According to a Times Bricks and Mortar supplement some 67% of us are disappointed with our houses. Whether respondents were transplacing other feelings onto their houses or whether this relates to the houses themselves is a moot point. It could be the spiralling cost or some concern over where society is headed. Astute buyers may have made a killing on the back of an inflated market but one does wonder what sort of dwellings our children or grandchildren may inhabit. Houses built at todays level of output would have to stand for 1500 years! Somehow can't see that happening by any measure as modern housing lacks the solidity of its predecessors and merely apes the style, particularly mass built housing.
Most modern housing is stuck in a timewarp. New developments of mock tudor or georgian 'style' are hastily built on any scrap of land where demand is high. New environmentally sensitive regulations call for higher density build so we still live unnecessarily in the lap of our neighbours.
Despite many improvements in materials and construction methods new housing still attempts to replicate the old. Where factory built housing components are manufactured they still resemble brickwork and little genuine prefabricated work exists particularly in the UK. Even manufacturers of prefabricated buildings still feel the need to encase buildings in brick tiles for that traditional look ie. to make them look like something that they are not.
This is pathetic but understandable in a culture that dare not face the future and seeks comfort in an imagined past.
What of bolder visions?
Although some architects may produce expensive and gimmicky one offs there are houses designed and built with increased specification and functionality, relatively simple in design and execution yet far from commonplace. Frank Lloyd-Wright with his Fallingwater house, for one, showed that nature should not bind us to limitations . . .
View/read on:
http://www.audacity.org/Acrobat%20Reader%20files/Housing%20Forum%202002.pdf
http://www.lmearchitecture.com/houses.htm
http://brasembottawa.org/cd/1arq_3.9.2.res_macab_helio.htm
http://www.google.co.uk/search?hl=en&q=falling+water+house&btnG=Google+Search&meta=
http://www.treehugger.com/files/prefab/index.php
http://www.channel4.com/4homes/diyandbuilding/buildinghouse/kit_homes.html
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