Reply #102: Yes suburban architecture is crappy because ...

[HamdenRice]

it is so profoundly fake. Let's look at even the modest pic that Walt Starr posted that he says he may go for.

By saying that it is fake, I don't just mean that it is faking at being something it is not. In this case, it is obviously faking at being English tudor, even though that period ended 300 years ago.

More importantly, it is more profoundly fake because the form tells us almost nothing about its function. Whether you look at the horrible mcmansion or the Walt Starr house, you can ask a lot of questions: why are there so many pitched roofs, enclosing gables, instead of just one? These gables within gables are not actually walls. What purpose do they serve? In the macmansion, You are right, they look like pop-ups -- like someone was trying to cram as many useless gables in as little space as possible -- just like useless advertising. Why are they there? Is it just to add cost and "bangles" to please an unsophisticated buyer?

Look at the Starr house. Why does it have shutters that don't close? Why verticle and horizontal beams inlaid in stucco? Obviously it is a "quote" of some simulacrum of some simalacrum of some simulacrum of some distant memory of tudor; but why would an architect put in on such and house and why would a buyer want it? In tudor architecure these beams were supporting, load bearing beams. Here they are just decoration, and ironic quotes, the architecht "laughing" at the owner.

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