. But building houses is expensive so costs need to be cut where it can, thus very minimalist facades. If you live in your own house would you pay 50k or 100k just to have your house look a certain way from the outside? I know I wouldn’t. I could barely afford the house.
Relevant YouTube video: how did the world get so ugly?
Tell me you’ve never read Buckminster Fuller without telling me
Hmm, tricky but I’ll try.
*Mimes: Five words*:
- 1st word: *Points at self *
- 2nd word: *Crosses arms straight, refusal motion*
- 3rd word: *Folds hands open and holds close to eyes*
- 4th word, 1st syllable: *Cups hand to ear, then makes thrusting motion with hips*
- 4th word, 2nd syllable: *Hold first finger and thumb close together, squints eyes*
- 4th word, 3rd syllable: *Walking motion whilst lowering knees gradually*
- 5th word, 1st syllable: *Pats belly and plumps out cheeks*
- 5th word, 2nd syllable: *Makes a confused gesture, scratches head, looks around*
LMFAO
Like… everything he wrote?
I know it was fairly cheap ornamentation, but the damage his philosophy did to buildings in Germany is profound. They straight up tore the ornamentation off a lot of buildings.
Man, I really don’t care for this Adolf character…
Just normal Adolf things. Y’know, like white supremacy
Ayn Rand also writes about this in The Fountainhead
Goddamn she found a way to be as wrong as possible about every single topic.
I read The Fountainhead in college and thought it was great. Then I recovered from the flu and thought “what the hell was that shit?”
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Funny enough 1921 is when all the houses from the second half of the comic started.
Not fair to equate bland housing with modernism.
Tell me this building is bland: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palace_of_Assembly
It looks like it hasn’t been used since the fall of the soviet union and I’m only half sure it’s not intentional.
That’s horrific
The reflecting pool is so funny… What’s there to reflect? The legislative assembly for my province is more breathtaking
Blander than any of the Corbusier buildings you’re responding to, tbh
it’s not bland, but can someone powerwash that thing?
And lose all the brutalist charm? Might as well wash the sauce off your spaghetti before eating it.
And lose all the brutalist charm? Might as well wash the sau
Wait… other people DON’T do that?
*Cries in french* Around my hometown I have 4 styles of different houses depending of the microregion they are in. All in a 40 km radius. There is even a continum with hybrids as we move from a place to another.
… That’s for older house of course. They are still here, terribly laking heat isolation and in desperate need of renovation, but still here but for every new family that move in the village of for every second brother that stays as an adult, there is a cookie cutter home terribly laking in hot weather resistance that will be desperate for renovation in just 15 years.
On est voisins ?
This is the “light” version. The worst are when they don’t even have street facing windows, only concrete and garage doors facing the street and all around the house nothing but concrete/tiles, no greenery. These houses make me so sad while walking around a neighboorhood :(
the grey and black rocks garden!
Back then, the builders built homes.
These days builders build houses.
I think the creative processor for our simulation is failing. This explains a lot of the wacky things that are happening.
It’s just low poly style, easier to render
You’re joking, but a big part of this style of housing’s popularity is that it’s very fast for architects to draw them in CAD programs.
Yes it’s cheap and that’s what it looks like.
Less work to design too. Whoever is working on the simulation might be on strike. Or got layed off…
Ʌ921 is crazy
I like it. But I also will never own one, so wtv I guess.
What is the leading character of the older year? Capital 1?
common in France, in handwriting the down-tick part is often bigger than the vertical part.
Is it only if it’s the first number? I was confused why both 1s weren’t written like that, and was wondering if it was a weird way to write a 0 or something (idk if those would be accurate mid-medieval homes, probably not)
Not at all. In France it’s very common to have roughly the same proportions for the upstroke and downstroke. Both the first and second 1s are perfectly valid and legible and variations come with handwriting. However the downstroke should roughly end at least at the same level as the upstroke’s start.
See this quickly made example, 147 written in French style (above) and English style (below) in my shitty phone handwriting.
As you can see, 1 takes a single stroke and 7 two so we can’t mix them.
Never seen that in my whole life, it must be a mistake.
There are things you haven’t seen.
