New Houses with fake windows

strawb_shortcake

The new builds opposite my parents have these, absolutely not in keeping with the locality. It's quite a historic town they live in but I can't recall many if any other older homes in the town that has original bricked up windows 

daveyjp

Imagine spending 7 years at university. then 10-15 years getting to senior architect position and being proud of signing that off.

Same goes for planning officers who think this is perfectly acceptable housing design for the 22st century.

user1977

annabanana82 said:

The new builds opposite my parents have these, absolutely not in keeping with the locality. It's quite a historic town they live in but I can't recall many if any other older homes in the town that has original bricked up windows 

Bit of an urban myth that any older "bricked up" windows were because of window tax - much more likely to be a design feature like in the OP for reasons of symmetry etc, or bricked up for practical reasons.

By definition, the buildings occupied by those too impoverished to pay window tax are unlikely to have survived to now. 

stuart45

The only time it's really worth doing is when an old window is being bricked up and you can't get a decent match.

GoogleMeNow

I've seen these on new builds in my area - dreadful (in my opinion).

seven-day-weekend

I think they look ok in the gable end, the ones on the ground floor look dreadful.

darrensurrey

You've heard of one way glass/mirrors. This is one way brick.

FreeBear

Norman_Castle said: They're an architectural feature.

Architectural detail, yes. A feature, no.

There are better ways of breaking up a large area of brick and adding "interest". One way would be to use some contrasting bricks in rows or geometric patterns.

[Deleted User]

daveyjp said:

Imagine spending 7 years at university. then 10-15 years getting to senior architect position and being proud of signing that off.

Same goes for planning officers who think this is perfectly acceptable housing design for the 22st century.

They don't use architects. They use architectural technicians, whose job is to minimise cost and bolt on a few features that market research has determined are what people want.

Most of their job is cramming as many houses into as little space as possible.

RelievedSheff

[Deleted User] said:

daveyjp said:

Imagine spending 7 years at university. then 10-15 years getting to senior architect position and being proud of signing that off.

Same goes for planning officers who think this is perfectly acceptable housing design for the 22st century.

They don't use architects. They use architectural technicians, whose job is to minimise cost and bolt on a few features that market research has determined are what people want.

Most of their job is cramming as many houses into as little space as possible.

It is often blamed on the developers for squeezing houses in but it is actually the local planning departments that stipulate the required housing densities.