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I'd love this here in Seattle. I am not against modern home design with its excellent safety features and efficient usage of available land, but boy am I tired

I'd love this here in Seattle. I am not against modern home design with its excellent safety features and efficient usage of available land, but boy am I tired of the 'contemporary' aesthetic consuming every plot of land that comes up for sale.

nullindividual 3y ago
It’s even worse on the eastside where modern houses do not fit the surrounding landscape.
- WillPostForFood 3y ago
  This is very subjective. There is no reason a traditional architectural style fits the landscape more than modern other than that's what you are used to seeing. The most significant modern house in the US is totally at home in the surrounding landscape. https://fallingwater.org/ https://fallingwater.org/
  - OkayPhysicist 3y ago
    Frankly, using FLW as an example is a bit uncharitable to the opposing argument. Dude was one of the, if not the single, greatest architects in history. I don't think anybody would complain about living in a world of his design. The problem is without a keen eye for aesthetics, it's really easy to use the post(-post?)-modern style in really, really lazy ways, to create absolutely hideous structures. Brutalism runs into the same problem: there are some Brutalist buildings, especially those that pioneered the style, that are absolutely breathtaking. The problem is that Brutalism was also pretty cheap to pull off, so you ended up with a bunch of hacky office buildings that pulled a couple pages out of the design, and built every college campus in North America. Is there a solution to this? I dunno. Chicago's "it's illegal to build ugly buildings in downtown" seems to have worked alright. But there's always going to be a market pressure to build the cheapest building possible while tipping your hat to whatever architectural style you can get away with, for minimal extra cost. Not really sure where I was going with all that, but bring back Art Deco.
  - nullindividual 3y ago
    Modern/Post-modern in a rural area is a real stand out, not in a good way.
- pfannkuchen 3y ago
  The modern farmhouse thing is so confusing! They would look fine on a 20 acre farm, but crammed together in a neighborhood they look ridiculous. I hope it ends soon.
angarg12 3y ago
Really? I feel the complete opposite. I moved to Seattle recently from Europe, and I feel the contemporary houses way prettier. Most of the homes in my suburb seem to have been built in the 60s or 70s and they could be described as a shed-like box coming in 2 or 3 variations. Most contemporary homes are also boxy, but I find them far more aesthetically pleasing. But as someone else said it's a matter of context. If you were building in the historic city center of a European town with its own traditional style, contemporary architecture would feel jarring and out of place.
- debatem1 3y ago
  I'm not arguing about what's aesthetic or not. I'm saying that a city should explicitly pick one: either have all the same design because that's how you want the city to be, or have varied designs because the alternative is the above without the honesty. I would prefer the latter because I think 'modern' designs aren't modern at all and are instead cheaply executed clones of what was transgressive architecture 50 years ago. But I appreciate that the city should make decisions based on what everyone wants-- not just me, but also not just developers.
  - angarg12 3y ago
    But don't they already do? either cities have strict rules about how buildings look like (rare) or they don't. Probably what you are seeing is just a side effect of the slow effect of gentrification. When you have old houses in desirable parts of town, it's often better to level them to ground and build a new one rather than refurbish it. New builds are mostly dominated by contemporary aesthetics because... well, they are what's fashionable now. If this happened in the 90s, you would have a lot of Mc Mansions with 90s aesthetics, and in 20-30 years you'll get houses with whatever style is popular then.

nullindividual 3y ago

It’s even worse on the eastside where modern houses do not fit the surrounding landscape.

WillPostForFood 3y ago
This is very subjective. There is no reason a traditional architectural style fits the landscape more than modern other than that's what you are used to seeing. The most significant modern house in the US is totally at home in the surrounding landscape. https://fallingwater.org/ https://fallingwater.org/
- OkayPhysicist 3y ago
  Frankly, using FLW as an example is a bit uncharitable to the opposing argument. Dude was one of the, if not the single, greatest architects in history. I don't think anybody would complain about living in a world of his design. The problem is without a keen eye for aesthetics, it's really easy to use the post(-post?)-modern style in really, really lazy ways, to create absolutely hideous structures. Brutalism runs into the same problem: there are some Brutalist buildings, especially those that pioneered the style, that are absolutely breathtaking. The problem is that Brutalism was also pretty cheap to pull off, so you ended up with a bunch of hacky office buildings that pulled a couple pages out of the design, and built every college campus in North America. Is there a solution to this? I dunno. Chicago's "it's illegal to build ugly buildings in downtown" seems to have worked alright. But there's always going to be a market pressure to build the cheapest building possible while tipping your hat to whatever architectural style you can get away with, for minimal extra cost. Not really sure where I was going with all that, but bring back Art Deco.
- nullindividual 3y ago
  Modern/Post-modern in a rural area is a real stand out, not in a good way.
pfannkuchen 3y ago
The modern farmhouse thing is so confusing! They would look fine on a 20 acre farm, but crammed together in a neighborhood they look ridiculous. I hope it ends soon.

angarg12 3y ago

Really? I feel the complete opposite. I moved to Seattle recently from Europe, and I feel the contemporary houses way prettier. Most of the homes in my suburb seem to have been built in the 60s or 70s and they could be described as a shed-like box coming in 2 or 3 variations. Most contemporary homes are also boxy, but I find them far more aesthetically pleasing. But as someone else said it's a matter of context. If you were building in the historic city center of a European town with its own traditional style, contemporary architecture would feel jarring and out of place.

debatem1 3y ago
I'm not arguing about what's aesthetic or not. I'm saying that a city should explicitly pick one: either have all the same design because that's how you want the city to be, or have varied designs because the alternative is the above without the honesty. I would prefer the latter because I think 'modern' designs aren't modern at all and are instead cheaply executed clones of what was transgressive architecture 50 years ago. But I appreciate that the city should make decisions based on what everyone wants-- not just me, but also not just developers.
- angarg12 3y ago
  But don't they already do? either cities have strict rules about how buildings look like (rare) or they don't. Probably what you are seeing is just a side effect of the slow effect of gentrification. When you have old houses in desirable parts of town, it's often better to level them to ground and build a new one rather than refurbish it. New builds are mostly dominated by contemporary aesthetics because... well, they are what's fashionable now. If this happened in the 90s, you would have a lot of Mc Mansions with 90s aesthetics, and in 20-30 years you'll get houses with whatever style is popular then.