Building With Style: Trends I Could Do Without

Every architect, myself included, is a critic. We can’t agree about much of anything, but will stand shoulder to shoulder to disparage the typical single- family builder’s house. Ask any one of us exactly what makes one house interesting and another reprehensible, and you will hear some pretty amazing gobble-de-gook. My answer would mix history, site and floor planning, detailing, materials, sociology, and aesthetics into a philosophical haggle that would take about a year to prepare and digest. But there are some things I simply don’t like, so I decided to choose six of them to present here. Roundhead Windows Arched windows are the preeminent cliché of the 1980s. Aside from the correct and excellent use of arches as structural elements