The American Room

Seeing the cities change around me faster than I can absorb those changes always weirds me out. In Europe you have that too in areas where there is a lot of construction but it only gets to me with places that I know well. I remember almost driving into a tree when I rounded a corner into Amsterdam one fine weekday morning and saw a - new to me - very large building that had been built during my stay in Canada. Of course for people that had seen it built it arrived very slowly but for me it might as well have popped out of the ground.

So you can imagine what I feel when I'm in North America.

A country whose buildings are of wood, can never increase in its improvements to any considerable degree. There duration is highly estimated at 50 years. Every half century then our country becomes a tablua rasa, whereon we have to set out anew, as in the first moment of seating it. Whereas when buildings are of durable materials, every new edifice is an actual and permanent acquisition to the state, adding to is value as well as to its ornament.

Any argument that wooden houses last 100+ years is ignoring survivorship bias :) But even granting that, 100 years is not a very long time - just over one lifetime. If your parents lived in a wooden house, your children will need to build a new one.

In my neighborhood, the #1 reason for similarly aged wooden houses to be torn down is simply because developers want to build multi-level, multi-unit condo buildings.

It's interesting that a lot of new homes are stick built but with brick fascia, where bricks are available.

Personally, I can't stand white/beige rooms. I want colour in my life. When I bought a house, we painted half of it before I moved in. The kitchen is a yellow, the living room has a peach/seashell thing going on, the guest/spare room is a light lavender and the office is a blue that almost glows in sunlight.

This is supposed to be my house, I want to like living in it. It should be colourful. Maybe it's because we rented several houses when I was growing up.

God I hate white and beige.

I also read the whole thing, even though I started disliking myself halfway through.

I also wonder why this is on HN. But the reason it was written is eyeballs, a thin excuse to tie together a bunch of viral videos. This kind of 'meta-viral' post is easy to write because you're working with a vetted pool of already-popular content.

All you need is to suspend the reader's disbelief enough, with your narrative, that your post does make sense, that there is a thesis statement here. The popularity of the content you're cribbing from does the rest.

Aside from the cherry picking of the author, and the natural tendency for people to use the simplest possible backgrounds when they're recording a video, it's worth noting that the simplicity of modern interior construction, and the use of neutral colors, is completely intentional and desired.

It isn't accidental or unnoticed, and isn't some side effect of cheapness or thrift, or the "temporary worker" suburbanite, as the post seems to imply. It's that we learned through many generations that the things that you think look pretty awesome today often don't look that great in the near future, and soon interior design is an enormous burden instead of an expression or enjoyment.

In the 70s homes were filled with wallpaper, wall to wall carpet, shelves with trophies and knick-knacks, etc. And then we collectively decided that we didn't like wallpaper, carpet, shelves or knick-knacks.

So we moved to more malleable internal decorating that can more easily change with tastes. Pictures and accents instead of strongly colored walls. Throw rugs instead of carpet. Decorative free-standing elements instead of bolting stuff on a wall.

This newer model has held since pretty much the 80s. Simple interiors that you make your own, and you can keep making your own with every change of your taste, instead of being tied to the taste of you from a decade ago, or worse the taste of generations before you.

There's more to life than just the exuberance, progress, and extraordinary creations that we obsess over here in the Bay Area. For every amazing success story there's a thousand people shuffling their feet and walking in circles just to be our customers. On the other side of almost every IP packet is a person sitting alone in a room. It's important for us to realize the implications of our creations. It is important for us to realize what's real and what's just an idealized vision of the future. It'll keep us thinking about a path forward that includes everyone. It'll keep us from thinking that we're special and different and more entitled to life's pleasures. When we turn our heads most of us see the same pale white walls.

Well Frisco's a mighty rich town, now that ain't no lie

Why they got some buildings that reach a mile into the sky

Yet no one can even afford the time just to tell me why

Here's a world filled with people and so many people alone

- Frisco Depot by Mickey Newbury

Not everything needs to make a point. Sometimes we read (and write) things just for fun.

> those pictures on pinterest that you seem to think are fantasy are not fantasies, they are actual pictures of actual homes

Actually, quite a lot of pinned photos on Pinterest are from marketing materials (catalogues, Etsy, magazines, etc.). That applies to Houzz, too. Sure, there are some real homes there, including ones that have been designed by professional interior designers. But the point is that's why they are pinned there: It's what a lot of people aspire to. Not necessarily what they have.

Speaking from experience of other people's homes, people generally don't have homes like those shown in interior design magazines. Part of it is that most people simply don't have the taste -- whenever I speak to Americans about their beige homes, their wainscoatings, paneling, stained-glass windows and other reactionary cruft, they insist their love it -- and also that it's often very expensive.

http://www.goodreads.com/quotes/72745-the-reason-that-the-ri...

And since so many people either a) Rent and aren't allowed to paint or make significant alterations (e.g. nails in the wall), or b) Move too often to feel it's worth the effort, lots of people don't bother to change it from the inoffensive, dull, soul-crushing middle ground.

But, might be a good idea to sample rooms from videos/clips produced in rooms in other countries, maybe there is something to it?

Also, as a counterpoint, I recall when living in the suburbs as a teenager, friends' rooms bedecked with posters, pinup pictures, clothes strewn, music instruments about, etc. Their basements might have been different, those tended to be bare with exposed support beams, studs, unfinished (without a finish) concrete floors, etc.

HN. You and your predictable comments.

condos and apartment complexes built in the last 40 years all look pretty much alike, yes. older ones are more likely to be beautiful / "unique".