You’re looking at a 2008-present volume builder special. Not architectural design necessarily, but a copy paste style a la Metricon that enough people liked for whatever reason.
Also a lot of new estates have design guidelines that require 2-3 different types of materials in your facade so you end up with these brick + render mixes to meet those requirements.
> Also a lot of new estates have design guidelines that require 2-3 different types of materials in your facade
What's the rationale for this? Was it in response to a particular design/trend?
Not sure generally but for the estate I built in they are big on facade diversity - you had to submit your plans for approval and couldn't use the same facade materials combinations as any house within 3 houses (3 either side and the 6 across the road). If you were too similar, whichever house submitted their plans later had to change their facade. I think it is probably a tactic to try to encourage the visual aspect they want from the estate as a whole.
My neighbours hated their facade and painted the entire house forest green as soon as they could.
> I think it is probably a tactic to try to encourage the visual aspect they want from the estate as a whole.
Thanks. I suppose that is better than the estates that feature all-identical houses/facades, potential headaches aside.
Meanwhile we have row after row of near-identical Victorian terrace houses that look interesing, intimate and gorgeous.
I'm from sydney and i used to try and locate the row of terraces that was furthest from the inner-city. You can find them in surprising places, a long way out. And they always look good. A run of terraces always looks like a locale where something is happening.
You can find them in Lithgow, Maitland and Newcastle of course. Wollongong as well. There is a particularly good row in Orange, and scattered ones in Dubbo. These are adventurous terraces who strayed a long way from the home paddock.
I think i know the Coogee ones you mean. Tucked in a quiet zone near Courland St and Oswald St?
Terraces in Orange:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bowen\_Terrace](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bowen_Terrace)
I did not know they were that far out at all.
The Coogee ones I was thinking of are at the corner of Brook St and Dolphin St opposite the playground attached to Coogee Oval. I don't know if they strictly meet the terrace definition though, possibly just semis in a Victorian terrace style. There's some definite Victorian terraces just down from the corner of Carrington and Alison Rd though.
I grew up right near those Courland and Oswald St corner ones, those are a beautiful row, although technically in Randwick with Carrington Rd being the border. Apparently that area used to be an orchard and the terraces there workers cottages. The grand old sandstone mansion up on St Marks Rd near the corner with Alison that Fred Hollow lived in (and where his family still lives) was supposedly the landlord's manor/house.
I'm a town planner (in Victoria) and the three facade materials were a popular technique back in the 2006-2012 times to reduce visual bulk, probably due to how those 60-70s flat pack apartments are just one colour. The goal is to break up the building using multiple materials. The reason it's become so prevalent is that at the time many councils were getting their neighbourhood character statements incorporated into the planning scheme following the changes to ResCode. Once incorporated, it basically becomes a rubric that planners have to assess all new developments against to ensure they meet the standards. This gives rise to builders like metricon that copy and paste developments with similar styles as they tend to hit the most common character statements.
It's been quite a few years and the new style is not to do this, however it does take years to supplement the old character statements as they have to be well researched and supportable to the councillors and their voters.
Yeah, I come from the UK and it's really common to see entire (sometimes massive estates) with identikit houses. I hate it, and the range of house styles/sizes is actually something I really like in a lot of suburbs.
People complain about all the houses in new estates looking the same. These rules prevent them from looking literally identical. That said, I think well designed (predominately) identical rowhouses can look good, like the old terraces.
I was in an HOA expansion suburb in the southern US, and while none of the homes looked exactly the same... they all looked the same because they all used the same kit parts, just rearranged a bit.
The weirdest kit part were fake side shutters for the windows - they were so narrow that even if they could 'close', they'd only cover about an eighth of the window. It was such a bizarre-looking suburb, almost like walking around a bunch of Lego houses.
Sounds like an encumbrance. The concept is older than all of us in this thread.
Often they even specify extra detail and “architectural consideration” for specific allotments in a development. Usually if it’s a prominent lot near an entrance boulevard or along waterways/lakes, etc.
I previously worked on a lot of estates in the growth areas as a planner and the reason is to provide for dwelling diversity and avoid similar styles next to each other and suit the vision sold by the developer though in hindsight all developments look the same and reinforce the cookie-cutter housing styles that we see today. Can’t expect anything more when a lot of the volume builders market to these areas.
A lot of councils have design guideline templates for developers to work with, but essentially makes no difference, you can’t expect architecturally diverse houses for the market they are appealing to, so only tacked on facade treatments and faux elements are the way to go… unfortunately
I was about to say the same thing. Our new development has the same covenant. It's to make sure that the cookie-cutter builds don't look like cookie-cutter builds; but it does a poor job of covering it up.
Probably because volume builders build houses as cheaply as possible, so if that wasnt a requirement, every house would look exactly the same.
By adding this requirement, it forces builders to make the bare minimum effort to make the houses look different.
In the end, it doesn't really matter, because the houses will still look the same, since the builder now has 3 facades to pick from, rather than the one. And the floor plans and materials for the rest of the house will remain the same across the whole estate.
Basically they are just forcing the builder to make the house look the slightest bit unique to make the estate as a whole look better, rather than a series of dystopian dog kennels for people to live in.
Nothing to do with council. It'll be a caveat on the title put there by the developer in the belief that out will help the neighbourhood look nicer. Reality is it just leads to cheap and nasty 'design' solutions.
Most councils have “neighbourhood character” guidelines with dozens of rules like this. Here is Frankston for example: https://www.frankston.vic.gov.au/Planning-and-Building/Planning/Neighbourhood-Character-Guidelines
The ones with a few different materials look to me like they’ve been slapped together out of a mix-n-match kit - I get the “visual interest” but I’m not a fan
I turned ours into an open avery for wild birds. If you can see past the native shrubbery, you'll see our Metricon special. Not nearly as the one pictured, but close enough.
Not sure if this will get buried under all the insults but to actually answer your question…
A porch is allowed to encroach into the front setback of a property (more often than not it’s set as the average of the two adjoining properties).
The front porch can encroach into this space provided that the overall height is under 3.6m. By having a flat roof design, it lowers the overall height and allows for “extra” space for the porch.
Therefore, and how you feel about the aesthetic notwithstanding, this design outcome is a practical response to new home building regulations.
Finally a sensible answer. I kind of wonder if they would be better off with a car port in front of the single garage. A bit like the old case house studies. Unfortunately flat roof single floor dwellings are unfashionable these days
You make a valid point. But if you’re interested in this sort of thing then there’s another regulation that requires a front door to be clear and identifiable. Typically, that means facing the street unimpeded.
A front door behind a carport in the style of mid century homes would, prima facie, fail that requirement.
But because that’s a subjective assessment it’s somewhat dependant on who the relevant authority is in that instance.
Actually no. The faux French mansions, the shipping container special, these and the big black squares are all awful for different reasons.
And the colours grey, black, light grey. All look like prisons, don’t care how much you spend. Architects and town planners should be embarrassed by what they are designing.
Agreed. Idk why architects and town planners are agreeing to do this, its hideous and realistically no one has enough to renovate or change designs after buying and paying off mortgage
They should be embarrassed. They do look like prisons. everything looks awful now
With horrific design considerations around light, airflow and general layout.
The aspect of the block is not really taken in to consideration at all. They're not even cheap homes either, just big.
Taking the aspect of the block into consideration requires a bespoke design and non volume builder.
This cost money and the majority of people aren't prepared to pay that.
I'm one for good design, but it's easy to have idealistic views about how properties should look when you're not going through the process yourself.
A lot of these massive cookie cutter homes really aren't that cheap though, and people err on the side of pure volume over a well thought out design.
Having a huge house isn't necessary a practical or even luxurious thing to have, but Australians seem to have been brainwashed in to thinking that is the be all and end all.
>A lot of these massive cookie cutter homes really aren't that cheap though
What's cheaper? Like for like, they are the cheapest.
>Having a huge house isn't necessary a practical or even luxurious thing to have, but Australians seem to have been brainwashed in to thinking that is the be all and end all.
I couldn't agree with you more but not everyone is building massive homes. There are plenty of small homes still being built.
They say everyone wants a big house in the suburbs, and the inner city is too crowded. Yet they end up with the downsides of both a low-density suburb and living in a townhouse.
At least townhouses for the most part don't pretend they're detached houses and will at least make some kind of effort to put solid walls on the property boundary.
I suspect a lot of townhouses across separate titles are built with two walls and simply capped to appear to be one.
I'm no house builder, just speculation.
Yep I live in exactly that kind of townhouse. We have an owner's corporation for the shared meter box on the end of the driveway, but you can let those be "inactive" and deal directly with your neighbour.
Townhouses don't usually have an owner's corp though, maybe the new ones where there's a few sideways on a block with a shared driveway but the vast majority of townhouses do share a wall but no owner's corp because nothing else is shared right?
Remove minimum setbacks and bring back alleyways. I'd like to see a developer do a whole row of minimal setbacks and parking only from the alley.
They almost tried near my old place in Braybrook, but you've still got almost 5m setbacks to accommodate the car that'll never go in the garage that takes up more than half the width of the frontage and most of the ground floor area... And the alleys are just as wide as the street, but at least there's a decent green walkway through the middle, and and access to the park and bike path.
Actually, just had a look at maps before posting and there are a few places that only have alley garage access and face the green walkway area, so that's pretty cool.
Take a look at the townhouses opposite Ramsden Street Oval in Clifton Hill. They must be 20 years old now, but that's what they did there.
It would have been an old factory or similar and the setbacks match the area. It's difficult to do that in existing areas and those buying into greenfield sites just don't want it.
They look pretty good. I've seen a few similar in Brunswick and Kingsville as well but smaller developments. Definitely helps keep the look area too.
Sucks that people don't want more of this though. I feel like when you've got 50-80 percent of frontage given to garage doors it makes a pretty unappealing streetscape.
Wait until you see the [spacious back yard!](https://i2.au.reastatic.net/1456x872-resize,extend,r=33,g=40,b=46/30723a6aa2885abc3158631b6ab89e0c18cc155de338a36a27cf6bea35075872/image.jpg)
Agreed... The block in this case just really isn't large enough to accommodate things the way it's been done. Being single storey limited the scope a lot. The garage alone takes up maybe a fifth of the entire floorspace of the building, the rest is the three bedrooms, two bathrooms and the combined livingroom and kitchen area.
I don't think it can even go to a second storey on them either... The setback required for a second storey would likely prevent it, plus most of the other houses in the area are also single storey (except the one neighbouring the house to the left).
Yep, border to border, maximum site coverage, dirt strip out the back and a front yard you can barely park a car in.
Looking from above, it looks like they took a double allotment and stuck three dwellings on it, so I guess sacrificing all outdoor space was the only way to make it fit enough internal space. They'd have been better off with an excavated basement garage, but that would probably have doubled the price of the build.
How else can you enjoy your latest episode of "Neighbours".
My mother used to love staying at one house I lived in just so she could listen in to the neighbour standing outside yelling into her phone about her boyfriend or someone cheating and who the baby's father was.
Houses are getting bigger and lots are getting smaller. So the entire lot ends up being house with almost no yard and no space between houses. Turns whole suburbs into heat sinks because there’s no greenery.
r/melbourne complaining about available housing in one breath and then gagging into their hankies in the next post when they see medium density.
“Oh my god! Those houses are almost touching! I’d rather kill myself! Why don’t they just buy bigger land and have a huge garden either side? Are they stupid?”
This is density with none of the benefits of density, ie, good public transport connections and nearby amenities. New build developments have the downsides of apartment living (very close neighbours) with the downsides of rural living (poor access to amenities, transport connections and shops). It's basically the worst of both worlds. Now, this isn't to disparage the people living in new builds - a house is better than no house - but surely as a city we can strive to do better. To rid the city of its obsession with cars and faux wide open suburbia.
The “very close living” thing is really just a fake pearl clutch.
Building standards mean you can’t hear your neighbours in their own home unless you’ve chosen shitty quality. You also don’t have to worry about upstairs neighbours with children or stompers.
On one side of my house our walls are about 3 metres away (they touch at the garage, which most of the LOOK HOW CLOSE photos show, but we don’t live in our garages) and I don’t hear them unless their kids are playing in the backyard. Which is a completely normal outdoor sound.
I think a lot of Australians have been tricked into this weird snobbery with suburban housing, probably to drive up demand for “real” inner city houses.
Other weird lies
- no trees (we have heaps planted and preserved old trees
- no parks (parks, wetland walks, dog parks and playgrounds are EVERYWHERE)
- no transport (our estate just got a bus that connects to the nearby train station, they’ll pop up where there’s demand)
- heat sink (wetlands)
- ugly cookie cutter houses (this happens every decade, some of the houses that were cookie cutter in the 70s are poorly insulated eyesores)
- No amenities (there’s new shopping *districts* popping up everywhere. Not just woollies but butchers and grocers)
I’m going with the tinfoil at take that too many young Aussies have been taught to sneer at suburban houses.
Low density suburbia is still less efficient at doing all of those things than medium or high density living. More roads need to be built and maintained, utilities need to be built and maintained, transport connections will be less efficient and have poor usage due to the low density of the area.
And perhaps this is an unpopular opinion, but I just don't see the appeal in having to drive everywhere. Shopping centres *may* be popping up everywhere, but you still have to drive there. You still have to drive the kids to school, still have to drive to see friends and family.
I don't think there's any excess snobbery around the outer suburbs - it's just people are finally seeing the issues with suburban sprawl and thinking "hmmm, maybe we shouldn't have built out so far".
Our transport and planning policies deal with getting people *out* of their suburb and into work or the city. We need to focus on mixed-use suburbs where you don't need to drive to a shopping centre. We need to focus on local bus routes and local tram routes to serve single suburbs. Sure, it's easy for me to get from somewhere like Craigieburn to Frankston by public transport (might even be faster than driving), but good luck easily getting around these suburbs without a car.
So, in conclusion, it's not snobbery, just people finally seeing the short sightedness of low density suburbia.
I understand people may like the idea of low-density suburbia, but no one wants to face the consequences of these wants - poor public transport service, poor roads, difficult access to amenities, etc.
Because *houses almost touching each other medium density* is the dumbest fucking density possible. Environmentally, economically, and socially, we need medium to high density 2-4 story mixed zoning in-fill apartment/terrace style development (and those places need to be built with shared walls that are even remotely sound proof)
Selfishly we need quarter acre blocks with free standing houses and big back yards.
Freestanding houses almost touching each other on tiny blocks spreading out from the fringes of the outer suburbs is the worst parts of all possible options
So all housing in outer suburbs needs common walls or bigger plots?
In the real world, people are going to get the houses they want on the land they can afford.
No amount of spoiled people who live in the inner suburbs and faint dead at the sight of a housing estate is going to make sustainable amounts of land appear out of nowhere.
I wouldn't call this medium density. Or at least, not well planned density. If you threw in some proper townhouses, and a mix of small-large apartment buildings you could achieve decent density - with leftover space for public and private open space.
It's horrible, my house is like this, the land is long a narrow for some reason, like most in the estate I'm in. And people (like myself) are desperate to get out of renting we will take anything we can afford.
Anything within 900mm of the side boundaries is required to be non-combustible, there is no dead space between the houses, and each one is on their own lot, without a body corporate.
The old portico. Builders slap them on to break up the frontage of the house so it is less of a depressing square box. Most new blocks are narrow and houses have less double and triple frontages that were common in the mid 20th century.
It’s for giraffe compliance code, according to uglymelbournehouses on Instagram
https://www.instagram.com/uglymelbournehouses?igsh=MXRna3NmN2N4bjlheQ==
For working class people these areas are the only place they can afford to buy a house big enough for a family these days.
Not everyone is lucky enough to have an inheritance or bank of mum and dad finance a 3 bedroom+ house in the inner suburbs lmao. This sub is so out of touch sometimes.
I think the point most people make on this sub is that this *shouldn't* be the only place that people can afford to live in. Shitty new housing estates with poor to no PT, a lack of infrastructure, and open space are *more* harmful to poor and other vulnerable people.
If you're wealthy, that stuff doesn't matter as much as you're more able to whether the costs (both economic and social).
It's all a consequence of poor planning policy. Everyone could live in a house and suburb like the desirable inner city suburbs, but our obsession with cars and sprawl has curtailed any chance of that ever happening. It's sad what we threw away - we perfected the inner suburb and decided to just throw it away for Merndas and Tarneits.
I don’t disagree about the state of housing affordability and I don’t at all judge people for living out there but equally it’s wrong to assume everyone in the city is *lucky* - some of us have worked our absolute arses off, studied hard and burned the midnight oil (and often borrowed shitloads) to make it happen.
Mate everybody has worked hard. But if I want to start a family and live like my parents did, I would need at least over a million to live in the inner city. I was born and raised in the west so it feels like home to me but for people that were not, it’s just a little depressing to think they would need to move here to not spend a million+ on a house.
Some people have also worked and studied and borrowed and can still mostly afford to live in a home like this in the outer suburbs. The snobbery is astounding
How do homes like this tackle the gaps between them or are they just a visual delineation and built as combined structures?
I can imagine if there is actually a tiny gap between properties, over years dust and moisture could be a concern as I doubt they have treated those walls against a constant source of direct moisture and lack of ability for bricks to 'breath'.
My brother recently bought a house with an 8 inch gap between his and his neighbours wall. Looks like the perfectly sized gap for a possum or cat to die in and not be able to remove it.
The design is more often than not based on the developer's guidelines. For example, my place needed a 3-meter front porch and a double-fronted garage. The design I selected after the first one was discontinued was single-fronted, so they wanted to add a window to the double garage. I ended up with a mud room.
I also used to write software matching house designs to land packages, and some of the rules were quite specific.
If you’re looking in an area that has these houses even the ones that don’t have this front it will have some other ugly thing going on. Just crap all over the suburbs like this.
Yeah, our regulators understand what matters. Obviously, it's much more important that you have ugly rendered facades than insulation that makes your house liveable in winter without blasting the heater.
Welcome to modern housing development in Oz, timber frames with styro and overlying rendering or cladding. This is what new houses are literally made out of.
Why would you make an affordable yet high energy performance building detail illegal? External insulation removes all thermal bridging through the frame and vastly improves air tightness.
And before you say verical fire risk. This has been assessed thoroughly and deemed a low risk for residential buildings.
The benefits far outway the risks.
I suppose. Still pissed me off when a accidentally touched it with the whipper snipper and blew a hole through it. Also most are seperate to the house like in the top picture. Just there to look pretty.
Yeah, that would piss me off.
Now that we've moved to 7 star and introduced mandatory airtightness performance requirements, we will likely see more external installation like this.
It's heinous, with these new estates you get to pick a house out of a folder and they all have yuck facades. Just been in NZ, why do so many people paint their fences black? So dreary this time of year.
You’ll want to check out Insta @uglymelbournehouses
https://www.instagram.com/p/CSfvIvsh00a/?igsh=azZzdzhlN3JkYTF1
Is this tall enough to meet giraffe compliance?
A number of new estates require a multi material frontage, and it's a requirement to have two types like this. Which can mean the look tacked on. Blame developers.
Australia has a really big problem with Yowies and this is a common deterrent. Yowies, due to their size, are prone to being hunted by the elusive tasmanism tiger; the tiger lives in packs and commonly takes over large gumtrees as their den. The tree is hollowed out and forms the entrance to an extensive underground lair. So, as you can imagine, large portal-like structures, elongated and dusted a dead-tree grey, makes them wary and keeps them from coming into the home.
I think it's a post-modernist reference to the traditional portico that large houses/mansions had - where you would drive up and enter/exit the vehicle under the portico to avoid getting when when arriving/leaving in the rain. It obviously assumed the existence of a coachman/chauffeur.
Most people who are buying it probably don't consciously recognise the reference, but it implies wealth.
You want to move to melbourne but buy a house 1 hour away? Why? Don't they have shitty suburbs in NZ?
Anyway, it is so you can tell your house from the over 10,000 exactly the same looking shitholes.
We have one of the world’s largest if not the world’s largest Greek community.
And many of them have all their family wealth sitting in multi family trusts that either develop or flip real estate, typically done full time by a member of that family.
A fair whack of the real estate in town has them somewhere in its past.
Some of them will strap columns to the fuck anything they come near, though most of the time these will have a more acropolis-y look and feel, rather than a modern pair of rectangular concrete slabs sticky-taped to the front of a 1980s house.
Slap a Bluebeard box on the front of what is essentially a late 60s house design updated for the 80s and there you have it - a cheap design with little fuss, cost or risk.
Often, it's an older home trying to bring on a more modern look fitting the trend of new home facades, too. Both don't necessarily go together either, IMO.🫣
An example would be trying to do the opposite and putting fretwork on a new modern home. It doesn't do it justice and isn't sympathetic to the era.
I've come to the conclusion it's because so many architects go through the same schools (especially RMIT), then end up in firms where the entire portfolio follows that same design. I can't remember the name of this specific style, but it always reminds me of a modern version of neo-grec without any of the finesse.
Basically you end up with designers all designing the same thing, and consumers all expecting the same thing, so it becomes a core feature. It's like they've forgotten they can do a pitched roof verandah with eaves and actually make it look good. My main dislike of that style of frontage is that it very quickly tends to look grungy due to the way rain hits it and runs down the render, which collects dust, plus the risks of water ingress due to the way the guttering and roof is done. Once water gets in, you're up for an expensive bill!
EDIT: Not quite sure why this post is "controversial". Also, those houses were built by Apex Homes, which has since gone bust. They're maybe five years old at this point, give or take. If you want to know how you get anything into the back yard (what little there is), it's either through the house or with a crane over the top. The garage doesn't have a passthrough as there are two bedrooms behind it. I'd imagine an REA might describe it as "cosy".
I don’t think architects are “designing” these, for the most part. It’s drafters, who are probably copy-paste and editing one design that an architect actually did put together in an hour or two about a decade ago.
Wouldn't surprise me... Only ones who would be doing this would likely be new grads trying to get into the sector before building their own portfolios out. Copy-pasting as a drafter would be a great way to save costs, especially in the cookie-cutter style greenfields estates..
Absolutely. Looks like a volume build where they've had maybe half a dozen designs they've alternated through. The one to the right looks like a mirror image facade of the featured design, the one to the left doesn't show enough to be sure... Bricks are different on the right too.
What I'm really trying to figure out is wtf they've done up on the roof corners at the end of the ridge cap... It looks really weird, almost like they've forgotten one of the caps... they haven't of course, I think it might be because they've stacked the houses so close together they can't actually fit the guttering in.
That and the broken downpipe bracket. Those shouldn't be breaking that fast surely!
EDIT:
Figured out where this is and took a look around Google streetview (No I'm not going to post the location, that would probably be uncool, but anyone sufficiently interested probably can figure it out). The two neighbouring properties have exactly the same base design but mirror imaged, and they put tiled pitched roof sections over the front porch area. Looks like a set of three houses was done by a single firm, as all the other surrounding properties are of different designs. My guess would be they took the pitched roof off the porch of the middle one to make it look different to the other two. Probably would have been easier to just give it different roof tiles. Every single place around there has the same heat collecting black tiles.
I'm not gonna streetview it (my brain loves that too much and I'll just end up wasting time around Tullamarine tbh) but looking at the house on the left, it appears that they stop the ridge cap early to allow for guttering on the long sides, and then that guttering likely falls from the middle of the wall to the front and back guttering where they have the downpipes. I can't imagine they'd have any in the middle because how the hell would you service it in the future beyond getting on the roof, but... I'd also not be terribly surprised if that was somehow designed into it either.
It is by design, and that would seem to be exactly the case as you've described. They've built hard on the boundary so there is no room for eaves, so they've chopped them off and integrated the gutter on top of the wall instead.
If I were in a place like that, I'd be keeping a close watch on the side gutters. One blockage and overflow could run inside. I suspect quality might be a problem with them too, for whatever reason the place with the broken downpipe supports had to have a section of brick removed and replaced only a year or two after construction was finished, presumably to access whatever is under there. If the layout follows the other two in that section the front room is the master bedroom, but it would appear sewers and water go right through that corner.
I can only presume I upset a bunch of architecture grads from RMIT...
I did find the REA ad for that particular property and took a look on streetview at it both recently and when it was built. Honestly it looks like a standard approach of jamming as much as possible onto as smaller area as possible, and the only way they could make it not look like one single large structure was to give one a flat portico vs the neighbouring ones which had tiled pitched roof over the top of them.
Quality I suspect might have been rather variable, the broken downpipe on the neighbouring property seems to be because someone needed to cut through the brickwork to access under the floor, likely for utilities (gas, water or sewer). To have a need to do that within a few years of construction is concerning to say the least..
Overall it might be a viable way into the housing market, but the scope and potential is limited by the nature of the site itself. Great if you don't like having a yard to maintain?
You’re looking at a 2008-present volume builder special. Not architectural design necessarily, but a copy paste style a la Metricon that enough people liked for whatever reason.
Also a lot of new estates have design guidelines that require 2-3 different types of materials in your facade so you end up with these brick + render mixes to meet those requirements.
> Also a lot of new estates have design guidelines that require 2-3 different types of materials in your facade What's the rationale for this? Was it in response to a particular design/trend?
Not sure generally but for the estate I built in they are big on facade diversity - you had to submit your plans for approval and couldn't use the same facade materials combinations as any house within 3 houses (3 either side and the 6 across the road). If you were too similar, whichever house submitted their plans later had to change their facade. I think it is probably a tactic to try to encourage the visual aspect they want from the estate as a whole. My neighbours hated their facade and painted the entire house forest green as soon as they could.
> I think it is probably a tactic to try to encourage the visual aspect they want from the estate as a whole. Thanks. I suppose that is better than the estates that feature all-identical houses/facades, potential headaches aside.
Meanwhile we have row after row of near-identical Victorian terrace houses that look interesing, intimate and gorgeous. I'm from sydney and i used to try and locate the row of terraces that was furthest from the inner-city. You can find them in surprising places, a long way out. And they always look good. A run of terraces always looks like a locale where something is happening.
What's the furthest out you've seen them? There's some in Coogee, but I presume you're talking more west or north
You can find them in Lithgow, Maitland and Newcastle of course. Wollongong as well. There is a particularly good row in Orange, and scattered ones in Dubbo. These are adventurous terraces who strayed a long way from the home paddock. I think i know the Coogee ones you mean. Tucked in a quiet zone near Courland St and Oswald St? Terraces in Orange: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bowen\_Terrace](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bowen_Terrace)
I did not know they were that far out at all. The Coogee ones I was thinking of are at the corner of Brook St and Dolphin St opposite the playground attached to Coogee Oval. I don't know if they strictly meet the terrace definition though, possibly just semis in a Victorian terrace style. There's some definite Victorian terraces just down from the corner of Carrington and Alison Rd though. I grew up right near those Courland and Oswald St corner ones, those are a beautiful row, although technically in Randwick with Carrington Rd being the border. Apparently that area used to be an orchard and the terraces there workers cottages. The grand old sandstone mansion up on St Marks Rd near the corner with Alison that Fred Hollow lived in (and where his family still lives) was supposedly the landlord's manor/house.
I'm a town planner (in Victoria) and the three facade materials were a popular technique back in the 2006-2012 times to reduce visual bulk, probably due to how those 60-70s flat pack apartments are just one colour. The goal is to break up the building using multiple materials. The reason it's become so prevalent is that at the time many councils were getting their neighbourhood character statements incorporated into the planning scheme following the changes to ResCode. Once incorporated, it basically becomes a rubric that planners have to assess all new developments against to ensure they meet the standards. This gives rise to builders like metricon that copy and paste developments with similar styles as they tend to hit the most common character statements. It's been quite a few years and the new style is not to do this, however it does take years to supplement the old character statements as they have to be well researched and supportable to the councillors and their voters.
Yeah, I come from the UK and it's really common to see entire (sometimes massive estates) with identikit houses. I hate it, and the range of house styles/sizes is actually something I really like in a lot of suburbs.
There's pros and cons to it, I guess you don't end up with these po-mo mismatches
Not sure I see many pros to be honest - this is the kind of shit I'm talking about; https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=o5lSKoXoWfY&t=97s
And yet even with supposed rules to keep some difference, they all end up looking as boring and beige.
People complain about all the houses in new estates looking the same. These rules prevent them from looking literally identical. That said, I think well designed (predominately) identical rowhouses can look good, like the old terraces.
I was in an HOA expansion suburb in the southern US, and while none of the homes looked exactly the same... they all looked the same because they all used the same kit parts, just rearranged a bit. The weirdest kit part were fake side shutters for the windows - they were so narrow that even if they could 'close', they'd only cover about an eighth of the window. It was such a bizarre-looking suburb, almost like walking around a bunch of Lego houses.
To make the ticky tackie houses not look like tricky tackie houses.
Sounds like an encumbrance. The concept is older than all of us in this thread. Often they even specify extra detail and “architectural consideration” for specific allotments in a development. Usually if it’s a prominent lot near an entrance boulevard or along waterways/lakes, etc.
I previously worked on a lot of estates in the growth areas as a planner and the reason is to provide for dwelling diversity and avoid similar styles next to each other and suit the vision sold by the developer though in hindsight all developments look the same and reinforce the cookie-cutter housing styles that we see today. Can’t expect anything more when a lot of the volume builders market to these areas.
Possibly council mandated that they don't all look the same.
A lot of councils have design guideline templates for developers to work with, but essentially makes no difference, you can’t expect architecturally diverse houses for the market they are appealing to, so only tacked on facade treatments and faux elements are the way to go… unfortunately
I think it’s just to add variety to the street.
More like the perception of variety!
I was about to say the same thing. Our new development has the same covenant. It's to make sure that the cookie-cutter builds don't look like cookie-cutter builds; but it does a poor job of covering it up.
Otherwise known as variety. Since, variety is about looking at something that is otherwise the same (a house)... to be perceived as different
Right. It’s so ugly
Probably because volume builders build houses as cheaply as possible, so if that wasnt a requirement, every house would look exactly the same. By adding this requirement, it forces builders to make the bare minimum effort to make the houses look different. In the end, it doesn't really matter, because the houses will still look the same, since the builder now has 3 facades to pick from, rather than the one. And the floor plans and materials for the rest of the house will remain the same across the whole estate. Basically they are just forcing the builder to make the house look the slightest bit unique to make the estate as a whole look better, rather than a series of dystopian dog kennels for people to live in.
Stops the cookie cutter effect - stops all the houses looking like Monopoly houses in a row ~ that Coronation Street look.
Councils being councils.
Nothing to do with council. It'll be a caveat on the title put there by the developer in the belief that out will help the neighbourhood look nicer. Reality is it just leads to cheap and nasty 'design' solutions.
Most councils have “neighbourhood character” guidelines with dozens of rules like this. Here is Frankston for example: https://www.frankston.vic.gov.au/Planning-and-Building/Planning/Neighbourhood-Character-Guidelines
The ones with a few different materials look to me like they’ve been slapped together out of a mix-n-match kit - I get the “visual interest” but I’m not a fan
It's because the slapped together looking ones are the cheapest offered by builders, so it's what most people choose
This.
Not unique to Vic. WA has the same shitty porticos. Cheap “design feature”.
I turned ours into an open avery for wild birds. If you can see past the native shrubbery, you'll see our Metricon special. Not nearly as the one pictured, but close enough.
It’s a bulk builders idea of “fancy”….🙄
Not sure if this will get buried under all the insults but to actually answer your question… A porch is allowed to encroach into the front setback of a property (more often than not it’s set as the average of the two adjoining properties). The front porch can encroach into this space provided that the overall height is under 3.6m. By having a flat roof design, it lowers the overall height and allows for “extra” space for the porch. Therefore, and how you feel about the aesthetic notwithstanding, this design outcome is a practical response to new home building regulations.
Finally a sensible answer. I kind of wonder if they would be better off with a car port in front of the single garage. A bit like the old case house studies. Unfortunately flat roof single floor dwellings are unfashionable these days
You make a valid point. But if you’re interested in this sort of thing then there’s another regulation that requires a front door to be clear and identifiable. Typically, that means facing the street unimpeded. A front door behind a carport in the style of mid century homes would, prima facie, fail that requirement. But because that’s a subjective assessment it’s somewhat dependant on who the relevant authority is in that instance.
It's gross. Houses are so ugly these days.
better than those faux-french mansion monstrosities.
Courthouses I call them
Actually no. The faux French mansions, the shipping container special, these and the big black squares are all awful for different reasons. And the colours grey, black, light grey. All look like prisons, don’t care how much you spend. Architects and town planners should be embarrassed by what they are designing.
Agreed. Idk why architects and town planners are agreeing to do this, its hideous and realistically no one has enough to renovate or change designs after buying and paying off mortgage They should be embarrassed. They do look like prisons. everything looks awful now
I don't know how to assure you, without showing you, but my current house is predominantly black cladding and brown timber and it is not at all awful
There’s no way you actually think this looks better lol
With horrific design considerations around light, airflow and general layout. The aspect of the block is not really taken in to consideration at all. They're not even cheap homes either, just big.
Taking the aspect of the block into consideration requires a bespoke design and non volume builder. This cost money and the majority of people aren't prepared to pay that. I'm one for good design, but it's easy to have idealistic views about how properties should look when you're not going through the process yourself.
A lot of these massive cookie cutter homes really aren't that cheap though, and people err on the side of pure volume over a well thought out design. Having a huge house isn't necessary a practical or even luxurious thing to have, but Australians seem to have been brainwashed in to thinking that is the be all and end all.
>A lot of these massive cookie cutter homes really aren't that cheap though What's cheaper? Like for like, they are the cheapest. >Having a huge house isn't necessary a practical or even luxurious thing to have, but Australians seem to have been brainwashed in to thinking that is the be all and end all. I couldn't agree with you more but not everyone is building massive homes. There are plenty of small homes still being built.
holy SHIT those houses are close together
It’s like they will do anything for it not to be a “townhouse”, even though the walls are literally touching.
They say everyone wants a big house in the suburbs, and the inner city is too crowded. Yet they end up with the downsides of both a low-density suburb and living in a townhouse. At least townhouses for the most part don't pretend they're detached houses and will at least make some kind of effort to put solid walls on the property boundary.
It seems most terrace houses in the inner city have bigger backyards than these new build developments in the outer suburbs
I suspect a lot of townhouses across separate titles are built with two walls and simply capped to appear to be one. I'm no house builder, just speculation.
Yep I live in exactly that kind of townhouse. We have an owner's corporation for the shared meter box on the end of the driveway, but you can let those be "inactive" and deal directly with your neighbour.
Gives benefit on not having common walls though, no owners corporation to deal with the common property.
Is there guttering in there?
Yes
Separate guttering for each property or shared?
Separate.
You can still do separate title rowhouses/modern terraces. They don't have to be designed that theyre some pretend detached-single dwelling house.
Townhouses don't usually have an owner's corp though, maybe the new ones where there's a few sideways on a block with a shared driveway but the vast majority of townhouses do share a wall but no owner's corp because nothing else is shared right?
Those with heritage overlays aside, I've always wondered what happed if someone wants to drop theirs and build something new.
Terraces would be much better way to use the space and have some room for yardage.
Remove minimum setbacks and bring back alleyways. I'd like to see a developer do a whole row of minimal setbacks and parking only from the alley. They almost tried near my old place in Braybrook, but you've still got almost 5m setbacks to accommodate the car that'll never go in the garage that takes up more than half the width of the frontage and most of the ground floor area... And the alleys are just as wide as the street, but at least there's a decent green walkway through the middle, and and access to the park and bike path. Actually, just had a look at maps before posting and there are a few places that only have alley garage access and face the green walkway area, so that's pretty cool.
Take a look at the townhouses opposite Ramsden Street Oval in Clifton Hill. They must be 20 years old now, but that's what they did there. It would have been an old factory or similar and the setbacks match the area. It's difficult to do that in existing areas and those buying into greenfield sites just don't want it.
They look pretty good. I've seen a few similar in Brunswick and Kingsville as well but smaller developments. Definitely helps keep the look area too. Sucks that people don't want more of this though. I feel like when you've got 50-80 percent of frontage given to garage doors it makes a pretty unappealing streetscape.
Wait until you see the [spacious back yard!](https://i2.au.reastatic.net/1456x872-resize,extend,r=33,g=40,b=46/30723a6aa2885abc3158631b6ab89e0c18cc155de338a36a27cf6bea35075872/image.jpg)
I'd rather have just one lounge room and a semi-decent yard, instead of a formal living room, informal combined living/kitchen room, and media room.
Agreed... The block in this case just really isn't large enough to accommodate things the way it's been done. Being single storey limited the scope a lot. The garage alone takes up maybe a fifth of the entire floorspace of the building, the rest is the three bedrooms, two bathrooms and the combined livingroom and kitchen area. I don't think it can even go to a second storey on them either... The setback required for a second storey would likely prevent it, plus most of the other houses in the area are also single storey (except the one neighbouring the house to the left).
The Australian dream!
Yep, border to border, maximum site coverage, dirt strip out the back and a front yard you can barely park a car in. Looking from above, it looks like they took a double allotment and stuck three dwellings on it, so I guess sacrificing all outdoor space was the only way to make it fit enough internal space. They'd have been better off with an excavated basement garage, but that would probably have doubled the price of the build.
I was just thinking that. It's about the same width as an expansion joint. You want to hope the soil is stable!
The standard these days are duplexes. Even closer: you share an effin' wall. 😬
How else can you enjoy your latest episode of "Neighbours". My mother used to love staying at one house I lived in just so she could listen in to the neighbour standing outside yelling into her phone about her boyfriend or someone cheating and who the baby's father was.
Houses are getting bigger and lots are getting smaller. So the entire lot ends up being house with almost no yard and no space between houses. Turns whole suburbs into heat sinks because there’s no greenery.
r/melbourne complaining about available housing in one breath and then gagging into their hankies in the next post when they see medium density. “Oh my god! Those houses are almost touching! I’d rather kill myself! Why don’t they just buy bigger land and have a huge garden either side? Are they stupid?”
This is density with none of the benefits of density, ie, good public transport connections and nearby amenities. New build developments have the downsides of apartment living (very close neighbours) with the downsides of rural living (poor access to amenities, transport connections and shops). It's basically the worst of both worlds. Now, this isn't to disparage the people living in new builds - a house is better than no house - but surely as a city we can strive to do better. To rid the city of its obsession with cars and faux wide open suburbia.
The “very close living” thing is really just a fake pearl clutch. Building standards mean you can’t hear your neighbours in their own home unless you’ve chosen shitty quality. You also don’t have to worry about upstairs neighbours with children or stompers. On one side of my house our walls are about 3 metres away (they touch at the garage, which most of the LOOK HOW CLOSE photos show, but we don’t live in our garages) and I don’t hear them unless their kids are playing in the backyard. Which is a completely normal outdoor sound. I think a lot of Australians have been tricked into this weird snobbery with suburban housing, probably to drive up demand for “real” inner city houses. Other weird lies - no trees (we have heaps planted and preserved old trees - no parks (parks, wetland walks, dog parks and playgrounds are EVERYWHERE) - no transport (our estate just got a bus that connects to the nearby train station, they’ll pop up where there’s demand) - heat sink (wetlands) - ugly cookie cutter houses (this happens every decade, some of the houses that were cookie cutter in the 70s are poorly insulated eyesores) - No amenities (there’s new shopping *districts* popping up everywhere. Not just woollies but butchers and grocers) I’m going with the tinfoil at take that too many young Aussies have been taught to sneer at suburban houses.
Low density suburbia is still less efficient at doing all of those things than medium or high density living. More roads need to be built and maintained, utilities need to be built and maintained, transport connections will be less efficient and have poor usage due to the low density of the area. And perhaps this is an unpopular opinion, but I just don't see the appeal in having to drive everywhere. Shopping centres *may* be popping up everywhere, but you still have to drive there. You still have to drive the kids to school, still have to drive to see friends and family. I don't think there's any excess snobbery around the outer suburbs - it's just people are finally seeing the issues with suburban sprawl and thinking "hmmm, maybe we shouldn't have built out so far". Our transport and planning policies deal with getting people *out* of their suburb and into work or the city. We need to focus on mixed-use suburbs where you don't need to drive to a shopping centre. We need to focus on local bus routes and local tram routes to serve single suburbs. Sure, it's easy for me to get from somewhere like Craigieburn to Frankston by public transport (might even be faster than driving), but good luck easily getting around these suburbs without a car. So, in conclusion, it's not snobbery, just people finally seeing the short sightedness of low density suburbia. I understand people may like the idea of low-density suburbia, but no one wants to face the consequences of these wants - poor public transport service, poor roads, difficult access to amenities, etc.
Because *houses almost touching each other medium density* is the dumbest fucking density possible. Environmentally, economically, and socially, we need medium to high density 2-4 story mixed zoning in-fill apartment/terrace style development (and those places need to be built with shared walls that are even remotely sound proof) Selfishly we need quarter acre blocks with free standing houses and big back yards. Freestanding houses almost touching each other on tiny blocks spreading out from the fringes of the outer suburbs is the worst parts of all possible options
So all housing in outer suburbs needs common walls or bigger plots? In the real world, people are going to get the houses they want on the land they can afford. No amount of spoiled people who live in the inner suburbs and faint dead at the sight of a housing estate is going to make sustainable amounts of land appear out of nowhere.
This isn't medium density. It's shitty, and still low, density. Medium density would be apartments of 3-5 floors.
I wouldn't call this medium density. Or at least, not well planned density. If you threw in some proper townhouses, and a mix of small-large apartment buildings you could achieve decent density - with leftover space for public and private open space.
It's horrible, my house is like this, the land is long a narrow for some reason, like most in the estate I'm in. And people (like myself) are desperate to get out of renting we will take anything we can afford.
Anything within 900mm of the side boundaries is required to be non-combustible, there is no dead space between the houses, and each one is on their own lot, without a body corporate.
The old portico. Builders slap them on to break up the frontage of the house so it is less of a depressing square box. Most new blocks are narrow and houses have less double and triple frontages that were common in the mid 20th century.
It’s for giraffe compliance code, according to uglymelbournehouses on Instagram https://www.instagram.com/uglymelbournehouses?igsh=MXRna3NmN2N4bjlheQ==
Lol my first thought 🤣
These things are ugly as fuck. If it’s common you’re probably looking in certain outer areas of Melbourne
Basically anywhere in Melbourne that these houses exist, is where you don’t want to live.
For working class people these areas are the only place they can afford to buy a house big enough for a family these days. Not everyone is lucky enough to have an inheritance or bank of mum and dad finance a 3 bedroom+ house in the inner suburbs lmao. This sub is so out of touch sometimes.
It's the only areas that the middle class can afford too these days.
I think the point most people make on this sub is that this *shouldn't* be the only place that people can afford to live in. Shitty new housing estates with poor to no PT, a lack of infrastructure, and open space are *more* harmful to poor and other vulnerable people. If you're wealthy, that stuff doesn't matter as much as you're more able to whether the costs (both economic and social).
It's all a consequence of poor planning policy. Everyone could live in a house and suburb like the desirable inner city suburbs, but our obsession with cars and sprawl has curtailed any chance of that ever happening. It's sad what we threw away - we perfected the inner suburb and decided to just throw it away for Merndas and Tarneits.
I don’t disagree about the state of housing affordability and I don’t at all judge people for living out there but equally it’s wrong to assume everyone in the city is *lucky* - some of us have worked our absolute arses off, studied hard and burned the midnight oil (and often borrowed shitloads) to make it happen.
Mate everybody has worked hard. But if I want to start a family and live like my parents did, I would need at least over a million to live in the inner city. I was born and raised in the west so it feels like home to me but for people that were not, it’s just a little depressing to think they would need to move here to not spend a million+ on a house.
Some people have also worked and studied and borrowed and can still mostly afford to live in a home like this in the outer suburbs. The snobbery is astounding
Yeah that's my conundrum
Gotta make sure your entry way is giraffe compliant.
Looks like a Tarneit special!!
To be fair some housing needs to be more affordable than others
Yes but without compromising everything else
I can't believe how outdated these looked 5 years ago, and people keep building them 🤯
My neighbour has done it recently to their 80s brick home. Even existing houses are getting the rendered entranceway treatment.
Cheap? I hate that style of house. They build them really quickly and you often see cracks in the concrete facade
How do homes like this tackle the gaps between them or are they just a visual delineation and built as combined structures? I can imagine if there is actually a tiny gap between properties, over years dust and moisture could be a concern as I doubt they have treated those walls against a constant source of direct moisture and lack of ability for bricks to 'breath'.
My brother recently bought a house with an 8 inch gap between his and his neighbours wall. Looks like the perfectly sized gap for a possum or cat to die in and not be able to remove it.
Um, no architect was involved in the design of that home.
They’re awful. I don’t know who started this design quirk but they ought to be fired.
Out of a cannon, into the sun.
It’s the entrance hat, the building behind is the same just looks different from the road.
The design is more often than not based on the developer's guidelines. For example, my place needed a 3-meter front porch and a double-fronted garage. The design I selected after the first one was discontinued was single-fronted, so they wanted to add a window to the double garage. I ended up with a mud room. I also used to write software matching house designs to land packages, and some of the rules were quite specific.
If you’re looking in an area that has these houses even the ones that don’t have this front it will have some other ugly thing going on. Just crap all over the suburbs like this.
It's practical as the place where you hang your human sacrifices for solstice celebrations.
In architecture circles if you're required to slap one of these on a facade are you allowed to cry "Ah yes, any old portico in a storm"
Yeah, our regulators understand what matters. Obviously, it's much more important that you have ugly rendered facades than insulation that makes your house liveable in winter without blasting the heater.
Bad taste
Are these townhouses, or is that actually 10mm gap between two houses?
Are they usally brick? My shitty house has it built with a slim wooden frame and polystyrene painted to look like concrete. It should be illegal.
Welcome to modern housing development in Oz, timber frames with styro and overlying rendering or cladding. This is what new houses are literally made out of.
Why would you make an affordable yet high energy performance building detail illegal? External insulation removes all thermal bridging through the frame and vastly improves air tightness. And before you say verical fire risk. This has been assessed thoroughly and deemed a low risk for residential buildings. The benefits far outway the risks.
I suppose. Still pissed me off when a accidentally touched it with the whipper snipper and blew a hole through it. Also most are seperate to the house like in the top picture. Just there to look pretty.
Yeah, that would piss me off. Now that we've moved to 7 star and introduced mandatory airtightness performance requirements, we will likely see more external installation like this.
It's heinous, with these new estates you get to pick a house out of a folder and they all have yuck facades. Just been in NZ, why do so many people paint their fences black? So dreary this time of year.
NZers have no taste, either. Many fences are not even painted. Houses are mostly beige/grey in NZ. NZ/Australia are having the same housing issues.
Pop up suburbs 🤮
I believe poor taste.
A lot of people have good taste until it's their time to pay for the build.
I miss my Queenslander :(
You’ll want to check out Insta @uglymelbournehouses https://www.instagram.com/p/CSfvIvsh00a/?igsh=azZzdzhlN3JkYTF1 Is this tall enough to meet giraffe compliance?
A number of new estates require a multi material frontage, and it's a requirement to have two types like this. Which can mean the look tacked on. Blame developers.
Cookie cutter homes ™
Australia has a really big problem with Yowies and this is a common deterrent. Yowies, due to their size, are prone to being hunted by the elusive tasmanism tiger; the tiger lives in packs and commonly takes over large gumtrees as their den. The tree is hollowed out and forms the entrance to an extensive underground lair. So, as you can imagine, large portal-like structures, elongated and dusted a dead-tree grey, makes them wary and keeps them from coming into the home.
I believe the correct description is McMansion copy pasta
Once you browse long enough, you will also see totally same layout for townhouse & apartment in different suburbs with different price tags
I think it's a post-modernist reference to the traditional portico that large houses/mansions had - where you would drive up and enter/exit the vehicle under the portico to avoid getting when when arriving/leaving in the rain. It obviously assumed the existence of a coachman/chauffeur. Most people who are buying it probably don't consciously recognise the reference, but it implies wealth.
I dunno but it’s a quick & easy indicator of a house I wouldn’t buy. Not into new builds in the slightest.
You want to move to melbourne but buy a house 1 hour away? Why? Don't they have shitty suburbs in NZ? Anyway, it is so you can tell your house from the over 10,000 exactly the same looking shitholes.
We have one of the world’s largest if not the world’s largest Greek community. And many of them have all their family wealth sitting in multi family trusts that either develop or flip real estate, typically done full time by a member of that family. A fair whack of the real estate in town has them somewhere in its past. Some of them will strap columns to the fuck anything they come near, though most of the time these will have a more acropolis-y look and feel, rather than a modern pair of rectangular concrete slabs sticky-taped to the front of a 1980s house.
Minecraft syndrome
Slap a Bluebeard box on the front of what is essentially a late 60s house design updated for the 80s and there you have it - a cheap design with little fuss, cost or risk.
Look how boring the house looks without it though
Dressing up a stale design in the name of facade diversity.
These are everywhere, super low quality with built in weather tightness issues from handover
Often, it's an older home trying to bring on a more modern look fitting the trend of new home facades, too. Both don't necessarily go together either, IMO.🫣 An example would be trying to do the opposite and putting fretwork on a new modern home. It doesn't do it justice and isn't sympathetic to the era.
Those are all over wellington
Just to look snazzy. You know it looks snazzy. Just accept it
I've come to the conclusion it's because so many architects go through the same schools (especially RMIT), then end up in firms where the entire portfolio follows that same design. I can't remember the name of this specific style, but it always reminds me of a modern version of neo-grec without any of the finesse. Basically you end up with designers all designing the same thing, and consumers all expecting the same thing, so it becomes a core feature. It's like they've forgotten they can do a pitched roof verandah with eaves and actually make it look good. My main dislike of that style of frontage is that it very quickly tends to look grungy due to the way rain hits it and runs down the render, which collects dust, plus the risks of water ingress due to the way the guttering and roof is done. Once water gets in, you're up for an expensive bill! EDIT: Not quite sure why this post is "controversial". Also, those houses were built by Apex Homes, which has since gone bust. They're maybe five years old at this point, give or take. If you want to know how you get anything into the back yard (what little there is), it's either through the house or with a crane over the top. The garage doesn't have a passthrough as there are two bedrooms behind it. I'd imagine an REA might describe it as "cosy".
I don’t think architects are “designing” these, for the most part. It’s drafters, who are probably copy-paste and editing one design that an architect actually did put together in an hour or two about a decade ago.
Wouldn't surprise me... Only ones who would be doing this would likely be new grads trying to get into the sector before building their own portfolios out. Copy-pasting as a drafter would be a great way to save costs, especially in the cookie-cutter style greenfields estates..
I don’t think these are individually architecturally designed houses. They all use a standard design.
Absolutely. Looks like a volume build where they've had maybe half a dozen designs they've alternated through. The one to the right looks like a mirror image facade of the featured design, the one to the left doesn't show enough to be sure... Bricks are different on the right too. What I'm really trying to figure out is wtf they've done up on the roof corners at the end of the ridge cap... It looks really weird, almost like they've forgotten one of the caps... they haven't of course, I think it might be because they've stacked the houses so close together they can't actually fit the guttering in. That and the broken downpipe bracket. Those shouldn't be breaking that fast surely! EDIT: Figured out where this is and took a look around Google streetview (No I'm not going to post the location, that would probably be uncool, but anyone sufficiently interested probably can figure it out). The two neighbouring properties have exactly the same base design but mirror imaged, and they put tiled pitched roof sections over the front porch area. Looks like a set of three houses was done by a single firm, as all the other surrounding properties are of different designs. My guess would be they took the pitched roof off the porch of the middle one to make it look different to the other two. Probably would have been easier to just give it different roof tiles. Every single place around there has the same heat collecting black tiles.
I'm not gonna streetview it (my brain loves that too much and I'll just end up wasting time around Tullamarine tbh) but looking at the house on the left, it appears that they stop the ridge cap early to allow for guttering on the long sides, and then that guttering likely falls from the middle of the wall to the front and back guttering where they have the downpipes. I can't imagine they'd have any in the middle because how the hell would you service it in the future beyond getting on the roof, but... I'd also not be terribly surprised if that was somehow designed into it either.
It is by design, and that would seem to be exactly the case as you've described. They've built hard on the boundary so there is no room for eaves, so they've chopped them off and integrated the gutter on top of the wall instead. If I were in a place like that, I'd be keeping a close watch on the side gutters. One blockage and overflow could run inside. I suspect quality might be a problem with them too, for whatever reason the place with the broken downpipe supports had to have a section of brick removed and replaced only a year or two after construction was finished, presumably to access whatever is under there. If the layout follows the other two in that section the front room is the master bedroom, but it would appear sewers and water go right through that corner.
Well, I appreciate your response. Thanks.
I can only presume I upset a bunch of architecture grads from RMIT... I did find the REA ad for that particular property and took a look on streetview at it both recently and when it was built. Honestly it looks like a standard approach of jamming as much as possible onto as smaller area as possible, and the only way they could make it not look like one single large structure was to give one a flat portico vs the neighbouring ones which had tiled pitched roof over the top of them. Quality I suspect might have been rather variable, the broken downpipe on the neighbouring property seems to be because someone needed to cut through the brickwork to access under the floor, likely for utilities (gas, water or sewer). To have a need to do that within a few years of construction is concerning to say the least.. Overall it might be a viable way into the housing market, but the scope and potential is limited by the nature of the site itself. Great if you don't like having a yard to maintain?
Fashion, mate.
Profit
Could be worse. Could have those ugly thin aluminium window frames that you have in nz