This is wild to me, I can't follow the author's logic here really at all. It reads like a borderline-satirical example of nostalgia for nostalgia's sake. They make such obnoxious claims like "I think most people have an intuitive sense that older homes are often special, and newer ones are often not".
Then they go on to list things that I associate much more with modern homes - not wasting floor space, and paying attention to the elements and light. A modern, open-concept design is optimizing much better for this than an old farmhouse where, for instance, the kitchen and formal dining room and living room are all closed off from each other. Modern homes often have floor to ceiling windows and sliding glass doors, old homes have tiny closed off windows. And old homes like the author uses as an example here are often just simple rectangles, so all the design decisions are constrained to be small square rooms. At least the "mcmansion" example in this post of a terrible new home has more interesting, non-perpendicular details and layout.
Maybe I just have an anti-nostalgia for this type of home, and maybe that makes me just as biased as the author in the opposite direction. I've never lived in a home like this but have been inside of a few of them, and they're often dark and closed in and kind of creepy. But I don't think I'm completely alone in feeling this way, there must be a reason so many horror movies are set in old farmhouses. To each their own, I guess.
(And on top of all this, I would argue that this kind of permeating attitude about new homes just not being special like old homes are plays a huge part in the current housing shortage crisis that much of the US faces, but I won't even go into that).
> I've never lived in a home like this but have been inside of a few of them, they're often dark and closed in and kind of creepy
I'm the author. I designed my house to have the enormous amounts of light that I found in older homes, that are often totally absent from new ones because of a reliance on electricity. You should see more of the "Colonials" that get built today. Many of them have zero windows on two sides (one side has the garage, the other merely has zero windows). There are numerous examples near me, this is right down the road: https://www.google.com/maps/@42.8408959,-71.6385114,3a,49y,3...
Those are dark and closed in. Many of the new homes I've been in, I had to turn on the light in the kitchen in the morning because they're so dark.
So this cheap-but-large construction is that mostly a US thing? I recognize very little of it from Sweden.
If I were to build somtething new it would have be much better planned space than older homes, and if I buy something built in the last 10 years it would be designed to be open, bright, clever, environmentally friendly, and with expensive lasting materials. Very old homes (100+ years) have a selection bias where the worst are torn down. Homes from 1940-1980 usually have terrible planning, cheap materials and so on, simply because people were poorer and prirorities were different (closed off kitchen, narrow hallways,...).
Huh. Apparently houses missing windows on an entire side are a common thing. I recently noticed a newly built house without any windows on one side. I had attributed this to the lot being split off from its neighbors, who presumably specced the new home that way for their own privacy. Evidently it's just a cost saving thing that people are willing to put up with. Weird.
It seems like essentially confirmation bias in action—the author notices crappy modern houses, but ignores great ones, and vice versa for old houses. Many of their complaints about modern houses do resonate for me, but for cheap suburban tract housing. For example, most suburban houses seem to have tiny windows. I suspect this is because windows that insulate to modern standards are expensive.
My city is full of many 100+ year old houses, and I looked at a lot of them last year when I was buying a house. Around here, you get big lovely windows (that you will spend a fortune to replace with double-paned ones), no insulation, and a layout that ranges from totally bizarre to serviceable, but inefficient. In the early 1900s, heating systems were very inefficient, so people wanted lots of small rooms with doors, so that you could heat only the room you're in. This is no longer necessary, and most homes have newer, efficient furnaces, but you're stuck with the old layout. In old homes, the kitchen was a tiny, functional space, rather than the gathering space like it is now. I thought it was rather funny they showed a big beautiful kitchen with an open floor plan. These are not common in 1900s homes.
I've lived in a mix of modern dwellings and older ones, and the simple truth is each have their advantages. Overall though, I'd say modern dwellings have better layouts and insulation, but cheaper finishes that you will despise looking at after a few months. Older houses have lovely details, but they're likely all worn out in various ways (my glass doorknobs are beautiful, but also very wobbly and loose), and layout was probably great 100 years ago, but doesn't conform to modern living styles.
You’re thinking of expensive or maybe region-specific “designer” homes. If you just go look at most of the kinds of new houses being built, up to surprisingly high price points (as noted in TFA), it’s exactly as described. The waste of space especially drives me nuts and it’s everywhere in most new construction. Ditto shockingly bad and cheap-feeling fixtures and doors even in very expensive houses. When they do mimic huge “open” design spaces (incidentally, the Worst Thing Ever if you have kids) these kinds of builders usually do it because it’s cheaper, and then screw it up so the flow/layout, somehow, still sucks and wastes space—because all they care about is that the house looks impressive in photos on Zillow.
You're both right. Most modern homes are designed by builders or their terrible architects. If you're going to spend $1 million on a home, hire a good architect and get a nice home. Builders (usually) "design" terrible homes. They have goals at odds with the eventual home buyer (as the poster points out).
We recently build a house too and we avoided to have an open floor design. When kitchen, dinging area and living room are connected, you have no place to get peace when anyone is occupying one area. Our kids can watch tv now, while we relax at the table or someone is cooking.
Then they go on to list things that I associate much more with modern homes - not wasting floor space, and paying attention to the elements and light. A modern, open-concept design is optimizing much better for this than an old farmhouse where, for instance, the kitchen and formal dining room and living room are all closed off from each other. Modern homes often have floor to ceiling windows and sliding glass doors, old homes have tiny closed off windows. And old homes like the author uses as an example here are often just simple rectangles, so all the design decisions are constrained to be small square rooms. At least the "mcmansion" example in this post of a terrible new home has more interesting, non-perpendicular details and layout.
Maybe I just have an anti-nostalgia for this type of home, and maybe that makes me just as biased as the author in the opposite direction. I've never lived in a home like this but have been inside of a few of them, and they're often dark and closed in and kind of creepy. But I don't think I'm completely alone in feeling this way, there must be a reason so many horror movies are set in old farmhouses. To each their own, I guess.
(And on top of all this, I would argue that this kind of permeating attitude about new homes just not being special like old homes are plays a huge part in the current housing shortage crisis that much of the US faces, but I won't even go into that).