rodface Posted December 17, 2014 Share Posted December 17, 2014 The four-story Hill Country barnhouse! http://blog.chron.com/primeproperty/2014/12/developer-rolls-out-floor-plans-for-heights-projecr-with-buyer-feedback/ Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Montrose1100 Posted December 17, 2014 Share Posted December 17, 2014 I've often wondered if the ultra rich who have commissioned famous architects (any time period, say from 1940-present day), really appreciated or understood what was designed for them. Or did they not see this vision, was it just a name dropped casually to visitors or guests in their house? When did the market become so... uninspiring? Is that even the right word for what I'm looking at here? I'm not trying to be melodramatic for humor's sake. I'm really pondering what went wrong with the world when I see this. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
KinkaidAlum Posted December 17, 2014 Share Posted December 17, 2014 It's like they took the worst ideas from everyone and threw them all together... "Hey, I want a three car garage""I want a roof deck""I went skiing once and there was a cool and big window that I now want""I love Hill Country stone accents""Pillars make a house feel grand""outdoor fireplace, please!""covered porch please!""pergola please!""More wood""Less wood, more siding""Less siding, more stone accents" Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Hasek Posted December 18, 2014 Share Posted December 18, 2014 who ever allowed that "thing" to even be rendered should be thrown out of an airlock.... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Howard Huge Posted December 18, 2014 Share Posted December 18, 2014 Easy guys, Surge Homes is a resident poster here on HAIF Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
LarryDierker Posted December 18, 2014 Share Posted December 18, 2014 it's ugly but that fourth floor is awesome. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mollusk Posted December 18, 2014 Share Posted December 18, 2014 Oh my, but there is a lot going on there... (was that more gentle?) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
NenaE Posted December 18, 2014 Share Posted December 18, 2014 Gives new meaning to the word Heights & Juxtaposition... who's going to be living behind this enormous endeavor? The real winner is the electric company. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
KristinDaugherty Posted December 18, 2014 Share Posted December 18, 2014 oh dear. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Surge Homes Posted December 20, 2014 Share Posted December 20, 2014 This design was in response to comments that we received on our website from Insiders. Our Surge Homes Insiders said that we should have designed larger homes, of nearly 5000 sq ft, for this side. So we asked our architect to come up with a rendering and accompanying floor plans in order to get feedback from the community. We did not know we would be so successful at engaging the online community in this design process. The response motivates us to continue our interactive design process throughout the different iterations, leading to the final product. You can see the details of our Frasier site at www.surgehomes.com. We will take into consideration all of your comments, thanks! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
IronTiger Posted December 20, 2014 Share Posted December 20, 2014 It's like they took the worst ideas from everyone and threw them all together..."Hey, I want a three car garage""I want a roof deck""I went skiing once and there was a cool and big window that I now want""I love Hill Country stone accents""Pillars make a house feel grand""outdoor fireplace, please!""covered porch please!""pergola please!""More wood""Less wood, more siding""Less siding, more stone accents"In and of themselves those aren't terrible ideas, but it looks like they took a bunch of Lego sets and tried to make some sort of tacky mess. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Luminare Posted December 22, 2014 Share Posted December 22, 2014 I......yeah I'm just going to wait until work is done to respond in depth. I will say that there is something to be said about the ability to get feedback from the community, but it has to go through a filter Surge Homes.....a very tight filter and then another filter on that, and then finally your own filter in terms of aesthetics and sensibility. You guys literally took everything and tried to jam it into one enormous monstrosity of a building! This is seriously first year design studio mistakes...Please tell me this is an april fools joke 4 months in advance? I expect this out of 1st year design studio's, but not from practicing architects. There has to be a balance between what a client wants and what an architect wants, design wise. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mollusk Posted December 22, 2014 Share Posted December 22, 2014 There has to be a balance between what a client wants and what an architect wants, design wise. I'm not so sure about that... there's a condo developer I can think of whose architectural (**cough**) style (**cough**) routinely gets bashed in these quarters, but who also sells them out quickly (I suppose so that the owners can see them from the inside). Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Luminare Posted December 23, 2014 Share Posted December 23, 2014 So I had just wrote out a long ass reply, but I think this analogy will work better. For any ladies that are on this forum I want to apologize in advance. It's like if you wanted to construct the "perfect" woman from various parts of other women that you think are good lookin. You like that girls eyes. You like this girls hair. You like this one's hips. That girl has a nice waist. Etc, etc... But just because you like those various aspects on each of those individual woman that doesn't mean that they should all be part of ONE woman. I mean imagine if you threw all of the those parts together.......that would not end well AT ALL!!! Each of those unique identifying features of those various ladies that you like are what make them attractive to you, but just because it's on that women doesn't mean it will be unique or great when combined with other things. It's the same here. What's more revealing is the statement by Surge Homes that it was done simply by user input online. What's the vetting process for all of that input? I actually want to know WHY they like those things instead of just the things in of themselves because that will reveal why it stuck out to them! Sometimes each of those various elements stated by those individuals also says something about the building that has what they like, but the building lives through those things and they play an integral part in why the building was designed in such a way. Whats has to be the most concerning thing is the shift from an 84 unit building to just 7 super large single family homes? I simply don't understand the economics of this! You are willing to trade 84 units for just SEVEN oversized, bloated, style collage mess houses? Truly baffling... Finally, what I see in this rendering is an example of an architect who doesn't know how to say, No. It's ok to say no to a client because not everything (features or ideas) can go in every project nor does it need to be. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
OkieEric Posted December 23, 2014 Share Posted December 23, 2014 I'm trying, but I can't find a single thing I like about the look of that design - even the color is awful. Did someone seriously request those columns? I mean, come on If this is some kind of experiment by Surge I would recommend trying it out on less expensive real estate. Looking at the rest of the site the designs are somewhat boring and benign but certainly easier on the eyes. If you want to appeal to the masses it's probably better to keep it that way Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mollusk Posted December 24, 2014 Share Posted December 24, 2014 I can at least address the shift from 84 units to seven single family houses. The tl;dr version is that it's a very difficult tract to build on. Access to this tract is down a very narrow street, causing concerns about access by fire trucks and ambulances. On top of that, much of this tract is in the White Oak Bayou flood plain, if not floodway, and unlike the Graystar project just a bit downstream it's not taking the place of existing structures. Surge (or its investor) won't get as big a profit, but I suspect that at that price point and with how long they've owned the land, they won't lose their shirts, either. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sevfiv Posted December 24, 2014 Share Posted December 24, 2014 Yeah my big question is pretty much - is that rendering really what the "catalog-house-buying-masses" think is aesthetically pleasing and in turn, we here are truly architectural and design snobs? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Luminare Posted January 3, 2015 Share Posted January 3, 2015 I'm posting this because it relates to this topic! In the video this idea is being applied to gaming, but it applies to almost anything in terms of design. It highlights the dangers of "focus group" designing and how it's all about what kind of questions you ask and how most of the time you have no idea if you are going to get the answers you are looking for, or if you are getting the right feedback, or if the questions were right in the first place. I know there is multitudes of research and psychology books that would explain this in a more 'professional' fashion, but I think this video will do. The biggest take away is that most of the time people don't know what they want until you show them! EDIT: Just making a note that this isn't all about that one topic I would recommend just watching the first 5mins, and if you like gaming and all that stuff then continue on, but for the topic at hand I thought that this person, in the first few mins of this video, put it in laymens terms very well. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ArchFan Posted January 4, 2015 Share Posted January 4, 2015 Thanks for that link, the video was interesting and also very entertaining. I'm not into gaming or design work, but there was one concept I could really relate to my own work: the tendency of people to assume that all distributions are Gaussian (i.e., "bell curves"). I think people often get into trouble when they assume that the average value of a bunch of things is always the best estimate of the most common value. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Reefmonkey Posted January 30, 2015 Share Posted January 30, 2015 It's like eight different drunk architects vomited on a set of blank blueprints, and a builder picked the blueprints up, scratched his head and said "yeah, I think I can build that." Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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