2y ago

Daily Discussion Thread: Mon 21 Aug 2023

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I have spent all day looking through housing design magazines and have come to a few conclusions.
There area a lot more people who can afford really big windows then there are truly interesting or innovative designs.
All houses look better if photographed with a dog or cat visible.
Some people have an unfathomably high tolerance for multiple clashing patterns and colours.
Some people have an unfathomably high tolerance for a complete absence of colour or pattern.
The design feature I like most is the ability to see outside to a garden. Big windows are good for this, but tall windows or multiple windows at different heights works well too.
After looking through too many designs they all start to blur together. It is apparently possible to overdose on housing magazines.
- There's another absolutely inevitable conclusion to 'design' houses - the people who designed them don't have to clean them.
  
  Oh yes. The old proverb, "people in glass houses probably employ cleaners"
- Be careful which direction big windows face. If they get the afternoon sun in summer it becomes more difficult and expensive to keep your house a comfortable temperature
  
  The house I grew up in had northwest facing windows, I'm still scarred by the memories of furnace-like conditions over summer. It's probably a large part of my interest in sustainable design, I know how terrible badly designed houses can be!
  
  Same. Some of them would be fine if just built the other way around… but gotta squeeze as many as possible into a lot, sun direction be damned. The people who profit aren’t the ones who have to live with it 🙃
  
  This was the 80's in a new suburb - the relevant factors in siting the house was which way was facing the street. The main priority behing the design in general was many rooms you could pack in for the lowest cost possible. I don't think we've improved a lot since then, but at least insulation has become standard, not an add on sold by a dodgy door to door salesman.

195 comments