An Architectural Rant

Last Saturday when we were walking back from The Wrestlers over the new bridge we then continued through the old part of Chesterton. It's an area with lots of nice old houses and we were powerfully struck by how you can put new houses into this street scene well ... and how you can really screw it up.

Let's consider the good first. This¹ is a terrace of houses built fairly recently on the site of an old chapel I think the sign said.

It fits in well with other houses in the street. The way the roof is constructed, the style of the windows and the detail over them, they've even included false bricked in windows on the ground floor (sadly you can't see this on the photo) but overall it fits. It's not a straight copy of the other houses around it but it's in the same style. In a hundred years from now, when the brickwork has aged down, it will really look like it was always there.

Now for contrast if I turn around I'm confronted with this.

It's pretty foul. Harse angles, metal girders holding up the balconies and unprimed wood. To illustrate the latter here's a close up of a front door with a faux shutter.

This estate isn't even finished yet: they're still building on the other side of the site, and already the woodwork on the shutter looks discoloured and just wrong. The door frame is no better. Note also the outside pipework - I'm guessing it's a gas pipe. Ugly. Very ugly. And I fear it will all get uglier with time too as the woodwork won't weather well and the girderwork will presumably rust without regular maintenance.

What a shame that this sort of thing is allowed.

1. You'll have to excuse the quality of these photos, they were taken with my phone.