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You're 1000% correct about build quality. Ironically, re my prior post, I've been missing soviet style flats ever since I moved to the UK many years ago. Afford

You're 1000% correct about build quality. Ironically, re my prior post, I've been missing soviet style flats ever since I moved to the UK many years ago. Affordable, better soundproofing, no mold, way better plumbing, no personal boiler to have to screw around with. Also 4-story apartment buildings are obviously a better way of doing medium density than stuffing 4-8 people into a 4 bedroom house the way South East England does it. However, that's sort of orthogonal(maybe wrong word) to he architectural style. I'm sure decent build quality can be done with a decent outside facade, even though private British home builders are all awful these days. I have joked to friends several times (when angry about rentals' value/money ratio) that Oxford could have benefited from a Ceausescu figure tearing down the crappier working class neighborhoods and replacing them with 4-6 story apartment buildings. Only about 10% serious about it, since he would've torn down the downtown as well to build himself a McPalace, tacky bastard that he was.

pasabagi 5y ago
The thing is, georgian houses only look good if they are actually made with all the right materials and skills - and that stuff is expensive. If you look at all the neoclassical / retro stuff the nazis built, for example, it generally looks really dystopian, no matter how well you look after it, My personal feeling, aesthetics-wise, is that materials look good and work well when you respect their innate properties. Trying to force an aesthetic from one material on another is, at best, a recipe for an cheap and ugly chimera - which is kind of how I view Poundbury. More often, it just results in buildings that don't work (every UK house ever). Georgian buildings come from a specific set of materials and skills, many of which don't really exist any more. You can replace the stucco with concrete or polystyrene or whatever, but it's never going to look the same, because part of the 'aura' of the old stuff is it was made by really skilled people who had generations of experience showing in every move they made.

pasabagi 5y ago

The thing is, georgian houses only look good if they are actually made with all the right materials and skills - and that stuff is expensive. If you look at all the neoclassical / retro stuff the nazis built, for example, it generally looks really dystopian, no matter how well you look after it, My personal feeling, aesthetics-wise, is that materials look good and work well when you respect their innate properties. Trying to force an aesthetic from one material on another is, at best, a recipe for an cheap and ugly chimera - which is kind of how I view Poundbury. More often, it just results in buildings that don't work (every UK house ever). Georgian buildings come from a specific set of materials and skills, many of which don't really exist any more. You can replace the stucco with concrete or polystyrene or whatever, but it's never going to look the same, because part of the 'aura' of the old stuff is it was made by really skilled people who had generations of experience showing in every move they made.