More anti-newurbanism

Issaquah Highlands embraces stylish nostalgia. So says Lawrence W. Cheek:

When a house is designed from the outside in -- meaning that all its functions must be juggled and packed into a shell of a predetermined size, shape and style -- there's literally no way to think outside that box. Which is exactly what's needed in home design today. Twenty-first century families need flexibility in interior space (movable walls, maybe?), lots of storage, ways to express and nurture individuality, and above all, better value. It's time to rethink the house, not recycle antique thinking.

I debate this fellow's premise. Yes, we have smaller families now and fewer servants than did people in the 19th and early 20th century. But do we need more flexibility, more storage. "more ways to nurture and express individuality" and better "value" than did people of the past? Do we really need to "rethink the house"? I doubt it. I am usual suspicious of critics who call for more imagination. That sounds to me like archi-babble. But go read the whole thing and make up your own mind

The more significant question raised is whether designing from the inside out to produce (supposedly and dubiously) "imaginative design" is possible within the context of creating the uniform platted streets which are essential to an urbane neighborhood. (Believe it or not, even though this project is 20 miles away, I haven't seen Issaquah Highlands so I can't judge whether Cheek's criticism are valid or not.) But overall the tone of his criticism strikes me as from the "artier than thou" school and of little relevance in building interesting neighborhoods.

Comments

[clew]

My favorite modernist populist houses glory in the box; the ones made of one-or-more shipping containers, suitable for suddenly moving across continents. Sometimes the containers get stacked up kittycorner to each other, if there's room on the lot.

The obvious comeback to a complaint that something is like one of the late-Victorian garden suburbs is that many of those have survived really well, economic upturns and downturns and changes in commute patterns and all. That's a fine test of a 'machine for living'.

The un-obvious comeback is that the Victorians thought of 'more storage space' and 'movable interior walls' and were triple-wool fanatics for expressing family and individual creativity. All of this in their aesthetic modes, not ours, but the modes are no farther apart than a change of decoupage. Beecher and Beecher-Stowe's articles could be republished in _Readymade_ or _Ladies' Home Journal_, leaving in the arguments for efficiency or Christian domesticity respectively.

I read a reprint collection of Vic. houseplans recently, Victorian Houses, in which the plan for a two-room family dwelling with moveable closet/screen/walls particularly stood out.

[Will Cox]

I think it's just not a well-written piece. He makes valid points, or so they seem, about misplaced windows and other features, but it is hard to say without walking through the houses. The least we need is a picture of an example.

Where he goes off the deep end is in mentioning modernism. And assuming that a artistic architect would be less clumsy than one who followed traditional forms.

[Laurence Aurbach]

It's ironic that the article mentions the styles of 1905 with disapproval, because that's when Corbusier received his first commission, villa à La Chaux-de-Fonds. It was also the period Frank Lloyd Wright developed and refined his Prairie Style. "Toward a New Architecture" appeared in 1923 and it said...the problem was the bourgeois love of comfort, tradition, ornament. And the solution was "brave" architects who would make a "bold" break with tradition into contemporary machine forms.

The author apparently feels no embarrassment in dusting off tired cliches from 80 years ago. Apparently the problem is not nostalgia itself, rather, it is which nostalgia is preferred by the free market. Labeling architects and homebuyers "chicken" is only going to work on insecure folks who need to feel superior to the vast majority who think a cute, stylish house is a pretty damn good thing.

I question the statement that modernism provides an "infinite variety of ways to create transitional indoor/outdoor space." What does this mean, other than glass walls? And why is modernism the only style that can achieve it? It seems to me that any style can be adapted to glass walls and provide "transitional" indoor/outdoor space (assuming that's in fact what the market wants).

[Brian Miller]

Although my personal tastes tend toward good, finely crafted and human scale modernism, I still think L. Aurbach nails it. As much as I love the open ceilings and floor plans and skylights and quirky materials, I still love and appreciate traditional neighborhoods. In fact, I wonder if modern houses only work if there is a structure of traditional houses. (See San Francisco, for example, where the "all modernist" neighborhoods like Diamond Heights are, stunning views aside, quite deadly dull in their streetscapes.)

[TM Lutas]

I expect that technology is going to make rethinking the house inevitable. Indoor plumbing changed houses in very real ways, broadband connectivity is likely to do it again as you are going to be able to do an awful lot of work at home and are going to need a space to do it in.

[Michael Meckler]

Not being in the Seattle area, I can't really comment on the specifics of this development. I would, however, like to point out that New Urbanism gains commercial appeal only when the homes fulfill popular expectations of value. Ornamentation, being quantitatively something more than sparseness, is viewed by homebuyers as value. Exterior "living spaces" (such as porches and decks) also count. But, alas, so do the anti-new urban concepts of excessive lot size, square footage, and "cathedral" ceilings.

The aspects of New Urbanism that planners love (condensed and compact neighborhoods) are not necessarily what excite most new homebuyers. So one is left wondering, is New Urbanism fated to turn into merely a variety of Postmodern residential architecture?

[David Sucher]

Anyone worried about the success of new urbanist developments must not be familiar with the prices which old urbanist housing fetches.