Cookie Cutter? Or Just Ugly?
I recently took a trip to Deerfield and Salem, Massachusetts. They are charming, historic, beautiful, and in the case of Salem, as architecturally relevant today as it's been since 1629. Same can be said about countless cities across the world.
What's amazing is that most of the houses and buildings are very simple boxes with a lot of effort put into the details. They are as cookie cutter as cookie cutter gets, but they are beautiful and charming. So if this type of cookie cutter is okay, what is everyone talking about when they say they are sick of subdivisions and builders who just build cookie cutter houses? It's not the cookie cutter that's got everyone bored, it's the lack of character. It's the lack of order. It's the lack of beauty.
Browse through the gallery from a collection of homes in Salem and pay attention to the following four things:
#1) The front facades are pretty flat
#2) There are only two or three window types used on one facade.
#3) Visual interest is achieved through details and order
#4) Even though each house is a pretty simple box, each house is still unique. Look at how the uniqueness is achieved.
(click on the pictures to scroll through the gallery)
The following is another gallery from Deerfield, MA. Pay attention to the same things. This time make a mental note of how much of the front facade of the house is dedicated to the garage.
(click on the pictures to scroll through the gallery)
You will notice that there is no garage presence on any of the front facades of the homes shown so far. The garages are in the back. Why? Before cars, there was no sense keeping horse and buggy close to the house. But what's the effect? The house is a house, not a storage unit. Did you also notice the other things? Facades are relatively flat, roofs relatively simple, window types are minimized, and each house is simple yet distinct. The distinction is achieved through the details. Every home shown so far is about as cookie cutter and simple as you get. When combined on a street, it makes for a very nostalgic walk. It's beautiful.
Now lets look at those same things in a "cookie cutter" subdivision of today.
We call these homes cookie cutter too, even though they are much less cookie cutter than the traditional homes. They really are simple boring boxes. What makes them boring? The traditional cookie cutter homes were also simple boxes, but they weren't boring.
The primary issue is the prominence of the garage. Our car storage, convenient access, and square footage dedicated to our vehicles is why homes built today like this will always have no character or timeless appeal.
So solution number one is to put the garage in a less prominent position.
Regarding how flat the front facade is. These facades are anything but flat. Based on all the things I read in HOA design guidelines these days, one of the most persistent requirements is to step the facade in and out every X amount of feet. The 'boring boxes' of the last slide show have at least 4 facade breaks. Does that make them have more "visual interest"? Maybe in their case, but in the case of the first two slide shows with traditional design, they have all the right detail in all the right places. Ironically, those traditional homes wouldn't be permitted in nearly every new subdivision today. They don't have enough material variety, don't have plane breaks in the facades, and exceed the height restrictions.
Notice how the windows on the traditional design are there to reinforce order. The windows on present day designs are to reinforce code compliance while trying to fabricate some artificial visual interest. There is no reference to order since there is no order. The order and detail are what generate visual interest in the traditional designs. Because of new construction techniques and a lack of skilled designers and craftsman there are no proper details.
Uniqueness in these "cookie cutter" homes of today is rarely achieved because we no longer build by the principles that make for a timeless home. We try to achieve visual interest in all the wrong ways.
The next is some cookie cutter boxes from the split level era 30 or so years ago.
It's interesting that these have more in common with the traditional homes than homes of today. But it was their lack of detail, lack of order, and lack of character that spurred on the barf we have today. The lesson we seemed to have learned from this simplicity is that more is better. More gables, more window types, more facade breaks, more convoluted roof lines, more, more, more! So rather than putting more effort into understanding the details and what makes a home beautiful, we just put on more materials on ever more facade planes.
The point with all this is that cookie cutter is not inherently the issue. The issue is ugliness; ugliness resulting from a lack of order and a lack of detail. It's just more P.C. to call it cookie cutter than ugly. Unfortunately cookie cutter doesn't get to the heart of the problem.
