Question for architects and home designers. What's going on with new houses design, they are making these

ridiculos home plans where you enter a house and the first thing you see is a wall, the houses are divided in squares with interior walls evrywhere making houses small and cramped, what about columns? I saw one where the small dining area had 4 columns you couldn't walk into the house w/o hitting one, what about those rear entry garage? instead of having a nice backyard now you have a garage and a alley for cars where only one car can drive at a time. So when you get home you still have to drive to the end of the block turn around on the alleyway if there is another car leaving his house one of you has to back up, once you reach home you enter you house trough the back, ceilings: you see this houses with beautiful tall roofs on the outside as you enter, the interior ceilings are flat and low. Isn't cheaper and better to leave the vaulted ceiling inside, leave walls and columns off, have a front garage?Question for architects and home designers. What's going on with new houses design, they are making these
I am neither an architect or designer, but I am a contractor who works exclusivly with both...and for better or worse (worse in my opinion)..there is a growing trend in new home design to mimic the style of homes from times past.They are designing narrow homes so more can be built on their parcel of land,so the insides become more chopped up, the rear entry garage allows them to build narrow since a garage will be in the rear not on the side,vaulted ceilings are more expensive due to all the additional drywall work involved.You may also have noticed that they are also putting in sidewalks again...there is this same trend that people want a more neighborhood community feel,with homes closer together and sidewalks connecting everything.I am as neighborly as the next guy but I'll keep my 3.5 wooded acres...I like neighbors,I just do not want to see and hear them all the time.Question for architects and home designers. What's going on with new houses design, they are making these
Incoming book:





First off, a majority of the houses that are now being constructed in this country no longer designed or sealed by a licensed architect. Provided a developer is willing to accept the liability, they can proceed through the permitting and construction process without even consulting one. Typically major developers will have a designer, or even more rarely a pocket architect, to pound out a few plans and elevations and then mass produce the designs, regardless of their quality. This problem is multiplied that so many houses are now spec-homes. The owner / client involved in the design process is most often the developer. The people who will live in the home aren't involved in the design process until they have to decide what paint color they want, and if they want a laundry closer or half-bath under the staircase. There is no accountability for design anymore.





Cheapest materials used the easiest and quickest construction method are the rule of the day. Quality has been replaced by quantity for the better part 30 years, and all that is marketed for a house is the number of square feet, the number of cars the garage can hold, the number of bedrooms / bathrooms, and the faux style that the outside may look like. Houses that are honestly designed (rather than congealed from market conventions) tend to be smaller, more complex, and yes, more expensive. Even a person with no knowledge about architecture can walk into a designed (doesn't even have to be well designed) house, and immediately tell the difference.





As the poster above me pointed out and possibly might illustrate, the trend of hostility between architects and contractors reaches a new high each day. We should be working as a team on a project, not competitors after every bit of scrap we can pull from the budget. Architects are trained designers, and specialize in the overall concept, how the spaces ';work'; conceptually, and how the house will actually be used by the client (which should be the resident). Contractors have a pool of experience and knowledge about constructibility that an architect can never approach, and if they honestly feel a modification can benefit a project, the architect should listen and evaluate it. Instead, architects overdesign something, and instead of suggesting an alternative that may in fact be better for everyone involved, they'd rather construct the detail poorly, cheaply, and to the letter of the detail so they can point the finger elsewhere after it works in an unintended manner, or looks low quality.





Lot sizes and garage locations are becoming something of a polarized issue with everyone. The front of the house tends to be the most open, and tradition (with good reason) places items of import at the front, and moving the more mundane / functional features to the back. Having a garage in the front of your house means you're turning the least attractive part of your house to your neighbors. You'll have a front yard that's a large percentage paved. Sure it's easy to maintain, but it looks like crap after it cracks or gets oil spots on it. Spectacular first impression to make on other residents and visitors. Garages in the rear do detract from the backyard, but honestly how many people use the entirety of their backyard? Dogs don't need an entire park behind your house, kids can't play ball in the average sized backyard anyways, and even if you prefer to grow a garden, it doesn't have to be farm sized. Having a garage in the rear means you have a side of the house dedicated to the pragmatics: where the power and gas enter the home, where your car is stored, where your garbage is taken out to. And even with this collection of mundane uses, alleys tend to be a more private area where someone you see is either your neighbor, a utility provider, or someone that shouldn't be there. It's a fairly well defined realm with is hard to say about anything residential anymore. Alleys should have two points of entrance, and if you meet another car, simply pull into another driveway and let him pass. I've never had to back up more than 30 feet when I lived at a house with an alley. As to entering the house from the back, I never found this to be an issue. Usually you enter from the garage into an area adjacent to the kitchen. What is the most common type of items you carry from your car to your house? Groceries. And guess where those typically go.





Hinting back at an earlier point, without a good reason columns and vaulted ceilings are something most architects will do their best to talk a client out of. Most columns you encounter in houses are either completely fake, entirely avoidable, or horribly oversized. They're there because someone somewhere reasoned that ';having columns is something an upper class house would have'; and simply put some in for no better reason. This is probably the case in your (likely ';formal';) dining room example. Vaulted ceilings are more expensive, seriously increase the mechanical (AC / Heating) loads in a building, restrict how utilities are run through the house, and are a serious hazard should your house ever catch on fire. Vaulted ceilings that are vaulted for no reason other than look are a waste (note, pitched ceilings that open to a loft or to a larger window are not). Attics are useful spaces, but tend to be overdone in recent construction. One small attic space for the heater, AC blower, and perhaps some storage is all the is required. Anything else added just to make the house look more like a grandiose castle is indeed wasted.





And not everyone in this country can live on a wooded 3.5 acre lot. I'm not sure we have enough land area now, and we wouldn't in the future. The infrastructure cost would be staggering, to run utilities the extra half mile between every single home. A sense of community is practically lost even with zero lot lines, spacing people out farther isn't going to encourage that development as a whole.





Short Answer: Architects are too few and have given up too much power to be to blame for every problem with housing in this country. Some may be trying to help, some are most certainly hurting the situation. And every person outside looking into the process is going to have a different point of view, mostly because everyone in the process has one. Designers... you'd have to narrow that down some (though some are where some of the problems may lie).
why don't you become an architect