4 ms·

This is a lesson in being innovative. Pushing boundaries has costs. You can explore new ideas, rid yourself of legacy assumptions and arrive at some valuable th

This is a lesson in being innovative. Pushing boundaries has costs. You can explore new ideas, rid yourself of legacy assumptions and arrive at some valuable things. But, you forgo the (often hidden) benefits of past mistakes and standard techniques that have all the kinks ironed out. The problem with houses is that iteration is expensive. A lot of architectural innovations are actually a version 2. There's another building where the architect/builder learned from mistakes.

jqpabc123 6y ago
One of the virtues of living in a "cookie cutter" home that has been built hundreds of times --- most of the bugs have already been worked out.
- glaberficken 6y ago
  Specifically a "cookie cutter" home for the same geography. There is a lot of invaluable and invisible knowledge baked into decades or centuries of building tradition of each specific region. I'm about to embark on a home building project myself. My wife keeps wanting a wood built house. In a country where there are hardly any... ...I just won't do it. no way.
  - arethuza 6y ago
    I'm going on a traditional rubble wall building course next month so I can build some stone walls that are in keeping with our house. Also been looking at sourcing stone from local quarries - which is fortunately quite straightforward as a lot of stone is quarried around here. If anyone is interested here are the charity that is running the course: https://www.scotlime.org/en/ https://www.scotlime.org/en/
- gwd 6y ago
  Or using traditional architecture. I once lived in an apartment building that was obviously built in the 70's, and was trying to be cool and new by having all flat-angled roofs, rather than normal gabled roofs. (Sorry don't know the technical terms.) Every winter, giant hundred-pound icicles formed, threatening to drop at any time onto people walking in and out. Yeah, those gables over the entrances weren't for looks guys, they were solving a problem. Maybe you should have asked why they were there before getting rid of them.
m000 6y ago
Agreed. The main problem here appears to be the location not being very well-suited for underground housing. So, if this is a v1 underground house for the area, a lot of unintended oversights are to be expected, especially if the construction cost settled around the median for the area.
cesaref 6y ago
The thing is, houses which are half hidden by hillsides have been built for hundreds of years with basic materials in the alps, so i'd have thought there is a rich seam of information about what works, and how to tackle various problems (my parent's house is like this, with a whole floor difference in level between the back and front of the house and this doesn't have damp problems).
- jaclaz 6y ago
  Yep, the "right" way dates back to Romans: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17933056 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17933056
- dalbasal 6y ago
  A rich seam perhaps, but that needs to be "mined" and what you get is raw material.... uhm analogy still working right? There's a big difference between "someone somewhere has done this and documented it" and "these exact builders have built 100s of these in my area." The gap between principle and practice. Software design and engineering is very influential these days, obviously on HN. We need to remember that bits have all sorts of magic to them. One magic is refactoring, bug fixing and malleability generally. With a building, any "bug" in the initial build is usually there forever.
- marcinzm 6y ago
  Climate matters as does location. Plus it was built in the 80s, I doubt any contractor in 80's Arkansas had any idea how to figure out about houses in the Alps even if they cared to.
- mywittyname 6y ago
  A hole in the side of a mountain is pretty different from a hole in the middle of Oklahoma.
ardy42 6y ago
> But, you forgo the (often hidden) benefits of past mistakes and standard techniques that have all the kinks ironed out. > The problem with houses is that iteration is expensive. A lot of architectural innovations are actually a version 2. There's another building where the architect/builder learned from mistakes. I think it would be super interesting and useful if different disciplines could condense that process down into relatively readable technical histories, and make those a core part of their curriculum. I think that would be super useful in software engineering, given the frequency that people seem to reinvent the wheel, some areas seem to oscillate back and forth between the same few concepts, and the path dependence that's locked us into others.

jqpabc123 6y ago

One of the virtues of living in a "cookie cutter" home that has been built hundreds of times --- most of the bugs have already been worked out.

glaberficken 6y ago
Specifically a "cookie cutter" home for the same geography. There is a lot of invaluable and invisible knowledge baked into decades or centuries of building tradition of each specific region. I'm about to embark on a home building project myself. My wife keeps wanting a wood built house. In a country where there are hardly any... ...I just won't do it. no way.
- arethuza 6y ago
  I'm going on a traditional rubble wall building course next month so I can build some stone walls that are in keeping with our house. Also been looking at sourcing stone from local quarries - which is fortunately quite straightforward as a lot of stone is quarried around here. If anyone is interested here are the charity that is running the course: https://www.scotlime.org/en/ https://www.scotlime.org/en/
gwd 6y ago
Or using traditional architecture. I once lived in an apartment building that was obviously built in the 70's, and was trying to be cool and new by having all flat-angled roofs, rather than normal gabled roofs. (Sorry don't know the technical terms.) Every winter, giant hundred-pound icicles formed, threatening to drop at any time onto people walking in and out. Yeah, those gables over the entrances weren't for looks guys, they were solving a problem. Maybe you should have asked why they were there before getting rid of them.

m000 6y ago

Agreed. The main problem here appears to be the location not being very well-suited for underground housing. So, if this is a v1 underground house for the area, a lot of unintended oversights are to be expected, especially if the construction cost settled around the median for the area.

cesaref 6y ago

The thing is, houses which are half hidden by hillsides have been built for hundreds of years with basic materials in the alps, so i'd have thought there is a rich seam of information about what works, and how to tackle various problems (my parent's house is like this, with a whole floor difference in level between the back and front of the house and this doesn't have damp problems).

jaclaz 6y ago
Yep, the "right" way dates back to Romans: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17933056 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17933056
dalbasal 6y ago
A rich seam perhaps, but that needs to be "mined" and what you get is raw material.... uhm analogy still working right? There's a big difference between "someone somewhere has done this and documented it" and "these exact builders have built 100s of these in my area." The gap between principle and practice. Software design and engineering is very influential these days, obviously on HN. We need to remember that bits have all sorts of magic to them. One magic is refactoring, bug fixing and malleability generally. With a building, any "bug" in the initial build is usually there forever.
marcinzm 6y ago
Climate matters as does location. Plus it was built in the 80s, I doubt any contractor in 80's Arkansas had any idea how to figure out about houses in the Alps even if they cared to.
mywittyname 6y ago
A hole in the side of a mountain is pretty different from a hole in the middle of Oklahoma.

ardy42 6y ago

> But, you forgo the (often hidden) benefits of past mistakes and standard techniques that have all the kinks ironed out. > The problem with houses is that iteration is expensive. A lot of architectural innovations are actually a version 2. There's another building where the architect/builder learned from mistakes. I think it would be super interesting and useful if different disciplines could condense that process down into relatively readable technical histories, and make those a core part of their curriculum. I think that would be super useful in software engineering, given the frequency that people seem to reinvent the wheel, some areas seem to oscillate back and forth between the same few concepts, and the path dependence that's locked us into others.