Often you will see show-off skyscrapers have a big bold shape, but then completely neglect the other scales.
All over the world it seems to be ther older neighbourhoods and houses that are most sought after. I used to think this was snobbiness, just the benefit of time (larger, more full trees etc), but the more I look, the actual built environment of these buildings is a lot more pleasent as well, especially if you consider them against what would be an equivalent new build.
There's an easy solution to this: integrate the garage inside the house, not as a box bolted on to the front, and make the overhead door smaller. There's no reason for the door to be 15 feet wide and 10 feet high if you only need to fit a single car through it—an 8 foot square door is plenty. This has a huge effect on the end result.
A lot of garages in the United States are 2 car garages where the cars are parked side by side. So you need a wide garage door to get the cars in and out.
Usually the extra space is used as a workshop or for storage. I would love to have a 2- or 3-car garage with just an 8-ft door off to one side. The rest of the elevation could be either a nice big window, or a large porch.
Yeah, I suppose this arrangement would hurt resale value. But it would look nicer.
I like how my neighborhood handles it. The garages are set back behind the houses, with the driveways running alongside the houses. When you look at it from the street, the house is front-and-center, rather than the car storage box. Also a big fan of alleys with the garage facing that way.
When used as a workspace, those massive garage doors come in very handy. They make it easy to get a lot of airflow through the garage and move large equipment or the product of your project in and out without having to squeeze past whatever car is also parked there. They may not look nice, but those large doors are very practical.
https://www.idealpark.com/Products/Car-Lifts/
https://www.idealpark.it/Prodotti/Parklifts/Parklift-462/
(this kind of stuff is relatively rare even here in Europe, and used only in "luxury" houses or condos in the city center as it is definitely expensive)
Example: https://www.alamy.com/stock-photo-details-of-delaware-and-hu...
I like the Gothic style.
The prettiest church I've ever seen: https://s.hdnux.com/photos/65/31/06/13996432/3/850x0.jpg
Deco buildings - as well as older stuff like the Classical Revivalist stuff that's so many public buildings in the place I live in now - have thought given to aesthetic variety at a scale only visible from the sidewalk. Allegorical sculptures? Decorative reliefs? Faces peering out here and there? Noveau-flavored ironwork? Yes please.
"Minimum fucks given" style?
It's called the "most affordable design compliant with the city's design requirements". It's always the planning department. Architects don't want to build ugly buildings, but it's the only thing that's legal.
Many cities mandate at least 4 different facade materials and that the massing be broken up. So we end up with a mishmash of materials and colors and an undulating blocky facade.
The Museum of Pop Culture in Seattle would beg to differ.
In places where skyscrapers are economically viable (aka very dense areas with high land values), I'd have a strong preference for cost-efficiency over aesthetics to lower the cost of operating a business/living in the area.
Albeit the aesthetics should have a non-zero priority.
But look more closely and it’s just utterly bland and boring. There is no detail. Just infinite repetition of the same window shape with a light shade.
And then an awkwardly inserted lobby that looks like you chopped out half of the bottom 3 floors and replaced them with a glass pane. Like an afterthought.