Ugly Houses – please dont build them!

Yes, this is a home, looks more like a commercial office building.

Take a drive down any of the new estates in Melbourne and you will see a growing trend in the design of houses. Its not always reflective of the owners but more of the developers and their body corporate style rulings. You see, they would rather build in named estates these days rather than the open plan development of yesteryear. We used to see an area built up and within months it would have blended in to the surrounding neighbourhood. Even 20-30 years on, you cannot tell where the lines between different stages where, as it was just well planned out.

Another house, but similar design, this time resembling an American lake house and old garage block all in one.

Now we live in a much different place, where having everything within a negated community is fashionable. They sell it as though its unique and all in one place, but it does breed a sense of prison farm mentality about it. The classic example of an estate gone bonkers is down at the old Waverley Park site in Melbourne's outer east. They were blocked by heritage from knocking down the whole stadium, so they left one section of the grand stand. Then below, a series of streets emerged and the lots began to sell, for a lot of money. Then came the style plan, which was put in place to limit the houses to a particular design book. Therefore colours of roofing, guttering and even the way your garden looks was all in a book to be followed to the last letter. This meant that all houses being built are featuring those ugly tall odd coloured structures called 'features'. Usually the houses are rendered as if to forget the bricks that are holding them up, or they simply choose to render only portions of the front, which appeals to... who exactly? Some houses don the grand entrance way, with fake pillars of opposing colour and material, these are generally hollow fiberglass structures.

I don't mind peoples own choice, however limiting a full scale urban development to a limited design style guide is simply pathetic. These houses will age quickly in the minds of those who won them, and not even their architectural labels will keep them in fashion. Look at the runways of Paris and Rome for the ideas of the future and see just how many of those are still worn on the streets in 12 months time.

Buy a block of land by all means, but remember the foundations you lay now, are there for the next generation to look at.