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Comment by rsynnott | Hacker News Reader

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.

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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.

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.

> 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...

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.

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