Oh nooooo
It's finally happened.
I have sold my architectural soul to the devil. I have designed an estate of noddy houses. For a developer. They look like all the other bloody awful noddy houses you see springing up everywhere.
I am ashamed but it is what my client wanted. It's a really hard call because the British public think they know what they like, but in actual fact they only like it because that's all they get offered.
When you analyse developer housing lots of them have a gable on the front with some sort of wrap around roof forming a porch. If you make a house with the eaves line running along the front (gable at the side) people don't buy them because they think it looks like a council house.
I tried to design something a bit different and my client took the drawings to an estate agent to get the houses valued. The comments came back requesting a gable on the front and more regular windows - they thought their customer base wouldn't want anything too 'radical'. I gave up and drew what they wanted. Or thought they wanted. I feel a bit dirty.
I have sold my architectural soul to the devil. I have designed an estate of noddy houses. For a developer. They look like all the other bloody awful noddy houses you see springing up everywhere.
I am ashamed but it is what my client wanted. It's a really hard call because the British public think they know what they like, but in actual fact they only like it because that's all they get offered.
When you analyse developer housing lots of them have a gable on the front with some sort of wrap around roof forming a porch. If you make a house with the eaves line running along the front (gable at the side) people don't buy them because they think it looks like a council house.
I tried to design something a bit different and my client took the drawings to an estate agent to get the houses valued. The comments came back requesting a gable on the front and more regular windows - they thought their customer base wouldn't want anything too 'radical'. I gave up and drew what they wanted. Or thought they wanted. I feel a bit dirty.
posted by Rach at 19:33
3 Comments:
Hi there,
I picked up your blog from postings on the PP forum, how fab a site is that! Everyone is sooo helpful! Love your blog - it's a real giggle - we have one too - it's such a fab way of keeping in touch with everyone. Hope your chickens are all fine, glad to hear scramble 1 is a lot better. We started off with a plan to get a few chooks for in the garden but we've now aquired 17 birds!!! A menagerie of hens, ducks and geese, all adorable and becoming very tame. I do find them rather adictive though and end up spending far too much time "bonding" with them rather than getting on with work! I'm fyall_chick on the forum.
Speak to you soon & good luck with the chickens!
Lisa
It's a sad sad day when you finally sell out, stop fighting the system and do the "anything for a quiet life" thing.....I think it's part of growing older and becoming more mellow..Welcome to the club!!!
Hello Rach,
Sorry you had to design crap houses. It makes my heart sink when I drive around and see the same old mock-georgian boxy crap.
I'm no architectural expert (in fact I am speaking from a vast reservoir of ignorance) but I really agree with Alain deBotton when he says we have little choice because we don't get any new, inspired architectual examples.
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