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> I've never lived in a home like this but have been inside of a few of them, they're often dark and closed in and kind of creepy I'm the author. I designed m

> I've never lived in a home like this but have been inside of a few of them, they're often dark and closed in and kind of creepy I'm the author. I designed my house to have the enormous amounts of light that I found in older homes, that are often totally absent from new ones because of a reliance on electricity. You should see more of the "Colonials" that get built today. Many of them have zero windows on two sides (one side has the garage, the other merely has zero windows). There are numerous examples near me, this is right down the road: https://www.google.com/maps/@42.8408959,-71.6385114,3a,49y,326.88h,86.24t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1sJhaHjeU9PqhFJwTE25dYww!2e0!7i13312!8i6656 https://www.google.com/maps/@42.8408959,-71.6385114,3a,49y,3... Those are dark and closed in. Many of the new homes I've been in, I had to turn on the light in the kitchen in the morning because they're so dark. I have posted other examples before to Twitter, eg: https://twitter.com/simonsarris/status/1225243964237807616 https://twitter.com/simonsarris/status/1225243964237807616

mindslight 6y ago
Huh. Apparently houses missing windows on an entire side are a common thing. I recently noticed a newly built house without any windows on one side. I had attributed this to the lot being split off from its neighbors, who presumably specced the new home that way for their own privacy. Evidently it's just a cost saving thing that people are willing to put up with. Weird.
alkonaut 6y ago
So this cheap-but-large construction is that mostly a US thing? I recognize very little of it from Sweden. If I were to build somtething new it would have be much better planned space than older homes, and if I buy something built in the last 10 years it would be designed to be open, bright, clever, environmentally friendly, and with expensive lasting materials. Very old homes (100+ years) have a selection bias where the worst are torn down. Homes from 1940-1980 usually have terrible planning, cheap materials and so on, simply because people were poorer and prirorities were different (closed off kitchen, narrow hallways,...).

mindslight 6y ago

Huh. Apparently houses missing windows on an entire side are a common thing. I recently noticed a newly built house without any windows on one side. I had attributed this to the lot being split off from its neighbors, who presumably specced the new home that way for their own privacy. Evidently it's just a cost saving thing that people are willing to put up with. Weird.

alkonaut 6y ago

So this cheap-but-large construction is that mostly a US thing? I recognize very little of it from Sweden. If I were to build somtething new it would have be much better planned space than older homes, and if I buy something built in the last 10 years it would be designed to be open, bright, clever, environmentally friendly, and with expensive lasting materials. Very old homes (100+ years) have a selection bias where the worst are torn down. Homes from 1940-1980 usually have terrible planning, cheap materials and so on, simply because people were poorer and prirorities were different (closed off kitchen, narrow hallways,...).