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What Style Is That House? Visual Guides to Domestic Architectural Designs
- arca_vorago 10y agoMy first house is the only one like it in the area, (one of the reasons I selected it, as I hate cookie cutter homes) but I always wondered about its origins. The neighbors said it was built by an architect in the 70's, so it was really cool to realize he had blended postmodern with deconstructionist to form it. Awesome read!
- taitems 10y agoA very interesting read. In what way does a "Craftsman Home" differ from what we internationally regard as a California Bungalow (or cal bung)?
- Inconel 10y agoI'm not positive in this but I believe a California Bungalow features a number of shared design elements that you will also find in Craftsman homes such as low sloping roofs, asymmetrical exterior proportions, open floor plans, roof overhangs, small porches along with a front stoop, but don't necessarily have to be in the traditional Craftsman/Arts & Crafts style. What we call California Bungalows can share all of those general elements while being in different aesthetic styles such as Tudor or Spanish Mission. Basically, Craftsman would be a subset of the larger California Bungalow style.
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- Gargoyle 10y agoShort article that covers the connection- https://www.kcet.org/home-garden/the-craftsman-homes-of-pasadena https://www.kcet.org/home-garden/the-craftsman-homes-of-pasa...
- matt4077 10y agoNever noticed that art nouveau apparently didn't make it to the US. Or is that because the chart only focuses on the single-family home? It's probably the most characteristic style of most cities from Brussels to Russia. Examples: http://www.rhein-ruhr-region.de/info/wp-content/uploads/wetter-villa-boennhoff.jpg http://www.rhein-ruhr-region.de/info/wp-content/uploads/wett... or https://birgitrehse.files.wordpress.com/2015/04/planufer-1.jpg https://birgitrehse.files.wordpress.com/2015/04/planufer-1.j...
- hkmurakami 10y agoI suspect some college campuses will have it. Ex: https://www.flickr.com/photos/geronimo819/9481473363/ https://www.flickr.com/photos/geronimo819/9481473363/
- matt4077 10y agoThat definitely feels more Roman. Art Nouveau is more playful, sometimes symmetry-breaking etc. I think the US was mostly doing Art Deco at the same time, which is obviously beautiful in its own right.
- tikhonj 10y agoFor whatever reason, I think Art Deco ended up supplanting Art Nouveau in US cities. Art Deco didn't have much of an influence on single-family homes either, but it certainly left its mark on everything from small apartments to skyscrapers. It's a shame: while I certainly enjoy Art Deco, I miss the incredible design and ambiance of the Art Nouvea neighborhoods in St. Petersburg and Barcelona. I've never found anything with quite that feel in other cities, especially in the US...
- matt4077 10y agoIt's beautiful and unlike the periods before it they are quite spacious on the inside. If you go further back in time, it sometimes gets a bit cramped (i. e. stairs half a meter wide, half the depth of your foot and at an 120 degree angle – basically a ladder). It's interesting to see that everyone wants to life in them here, but nobody would attempt to build like it again. Even the most luxurious new apartments may have floor-to-ceiling windows on all sides, but the ceilings are at 3m instead of 4.5m+. May be the costs of the solid walls and increased heat loss, or it'd just feel tacky to have ornaments of ivy and topless women on the front of a new building.
- Fibre2Fashion 10y agoVery nice article
- sfRattan 10y agoTheir graphical representation of a McMansion is perhaps overly generous: - some of the windows actually match (and are even symmetrically aligned) - the garage takes up less that half of the house's front face - the columns next to the door are neither too tall nor too skinny McMansion on the lower left: http://99percentinvisible.org/app/uploads/2016/08/american-vernacular-houses-guide.png http://99percentinvisible.org/app/uploads/2016/08/american-v...
- rosstex 10y agoRelevant: http://www.mcmansionhell.com/ http://www.mcmansionhell.com/
- ascorbic 10y agoI believe 99PI has recently hired Kate Wagner, creator of McMansion Hell. http://99percentinvisible.org/author/kate-wagner/ http://99percentinvisible.org/author/kate-wagner/
- ykl 10y agoAn excellent time to link to McMansion Hell's various guides on McMansions. Two good starting points are "What Makes a McMansion Bad Architecture" [0] and "The 10 Circles of McMansion Hell" [1]. [0] http://www.mcmansionhell.com/post/148605513816/mcmansions-101-what-makes-a-mcmansion-bad http://www.mcmansionhell.com/post/148605513816/mcmansions-10... [1] http://www.mcmansionhell.com/post/151896249151/the-10-circles-of-mcmansionhell-the-mcmansion http://www.mcmansionhell.com/post/151896249151/the-10-circle...
- majewsky 10y ago99pi also did an episode featuring that blog: http://99percentinvisible.org/episode/mcmansion-hell-devil-details/ http://99percentinvisible.org/episode/mcmansion-hell-devil-d...
- VLM 10y agoThere's an old game called "the sims" where perhaps tongue in cheek the criteria for how much your Sim loved the house it lived in was the McMansion criteria of the linked articles, nothing matches nothing balances no 90 degree corners no flat surfaces proportions are very weird. Ironically the house being awful results as a side effect in being very expensive to build, so from a conspicuous consumption standpoint its simultaneously hard to avoid noticing none of the windows match at the same time as its noticed clearly no one got a Federal style bulk discount on those windows, or the floor plan and roof line being, well, insane, was likely very expensive to build. You might have to live in an ugly house, but everyone will know you have money. Oh the fed dropped interest rates again so we have an extra $100K to spend, well, if you already have five dormers why not seven and toss in some columns on the side door entrance?
- ProfessorLayton 10y agoThis is so neat! I'm in what I can best describe as a single story "National gable + front wing" tract house from the 40s, and feel that the design is very pragmatic and boring. These types of houses are very common in the Bay Area suburbs, particularly in the East Bay. Those were built en masse during during the war and have a surprising degree of craftsmanship and material quality. I muse about one day owning one of those ordinate Victorian houses, but at the same time dread all work and red tape that can come with them (Which goes against my idea of homeownership). A buddy of mine has one and says it would cost ~35k to replace the drafty windows because the city requires an approved type/style/installer (it's a historic home).
- hkmurakami 10y agoI like old things and old houses too. But a friend in real estate advised me against buying and living in 100 year old houses because of the high cost of maintenance, very high cost of remodeling, and various things you wouldn't expect right away, like the water tasting funny due to old pipes, there house creaking and making sounds all the time as it shrinks and expands, the general lack of insulation, etc. I'm still fond of the Tudor style, but alas it does seem impractical.
- thomasfl 10y agoThe problem seems to be that builders don't build many houses in old style, even if the the demand is there. In Norway for instance, even if there is a high demand for old flats built before world war 2, there simply hasn't been built any old style flats at all since the war. One of the reasons is that many architects after the war considered it to be fascistic to build anything with ornaments on the outside. You can still buy new clothes in old fashion style and new books using old fashioned typography, but you can't buy a new flat in an old style flat. Some architects today say we are living in the age of modernism, not the baroque or roccoco, and therefore should not build old style buildings. Art history was not intended to be used to dictate which style to use when designing anything. Architects seems to abuse art historic terms to get their way.
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- dirktheman 10y agoSomewhat unrelated, but I'm always surprised by the fact that most american homes have the front door open directly to the living room. In most European houses there's usually a hallway behind the front door. It acts as a thermal buffer and you have space for a coat rack and shoe cabinet.
- galfarragem 10y ago> most american homes have the front door open directly to the living room. Adding some info: in South America (Brazil at least) front door opens also to the living room. On architectural theory it's common to correlate this trend with the 'less hierarchical' way of being of these countries. In Europe this hardly ever happen and in cold countries is even common to have 2 halls behind the front door on single houses: the first not heated (the ganek in Polish) and then another hall, this one heated.
- paganel 10y ago> Somewhat unrelated, but I'm always surprised by the fact that most american homes have the front door open directly to the living room. The "direct access into the living room"-thing got imported over here in Eastern Europe (well, Romania, from where I'm from) in a lot of new residential apartments. Which is quite unusual, because now you're watching TV and doing all your housy stuff in the same room as your dirty shoes. This is more noticeable in winter, when there's all that slush on our city streets which you're bringing into your home.
- dirktheman 10y agoI know, we have the whole hallway filled with wet shoes and jackets... In warmer climates a hallway isn't a necessity, but there are a lot of areas in the US that get much, much more snow than here in Europe. Weird...
- dsr_ 10y agoA lot of American single-family houses have three doors (or more): the "front door", which may never be used; the side door, which leads to a "mud room" for taking off boots and hanging up coats, which is used all the time, and the rear door, used for access to the back yard. In the South the front door is used much more often, because it gets hot, not so much cold.
- lpolovets 10y agoI love side-by-side visualizations like this. I think it would be very neat to have this presented via a Chrome extension that provides design context for Trulia and Zillow listings. When I see a listing description like "this is a lovely Tudor-style home," I often wonder which elements showcase the named style.
- kozak 10y agoLet's discuss the UX of the article: how is the user supposed to zoom the image it to actually see the house designs on the chart? I have a 4k monitor, and it's not enough at all. The site's built-in UI doesn't allow zooming. Certainly, I can open the image in a new tab and zoom it using the browser's UI, but come on: this is too advanced for the layperson.
- athenot 10y agoOpen the image in a new tab and use the browser's built-in functions to zoom/pan the image.
- nommm-nommm 10y agoClick on the image to get the image in a modal. Right click on the image. View Image. Then it will be in a new tab and your cursor will turn into zoom. At least in Firefox that's what I did.
- dfc 10y agoThe Craftsman is listed as originating in Southern California? This was news to me and is unsupported by anything that I have read. I always thought "The Craftsman" was a subset of "Arts and Crafts" with the "bungalow" variety being associated with california.
- sdiepend 10y agoTime to create a house style classifier! Anybody trained a neural net yet?
- skypanther 10y agoAs a lover of old houses, it's nice to see this sort of thing discussed. A few minor quibbles: The article (though fortunately not the poster/infographic) mentions the "Victorian" style. Victorian is an era during which multiple housing styles were popular -- Queen Anne, Stick, Shingle, etc. The stylized drawings, especially in the infographic, really obscure the characteristics of some of the styles. The Italianate drawing, for example, barely resembles the real thing. Finally, the article and sources fail to mention that few houses truly represent one specific style. Typically, only architect-designed homes (built by the rich-n-famous) or kit homes (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kit_houses_in_North_America https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kit_houses_in_North_America) would really fit a specific style. Lots of homes of that era are best described as "vernacular" and combine elements of multiple styles. You then end up classifying it based on the predominant features. For example, I live in a home built in the 1890s that has a mix of Queen Anne, shingle, and stick elements. Though, my last home was a spot-on American Foursquare. Nicely, the article references the McAlester book. It is the best resource I've found for classifying old houses. I have the older edition, authored by Virginia and Lee so I can't speak to the contents of the new edition. If you want some "old house porn" check out the Painted Lady series of books, too.
- Retric 10y agoFurther, old houses shift over time. I grew up in a house that look like greek revival from one side and rather different from the sides. It grew from a one room hunting lodge in the 1700's with a separate kitchen into a single structure, and then had some rooms added in the 1950's.
- randcraw 10y agoYeah 'italianate' seems to describe the presence of individual design elements more than full blown motifs. But I think that's a typical concession in 'affordable homes'. I too reccommend the McAlesters' Field Guide. Her 850 page successor text (w/ styles after 1940) is on my short list of 'to buy' books.
- CodeSheikh 10y agoAny builders/newly constructed home owners out here? I am thinking of building a new house instead of buying a used one. This is most likely going to be my biggest investment ever. I am looking at lands in upstate New York/New Jersey region, basically a region with 3 months of frost weather. I am not really a big fan of wooden houses. I have read all sorts of material online how wood is cheap, suitable of expansion/contraction weather, and contractors are cheap who build wood frames. But part of me just wants a durable concrete house. I was thinking of getting a slab or raised slab concrete foundation with concrete pillars (non cylindrical) protruding upwards that would make up entire foundations of the house. Instead of wooden frames I can go for steel frames (new kid on the block). Then for the rest of the stuff, I can use wood and combination of other materials. It would be nice hear someone else' similar experience and/or suggestions.
- NegativeLatency 10y agoWhat's your desire for steel and concrete? laminated wood products (osb, etc) are pretty strong
- conorcleary 10y agoLook into hempcrete; great insulative properties. Probably not the best for loading bearing, but it's being developed.
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- imgabe 10y agoIf you have the money it's entirely possible. Steel / Concrete is dramatically more expensive than wood framing though, like, an order of magnitude or close to it. You'll also have a harder time finding a contractor. Most residential contractors are not going to be able to build a steel / concrete structure and the job is going to be too small to interest one of the larger commercial contractors unless you're paying a hefty premium.
- hx87 10y ago
- Rynant 10y agoWhen applying for insurance for our house built in the 1780's, my wife and I couldn't find a style/year combo that the online form would accept. We thought it was a Colonial, but maybe it is Georgian? The farmstead stabled the original Morgan horse sire, and is pictured on page 12 here: https://www.morganhorse.com/upload/photos/905TMH_Jan2015_JustinMorgan.pdf https://www.morganhorse.com/upload/photos/905TMH_Jan2015_Jus...
- Declanomous 10y agoI have the Field Guide to American Houses. I'll take a look through it tonight and let you know, but given the era it's probably Georgian. It's not Federal, or Dutch/French/Spanish colonial. It might be what is considered a "folk" house, but those are generally what might be considered a shack.
- DoodleBuggy 10y agoProbably "McMansion"
- nommm-nommm 10y agoWhere would a Cape Cod style fit into this? I didn't see it.
- MrFoof 10y agoCape Cod is the 2nd home in the infographic following the photo of the poster. It is a Minimal Traditional (along with the "Gable & Wing Roof").
- nommm-nommm 10y agoThanks. I thought the poster was the entire article, I didn't notice that there was more content below it. Whoops. It doesn't seem to be on the poster though, which is odd.
- MrFoof 10y agoIt was on the poster, again, grouped with the "Gable & Wing Roof"
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- dfar1 10y agoI can finally understand my wife every time she points out a different house style :)