[878654Tom]

The current trend in Belgium is to build houses like cubes and drap a variation of white plaster on it [1]. While this looks great the first couple of years, the outside gets dirty and not a lot of people pay for it to get cleaned/repainted.

The houses are also always... the same. The variations in it are where the rectangle windows are and the length / width / height. But that is it.

I predict that in 20-30 years these houses will be seen as one of the ugly architectural trends of my time.

While houses that were built a century or even more ago (and that still stand) are lush with these ornaments and still retain a sort of beauty. [2]

I've lived in one of these type of houses and while they have some impracticalities because they have been built in a different century the outside stays a thing of beauty and you could guide people to your house purely because of how it looks.

Currently my wife and I are looking to build a new house and one of the requirements that we have for our architect is to build it with small details on the outside and a bit more classical than the current trend is.

[1] https://sibomat.be/media/f0xf52fy/moderne-bouwstijl-realisat...

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oude_Markt#/media/File:Old_mar...

[stdbrouw]

I feel we should bring back Georgian architecture [1]: on the one hand it is quite plain and so it fits well with modern sensibilities (and modern budgets that don't allow for a lot of faff, and the lack of skilled labor), but because of its strong emphasis on symmetry and a modest amount of ornament on doors, windows and railings, it looks vastly better than the lime rendered boxes of today. It also looks great with flat roofs, and flat roofs are here to stay -- why bother with nice roof tiles when you have to cover them with solar panels anyway.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georgian_architecture

[yterdy]

Why stop there? Institute Georgism while you're at it, so that people can actually afford houses again. Go "Full George".

[rsynnott]

I live in a city that has a bunch of it; in practice, it's incredibly impractical, and the few modern attempts to imitate it while providing an actually usable building tend to end up looking absurd.

Examples: https://www.irishtimes.com/life-and-style/homes-and-property... - Fake Georgian townhouses. You're still left with a four storey house, which isn't super-practical, and they look ridiculous.

https://www.pjhegarty.ie/projects/esb-head-office/ - Replacing a distinctly un-Georgian Brutalist thing which itself replaced a row of Georgian houses back in the day. Again, looks silly, but if they'd played it completely straight they'd be left with a pretty impractical office building.

[derriz]

Not sure what's impractical about a four story building? Without lifts/elevators, four stories hits the sweet spot in terms of density vs accessibility.

Of course, if you consider any building older than 100 years to be "impractical", then maybe living in the historic centre of a city isn't for you? There are plenty of modern (and soulless) places to live in the more modern fringes of the city.

And I disagree - the new ESB headquarters on Fitzwilliam St doesn't look "silly" at all - it actually looks very well to my eye from the street. Unfortunately https://maps.app.goo.gl/NL2qtasuMNM89Nqg8 doesn't have enough detail to show it but certainly the materials and brickwork is of a high quality. It doesn't aim to be pastiche or fake as you call it, but it does respect the materials and elevation of the historic streetscape.

[rsynnott]

> Not sure what's impractical about a four story building?

Nothing impractical about a four story building as such. The (normally five story) Georgian terraces are normally very long and narrow, though. This makes them difficult to turn into practical housing; you're looking at either awkwardly long narrow rooms, or rooms without natural light, if you turn them into apartments (and as single unit housing they're far too big for practical purposes). They also make for awkward offices (I've worked in one, back in the day).

You could... maybe make wider faux-Georgian terraces, I suppose, but at that point you're getting into the weird-looking anyway.

[stdbrouw]

At first glance, these look nice to me? Perhaps they look silly up close. I'm not sure what you mean by impractical though, I don't consider tall and narrow to be essential to the style, though many of the 18th and 19th century townhouses in the style surely were.

[throw0101d]

> I live in a city that has a bunch of it; in practice, it's incredibly impractical, and the few modern attempts to imitate it while providing an actually usable building tend to end up looking absurd.

Probably because a lot of folks don't understand the 'old' styles and how they work. Brent Hull specializes in restoring pre-WW2 buildings, and designing new ones that follow the design rules:

* https://www.youtube.com/@BrentHull/videos

A break-down on how a Georgian house should appear (i.e., use the Golden ratio everywhere):

* https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J-0XJpPnlrA&t=3m11s

Has a recent playlist, "New House Old Soul", on constructing new buildings (and additions) that harness the design rules of previous styles properly:

* https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLjEWB3ObiETMTGy11dF91...

[ethanbond]

Why is a 4 storey house impractical? And the only thing that looks ridiculous to my eye is the top floor which, for some reason, abandons the classical look and slaps some hideous modern handrails and flashing on top.

[pmontra]

It's 4 floors per family. An elevator or do a lot of stairs everyday. In both cases more time to move around than an equivalent 1 or 2 floors house. But if they do the stairs it keeps them fit.

[ethanbond]

My parents have a 3-floor townhouse and it's far, far more practical than the goofy sprawling "open floorplan" designs. Plus not having neighbors above/below you is a great tradeoff. I don't think this is as impractical as it would appear to someone not living in one (that's been my experience at least).

[DoughnutHole]

The floor space of an actual Dublin Georgian townhouse is frankly enormous - the houses seem narrow but they’re very deep. We’re talking 5000 square feet between the 4 floors in a country where the average house is 1000 square feet. And that’s in the densest part of a dense, old city.

These things weren’t built for mom, dad and 2.4 kids, but much larger families (6? 8 kids?) who were rich enough to have their own staff living alongside. Many were eventually subdivided into tenements and by the 20th century one street managed to fit 835 people between 15 houses.

There’s a reason well maintained Georgian houses sell for approaching €2 million euro. These new Georgian-style builds are targeting the very wealthy rather than trying to be practical city centre housing, in Ireland at least.

[nemo44x]

You can get a new home built in Georgian Revival style but it’s going to be expensive. Home builders rely on easy to source, mass produced, standard parts. In my experience the cost goes way up. For instance, a truss can’t be used for the roof and windows are custom, etc. and there’s going to be a lot of windows.

It’s why many homes today are built off existing models. But you see it in higher-end homes.

Now, of course the required parts could become mass produced if there were the demand. And I agree it’s a simpler and beautiful style. But you can’t put a flat roof on them.

[stdbrouw]

I dunno, I'm not a stickler for details. For example, I know that windows with many small panes ("muntins") are not cost-effective today and partially defeat the benefits of double and triple glazing, and the alternatives (fake bars that are glued on or between the glass) look shockingly bad... but any kind of partition at all (casement, fixed pane + tilt-turn pane, etc.) already adds visual interest and does not look out of place, as e.g. is evident in this photo of Georgian architecture with windows that I'm guessing are not historically accurate: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/78/Baggot_S...

[anon291]

My home has muntins, and I have to say they are incredibly convenient. If a ball goes through a window or something, it's extremely easy to replace; and very cheap. Highly recommend.

As for glazing... I'm not 100% sure. I've heard there are ways to get glass panes that are better insulated. My other guess is that, had muntins continued to be popular, the market would have found something. There's nothing inherently inefficient about them.

For example, one option a local window company gave to me was to simple add some plastic covering on the inside of the window. It would not reduce the outward appearance at all, but would provide some insulation. As it is, our house is quite efficient and we don't actually have any insulation. The way they used to build houses (not open floor plan, multiple stories, etc) actually make them more pleasant to live in, in my opinion. Our only issue was that, when adding AC, the original forced air venting leads to a noticeable temperature differential due to the lack of an intake on the second floor, but we'll be fixing this soon. Plus, ceiling fans have basically eliminated the worst of the problem.

[nemo44x]

Nowadays the window that was broken would just be replaced. Luckily they pop out easily!

For your old windows (I have many still, mainly in the front) I recommend ensuring you have good weather stripping and that you have storm windows installed. That helps a lot. Mine are double hung sashes though so the pulley boxes are massive leaks but nothing I can do about that.

I guess I could just seal the windows shut and put insulation in the pulley boxes but they are still functional even though we rarely open them.

[sokoloff]

I think some of the higher-end window grills (a "stuck on the outside muntin" for a short-hand description) look fine from any distance that they're typically seen.

https://aw930cdnprdcd.azureedge.net/-/media/andersenwindows/... (There's some chance that those are even internal, which are longer lasting/easier to clean, but much less convincing owing to having all the wrong shadow lines.)

[nemo44x]

Having a higher end window where the mutton/grill is dominated on both sides is best imo. It looks awful from the outside when it’s an interior stick-on as there’s no dimension and line you mentioned lack of shadow lines. You generally have to go to the higher end though, like a Marvin Ultimate. 30 of those on a house, installed, just set you back $60k+. But they look great.

[pmontra]

I had windows like those. The glued cross shaped frame was not actually glued and it was on both sides. It looked beautiful but it was a nightmare to clean. Four small glasses instead of a large one. It was wood, single layer glass. I replaced them with something that reduced the heat flow.

[nemo44x]

Yeah you can get simulated divided lights (SDL) on a modern window. I guess I am a bit of a stickler for these things, heh.

I can see a modern Georgian type thing though. Definitely nicer than so much of the garbage being built today.

[Fluorescence]

I live in a British Georgian rendered building (think South Kensington London [1]).

I find render is classic and beautiful but yes they are an ongoing maintenance issue to regularly repaint every decade or so and once the render has become damaged, rerendering the whole thing is eye-wateringly expensive. The main challenge is the right materials and expertise (lime render and porous mineral paint) which is expensive so people flipping a house will just bodge it with cement render and waterproof paints that will barely last a decade before it cracks, traps water, causes damp and starts coming way from the wall.

(Note that exposed stone also weathers and requires replacement which can make render/paint maintenance look very cheap).

A key part of the longevity of render is the design of other features e.g. you need correct channelling of water so it doesn't pour from roofs/windows down the render causing stains. This requires true skill and subtle architectural features like drip grooves carved under overhanging coping stones and subtle curves in the render itself (bell cast beading I think?). I am maddened by hokey designs that e.g. add a section of wooden facade above render which grossly stains the render below within months. It's just so careless and predictable. Any staining is a design fault that past experts knew how to avoid. There shouldn't be any "sources of colour" above render.

One of the joys of render is that you can personalise it with your own colours [2] which will stain less easily than white (grey is quite trendy) or even go for full graphic design [3] (I can't recall if those specific buildings were rendered - we have a tradition of drawing stone lines onto render so that it resembles limestone construction).

[1] https://images.mansionglobal.com/im-365825/social

[2] https://offloadmedia.feverup.com/secretbristol.com/wp-conten...

[3] https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-bristol-57212364

[paganel]

Regarding [1], I cannot understand for the life of me how come people located in places where it rains comparatively a lot (which is the case of Belgium) choose that solution with flat roofs for their individual houses, it doesn't make any utilitarian sense, you're just inviting rain water into your house at one moment or another.

[stdbrouw]

I think it makes perfect sense. Modern EPDM or fiber-reinforced bitumen roofs are very unlikely to leak before it's time to replace or renovate them after 25 years or so. They provide ample space for solar panels and for a heat pump, all out of sight. No need for gutters. They are easier to insulate. You don't end up with a bunch of barely usable attic space you don't need (even worse if we're talking about a hip roof instead of a gable roof.) It just takes a bit of effort to not make them look like a cheap cardboard box, whereas a house with a nice sloped roof has instant appeal.

[modo_mario]

There's no denying the practical elements however there are issues. For one:

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S00456...

>before it's time to replace or renovate them after 25 years or so.

And secondly that is short especially since the ceramic rooftiles that predated them could last 70.

[trgn]

Belgian houses are exceptionally ugly. Very badly proportioned. Belgium has the most beautiful cities in the world, but what that really means is that all the attractive areas predate the 30s. Once outside, it's a shockingly ugly country. Architects cannot seem to balance anything, weirdly positioned windows everywhere (e.g. https://www.a2o-architecten.be/work/vaartkom, this is so typical of all the dreck I saw going up there). Sad to see you use Leuven as an example. When I lived there some decade ago, all new buildings going up were unfathomably ugly. The old core was perfection though.

Kudos to Belgium to preserving its heritage so well, big thumbs down to being a black hole for architecture today.

[xdennis]

I like traditional houses very much, but there are two things you to consider: cost and regulations.

When you pay a fortune for the land and building materials you can't really build something nice.

When you have to comply with a million regulations, costs go even higher if you want an individualized house. If you keep it blocky and without decorations you can keep it affordable.

You would never get permission to build the Parthenon because it's simply not energy efficient.

Personally I think you should be able to build your own house without regulations, but not to sell it (i.e. you have to demolish it to sell the land). It's the perfect compromise between safety and freedom.

[leoedin]

I don't agree at all. The kinds of regulations that define how buildings are made are all pretty compatible with traditional building techniques. Obviously modern houses need to have insulation and air tightness, but that's not incompatible with block and timber construction used in old houses.

The cost of complying with regulations when building a house isn't even particularly high. It's stuff like "use x thickness of insulation" and "design it with a protected fire escape route". It doesn't cost much at the design stage to take those into account. The dominating cost is materials and labour.

What regulations stop people putting ornamentation on their house?

[octacat]

It is not just regulations. It is because land + regulations are expensive, cutting costs is important. Now we also could count high interest rates.

So, building as cheap and fast as possible is important to stay afloat. Example: making house from prefabs is cheaper and faster comparing to building using bricks + pro brick laying technics (i.e. what you can call ornamentation).

Besides, we should also consider that while saying that ornamentation is good to have, it does not mean it would fit all the people.

Good idea is to have regulations limiting what exactly you can build in historical centers of european cities.

[randomdata]

> I predict that in 20-30 years these houses will be seen as one of the ugly architectural trends of my time.

Isn't that always the case? I seem to recall that all architectural styles have been considered ugly 30-40 years after they were first in fashion. And then eventually they start to become appreciated.

[modo_mario]

History goes quite far back. The extremely rapid change of pace is quite recent. Architectural fast fashion if you will. Rather environmentally unfriendly i'd say since it allows for easy updating to modern specs that still almost never outmatches the carbon bomb that is the actual construction/materials.

[quickthrower2]

That house looks like modern Australian architecture too.

[llamaimperative]

It looks like everywhere modern architecture, that's the problem. There is no real culture behind it, only the insular culture of professional architects seeking out approval from other professional architects. There is no locality to it, no local materials or methods.

Christopher Alexander's dissertation, "Notes on the Synthesis of Form" lays out a very compelling sociological explanation of how this happens.

TLDR: People initially create things (like houses) to solve local problems, usually their own problems, with the materials and methods they have locally available. As the craft develops, its practitioners start to compete directly with each other and the craft becomes "self-conscious." This competition finds increasingly esoteric "dimensions" to compete on, at the expense of solving the real-world problems the craft initially set out to solve. So consider e.g. early designers of chairs. They were looking for good places to sit that looked nice in their homes. Now, if you want acclaim as a chair designer, you have to design the most garish, over-the-top, wildly uncomfortable "chair" (sculpture) that you can.

[FridgeSeal]

Yeah architecture in this country is real bottom of the barrel stuff, bar a few specific buildings (the new UTS and Central Park buildings in Sydney come to mind).

Our residential house design is even worse, they’re uniformay the most bland, cookie-cutter-McMansion-trash that’s built in a way that’s almost actively hostile to its environmental conditions.

[Gare]

Also like modern Croatian architecture. They're even repainting older buildings in white with black details. Blergh.

[pmontra]

The house at [1] in the parent post could be a modern house in any country of the world. It just doesn't fit into the history of any of them.

[somewhereoutth]

There is a huge gulf for exploration between your [1] and [2]! I dare say good contemporary architects have and will be doing just that.