
Dream Homes from the Past Century - pseudolus
https://www.bbc.com/culture/article/20190521-10-dream-homes-from-the-past-century
======
freetime2
Recently my idea of a dream house would something in the traditional Japanese
style with wood, tatami, shoji, and a beautiful garden. I remember being
really blown away by the Nomura house [1] in Kanazawa many years ago.

Of course I would probably want to update it with better insulation, air
conditioning, and more glass/screens to let me enjoy the views of the garden
while keeping the bugs out.

The best part is you don’t even need to break the bank to get something like
that. An old abandoned Japanese folk house can be purchased for next to
nothing and completely renovated for less than the cost of a 1 bedroom condo
in the Bay Area. [2]

[1] [https://www.kanazawastation.com/nomura-samurai-house-
garden/](https://www.kanazawastation.com/nomura-samurai-house-garden/)

[2]
[https://www.rakusumu.com/sale/detail/00166-200049](https://www.rakusumu.com/sale/detail/00166-200049)

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seanmcdirmid
A lot of those homes are difficult to retrofit with decent heating and
insulation. I had a friend thattried this with an old Beijing hutong whose
bones simply weren’t designed for central heating. You can put in something,
but it will be expensive and/or ineffective.

~~~
082349872349872
炬燵 are a thing

~~~
elric
True. It's long been my opinion that it's more efficient to heat a person (or
a couple of persons) than to heat an entire home, most of which is empty at
any given time. A kotatsu fits that bill rather nicely.

~~~
seanmcdirmid
Kotatsus are limited: they are ok if you are idle, but they don’t warm your
hands if you want to get work done on a laptop. I can never get anything done
MIL’s apartment in southern China in the winter (southern China gets no
central heating, and it still gets cold).

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carapace
Put a lump of butter in your tea. Sure it's gross but you'll be warm. ;-)

~~~
seanmcdirmid
Doesn’t stop your hands from freezing.

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carapace
It suspect it would (unless you have circulation issues in your hands or
something.) Your body burns the extra fat and whatnot to keep your core temp
up. At least that's the theory I was told. I was camping in the mountains and
too cold at night when a friend told me about this. We used hot chocolate, a
cup after dinner with a tablespoon of butter in it. Sure enough, I was roasty
toasty all night.

I'm not sure it would stop your hands from freezing but it might be worth a
try.

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symmitchry
Part of me loves architecture and seeing these amazing homes. Sadly, a bigger
part of me cannot afford a 1 bedroom condo.

In my old age, my lower middle class 'lot in life' prevents me from really
enjoying luxurious things.

~~~
082349872349872
Brits in the Austen period distinguished between attributes, acquisitions, and
accomplishments. The first are things one is born with and keep until death,
such as eye colour. The second are things one has bought and may sell. The
last are things one has done, or has learned how to do. You may not be able to
acquire instances of 'architecture porn', but you can enjoy them (and may even
be able to rent them), and very little keeps you from accomplishing things.

~~~
switch11
this is so true

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dafoex
A lot of these are too form over function for my tastes. They are very
interesting to look at for the most part, but I'm not sure I'd like to live in
a glass cube with everything on show, or in a brutalist mountain of concrete.
The one I would pick, however, is the "teletubby house" at the bottom of the
article. It looks small, but strikes a good balance between art and
practicality, to my mind.

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fullito
My biggest worry is, when i finaly have the money and the ground to build my
dream, that i'm not allowed to due to building restrictions :(...

Germany is densily populated and you can get a house + ground with 2-5 acres
for 200-500.000k but they are all in the so called 'outter area' and
apparently we don't want that. You have strict building restrictions. you
can't just tear it down and rebiuld it (what you often need to to be able to
build their at all. Your dream house will not be the original 0815 building)

Anyway, while i have a ton of ideas, my main motivation is to create spaces
and design a house around it.

That spot where you gonna watch movies, the wind and rain protected outdoor
place to watch the rain, the office which allows me to look out, feel the wind
and having enough shade that my screen is usefull, the gaming room, they day
bedroom, bright, with a great view and the tea room. Something like when Dr.
Strange was finding that teacher there was a very beautiful japanese style
empty square room with openings to every side and curtains.

Aaaand a Workshop, hobby room with big window to the north, solar power,
additional water reserve and a storehouse for gworing your own food.

All of that should be in a layout with optimizes sun exposure. And it has
either stacks of wood outside the window with slits high enough that you can
look out but the sun doesn't annoy you or other high quality automatic
blindes.

Modern, pratical, sustainable (also cheap to maintain).

Basically to build my dream house, i just need luck, time and money. Luck for
the location and building regulations, Time to think that through and money.

I think i watched too much BBCs Grand Designs

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ido
google is telling me an acre is a bit more than 4000 square meter...You need
8000-20,000 square meter plot for your house & yard or am I reading something
wrongly?

The house my father was born in (& my grandmother still lived in till shortly
before she died) was on a ~2500 square meter plot that seemed _huge_ to me, so
much that when my father & uncle sold the property 4 more houses were built on
the same plot.

From what you wrote above your house would comfortably fit in a 1000 square
meter plot with enough room for a yard around it.

~~~
TylerE
Very large yards make for good neighbors.

~~~
ecpottinger
And lets you do things without bothering them either.

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soneca
First I was surprised to see how modern were these houses from the _”past
century”_. Then I realized that the past century is no longer the 19th
century, as it was while I was growing up and got used to the term.

~~~
cheesecracker
Same here. I was actually hoping to see lots of outdated dreams, like "look
what they thought would be cool, but turned out to be completely impractical".

Also, all such posts miss location. What good is a cool house, if the next
supermarket is 50 miles away?

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ghaff
50 miles is not really all that far, especially if there are closer markets
that aren't full-blown supermarkets. Under the right circumstances--and
assuming Internet etc.--I would certainly consider living 50 miles from a
supermarket.

~~~
mod
I agree, and I live something like 40 miles from a walmart.

We do have a local grocery closer, it's about a 30 minute drive.

We strive to produce a lot of our own food, and that which we do not produce,
we buy in bulk. We make a trip to the grocery every couple of weeks, primarily
for things that perish quickly--produce in the winter (when we are not
producing it in our garden), milk, etc.

Internet isn't great, but it can stream a few TVs worth of netflix, so it's
not terrible either.

With 40 acres, mostly of hardwood forest I can romp around in--I love it
there, truly.

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jhoechtl
I lived for 10 years in a very transparent house. Loved it for two years. The
lack of privacy and the need of shade from sunlight=heat inside made me finall
move to a more closed construction.

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6510
haha, that transparent bedroom.

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WalterBright
I hate to say it, but the Desert House looks like the restroom building at the
local park here.

I like the other houses :-)

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ethbro
Beware anytime an architect says "subvert" with a gleam in their eyes...

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RcouF1uZ4gsC
Is it just me or does anybody else think that the Desert House, United States
looks a lot like a rest stop bathroom?

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tlack
Definitely an odd exterior aesthetic but it's a lot more rational on the
inside: [https://www.architecturaldigest.com/gallery/jim-jennings-
sli...](https://www.architecturaldigest.com/gallery/jim-jennings-
slideshow-092009)

~~~
ViViDboarder
Interesting interior design too with the open area and the gap window at
ceiling level going around the whole home. I guess there’s not much of a view
and likely a lot of solar heat, so the configuration makes sense.

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mjevans
I dislike how much glass is used in many of these houses. I imagine they let a
LOT of ambient noise and heat inside.

~~~
nullc
You can build windows that have sound attenuation greater than common wall
construction.

My office at home has a series of 62"x80" windows effectively forming the
walls on two sides of four sides, and smaller windows covering on one side. I
had the windows built as 3/16"-PVB_laminate-1/4"-1/2"_gap-1/4". The lamination
and the different thicknesses detune the panes, and the large mass provides a
lot of attenuation.

You can hardly hear someone standing outside yelling. People often comment how
quiet it is after they step inside and close the door.

[It also helps that I don't have any computers in the room-- just
display/keyboard and long fiber displayport cables to a rack in another room.]

These windows aren't particularly exotic... basically just the minimum you
might to do design for a lot of attenuation.

Here is a comparison chart (from a quick google):
[http://girardglass.com/uploads/stc_rating_chart.pdf](http://girardglass.com/uploads/stc_rating_chart.pdf)

Similarly for thermal insulating properties. Modern coatings can reject an
enormous amount of heat-- enough that in some designs its preferable to us
less effective coatings because the windows face the morning sun and the heat
gain is beneficial.

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teruakohatu
Can you explain what "3/16"-PVB_laminate-1/4"-1/2"_gap-1/4" means? Is that
four layers of glass?

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nullc
3/16" glass then a layer of PVB laminate then a layer of 1/4" class then a
1/2" sealed space of air then 1/4" glass.

So two glass panes, which are different thicknesses, one which is comprised of
a laminate sandwich.

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pkamb
I'd love a service that surfaced "architecturally desirable" homes for sale in
your area, at various price points.

This is a hard criteria to define. But I know it when I see it. Some
combination of materials, craftsmanship, age, and design. Not necessarily
location or price.

It's very hard to filter for using Redfin or Zillow. I wish there was an MLS
site that showed you 50+ listing thumbnails on a single page and allowed you
to click through on any that caught your eye.

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ryanwaggoner
100% agree. I usually search Zillow with “modern” or “contemporary” or
“architect”, which usually means 5-10% will actually be interesting houses. It
seems the vast majority of even extremely expensive homes are completely
devoid of any sense of design beyond “however the other McMansions look”.

~~~
mod
Perhaps this has something to do with location, as well.

The town my business is located in (American South) has a great, long history.
Many, many homes are now over 100 years old. A lot of them are very large, and
have exquisite crafstmanship oozing everywhere--for me, that's primarily
woodwork. Exposed beams, winding staircases, etc.

Anyway there's a couple hundred of those here, I think.

There are also a ton of more modern (1970s-era) homes that were definitely
swanky at the time, but now are really lackluster. They just look dated, while
the 100-year-old homes look magnificent.

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FreeBricklayer
Are these dream homes or architecturally interesting homes? I would certainly
not want to live in one of those homes.

~~~
freetime2
Definitely “dream” in the not-your-home-in-reality sense. My assumption is
that the people who can afford to build houses like this do so as second (or
third, etc) homes, and live in something much more practical as their “daily
driver”.

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SirLJ
If I am on a small budget, would build something like this:

[https://www.calearth.org/tour](https://www.calearth.org/tour)

[https://www.calearth.org/alumni-projects2](https://www.calearth.org/alumni-
projects2)

If the budget is unlimited, would probably buy a castle in south of France or
something...

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msh
Reminds me of this good blog post on how social behaviors drive architecture
of our homes: [https://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-
static/2019/04/archite...](https://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-
static/2019/04/architecture-and-the-house-of-.html)

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zuhayeer
Also check out [https://www.dwell.com/](https://www.dwell.com/) – sort of like
a Dribbble for homes

There's something really inspiring about nice architecture and interior
designs

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dghughes
A few of the homes have many glass walls where do you plug in things? Seems
very impractical.

~~~
brewdad
Power outlets built into the floor, most likely.

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sdan
Chilean house is literally just some glass and wood. Scary to think how people
sleep in that.

~~~
twalla
I imagine being on a lot large enough or remote enough that you have no
visible neighbors probably helps.

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ghaff
Yeah, as long as you have isolation there's no reason to keep people from
being able to see in the house.

That said, that design doesn't seem super practical and the photographs
probably wouldn't look nearly as nice once all the electrical cords and
general clutter is out. And I imagine it doesn't offer a lot of separation for
visiting family, etc.

The Graham House looks like it has lots of glass while still having some
separation between parts of the house.

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baybal2
It's 2020, and most Chinese still don't believe that most of Americans are
living in wooden houses.

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LockAndLol
Really nice to know that I'd have to work till I'm 60 to afford a house like
that without taking on serious debt. What a time to be alive. I'm so grateful.

~~~
anm89
The horror of having to settle for having all your needs met and living
without insane luxury. Poor you.

These houses would have been unaffordable to almost everyone at any time I'm
history and two hundred years ago no amount of wealth could have bought you
them at all. So what again is special about being alive now?

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Aeolun
What is special about now is that you can have a simple house now, and have it
be the envy of a kings’ from 200 years ago.

The sheer comfort of living in a modern house is insane, regardless of the
size.

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sgt101
Add a decent modern mattress and a 60" TV connected to Netflix and bring the
billionaire envy 150 years forward?

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owenversteeg
Not the mattress. High quality handmade horsehair mattresses are what the
absolute richest of the rich have slept on for hundreds of years and continue
to do today in 2020. There's a reason they go for $100k, I've tried them.

