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Comment by stdbrouw | Hacker News Reader

I feel we should bring back Georgian architecture [1]: on the one hand it is quite plain and so it fits well with modern sensibilities (and modern budgets that don't allow for a lot of faff, and the lack of skilled labor), but because of its strong emphasis on symmetry and a modest amount of ornament on doors, windows and railings, it looks vastly better than the lime rendered boxes of today. It also looks great with flat roofs, and flat roofs are here to stay -- why bother with nice roof tiles when you have to cover them with solar panels anyway.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georgian_architecture

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Why stop there? Institute Georgism while you're at it, so that people can actually afford houses again. Go "Full George".

I live in a city that has a bunch of it; in practice, it's incredibly impractical, and the few modern attempts to imitate it while providing an actually usable building tend to end up looking absurd.

Examples: https://www.irishtimes.com/life-and-style/homes-and-property... - Fake Georgian townhouses. You're still left with a four storey house, which isn't super-practical, and they look ridiculous.

https://www.pjhegarty.ie/projects/esb-head-office/ - Replacing a distinctly un-Georgian Brutalist thing which itself replaced a row of Georgian houses back in the day. Again, looks silly, but if they'd played it completely straight they'd be left with a pretty impractical office building.

At first glance, these look nice to me? Perhaps they look silly up close. I'm not sure what you mean by impractical though, I don't consider tall and narrow to be essential to the style, though many of the 18th and 19th century townhouses in the style surely were.

Why is a 4 storey house impractical? And the only thing that looks ridiculous to my eye is the top floor which, for some reason, abandons the classical look and slaps some hideous modern handrails and flashing on top.

It's 4 floors per family. An elevator or do a lot of stairs everyday. In both cases more time to move around than an equivalent 1 or 2 floors house. But if they do the stairs it keeps them fit.

My parents have a 3-floor townhouse and it's far, far more practical than the goofy sprawling "open floorplan" designs. Plus not having neighbors above/below you is a great tradeoff. I don't think this is as impractical as it would appear to someone not living in one (that's been my experience at least).

The floor space of an actual Dublin Georgian townhouse is frankly enormous - the houses seem narrow but they’re very deep. We’re talking 5000 square feet between the 4 floors in a country where the average house is 1000 square feet. And that’s in the densest part of a dense, old city.

These things weren’t built for mom, dad and 2.4 kids, but much larger families (6? 8 kids?) who were rich enough to have their own staff living alongside. Many were eventually subdivided into tenements and by the 20th century one street managed to fit 835 people between 15 houses.

There’s a reason well maintained Georgian houses sell for approaching €2 million euro. These new Georgian-style builds are targeting the very wealthy rather than trying to be practical city centre housing, in Ireland at least.

> There’s a reason well maintained Georgian houses sell for approaching €2 million euro.

Which is still a good bit less than you'd expect for the square footage (that would work out to 4-500eur/sqft, which would def. be on the low end for the areas they're most found in), reflecting the awkwardness of the layout.

That’s a problem with the square footage, not the number of stories. It is well within the realm of possibility to have a reasonably sized 3 or 4 story townhouse. It can even have Georgian design elements while being reasonably sized.

Not sure what's impractical about a four story building? Without lifts/elevators, four stories hits the sweet spot in terms of density vs accessibility.

Of course, if you consider any building older than 100 years to be "impractical", then maybe living in the historic centre of a city isn't for you? There are plenty of modern (and soulless) places to live in the more modern fringes of the city.

And I disagree - the new ESB headquarters on Fitzwilliam St doesn't look "silly" at all - it actually looks very well to my eye from the street. Unfortunately https://maps.app.goo.gl/NL2qtasuMNM89Nqg8 doesn't have enough detail to show it but certainly the materials and brickwork is of a high quality. It doesn't aim to be pastiche or fake as you call it, but it does respect the materials and elevation of the historic streetscape.

> Not sure what's impractical about a four story building?

Nothing impractical about a four story building as such. The (normally five story) Georgian terraces are normally very long and narrow, though. This makes them difficult to turn into practical housing; you're looking at either awkwardly long narrow rooms, or rooms without natural light, if you turn them into apartments (and as single unit housing they're far too big for practical purposes). They also make for awkward offices (I've worked in one, back in the day).

You could... maybe make wider faux-Georgian terraces, I suppose, but at that point you're getting into the weird-looking anyway.

> I live in a city that has a bunch of it; in practice, it's incredibly impractical, and the few modern attempts to imitate it while providing an actually usable building tend to end up looking absurd.

Probably because a lot of folks don't understand the 'old' styles and how they work. Brent Hull specializes in restoring pre-WW2 buildings, and designing new ones that follow the design rules:

* https://www.youtube.com/@BrentHull/videos

A break-down on how a Georgian house should appear (i.e., use the Golden ratio everywhere):

* https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J-0XJpPnlrA&t=3m11s

Has a recent playlist, "New House Old Soul", on constructing new buildings (and additions) that harness the design rules of previous styles properly:

* https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLjEWB3ObiETMTGy11dF91...

You can get a new home built in Georgian Revival style but it’s going to be expensive. Home builders rely on easy to source, mass produced, standard parts. In my experience the cost goes way up. For instance, a truss can’t be used for the roof and windows are custom, etc. and there’s going to be a lot of windows.

It’s why many homes today are built off existing models. But you see it in higher-end homes.

Now, of course the required parts could become mass produced if there were the demand. And I agree it’s a simpler and beautiful style. But you can’t put a flat roof on them.

I dunno, I'm not a stickler for details. For example, I know that windows with many small panes ("muntins") are not cost-effective today and partially defeat the benefits of double and triple glazing, and the alternatives (fake bars that are glued on or between the glass) look shockingly bad... but any kind of partition at all (casement, fixed pane + tilt-turn pane, etc.) already adds visual interest and does not look out of place, as e.g. is evident in this photo of Georgian architecture with windows that I'm guessing are not historically accurate: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/78/Baggot_S...

I think some of the higher-end window grills (a "stuck on the outside muntin" for a short-hand description) look fine from any distance that they're typically seen.

https://aw930cdnprdcd.azureedge.net/-/media/andersenwindows/... (There's some chance that those are even internal, which are longer lasting/easier to clean, but much less convincing owing to having all the wrong shadow lines.)

Having a higher end window where the mutton/grill is dominated on both sides is best imo. It looks awful from the outside when it’s an interior stick-on as there’s no dimension and line you mentioned lack of shadow lines. You generally have to go to the higher end though, like a Marvin Ultimate. 30 of those on a house, installed, just set you back $60k+. But they look great.

I had windows like those. The glued cross shaped frame was not actually glued and it was on both sides. It looked beautiful but it was a nightmare to clean. Four small glasses instead of a large one. It was wood, single layer glass. I replaced them with something that reduced the heat flow.

Yeah you can get simulated divided lights (SDL) on a modern window. I guess I am a bit of a stickler for these things, heh.

I can see a modern Georgian type thing though. Definitely nicer than so much of the garbage being built today.

My home has muntins, and I have to say they are incredibly convenient. If a ball goes through a window or something, it's extremely easy to replace; and very cheap. Highly recommend.

As for glazing... I'm not 100% sure. I've heard there are ways to get glass panes that are better insulated. My other guess is that, had muntins continued to be popular, the market would have found something. There's nothing inherently inefficient about them.

For example, one option a local window company gave to me was to simple add some plastic covering on the inside of the window. It would not reduce the outward appearance at all, but would provide some insulation. As it is, our house is quite efficient and we don't actually have any insulation. The way they used to build houses (not open floor plan, multiple stories, etc) actually make them more pleasant to live in, in my opinion. Our only issue was that, when adding AC, the original forced air venting leads to a noticeable temperature differential due to the lack of an intake on the second floor, but we'll be fixing this soon. Plus, ceiling fans have basically eliminated the worst of the problem.

Nowadays the window that was broken would just be replaced. Luckily they pop out easily!

For your old windows (I have many still, mainly in the front) I recommend ensuring you have good weather stripping and that you have storm windows installed. That helps a lot. Mine are double hung sashes though so the pulley boxes are massive leaks but nothing I can do about that.

I guess I could just seal the windows shut and put insulation in the pulley boxes but they are still functional even though we rarely open them.

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