[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.

[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.

[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.

[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?

[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.