January 2001 | Eyesore

Commentary on architectural blunders in monthly serial.

It takes a village to make a house.

These days, the civic impoverishment of suburbia is so intense that house-buyers feel the need to stick multiple unnecessary roof articulations on the facade to sustain the illusion that they are coming "home" to a village. Each house in the subdivision has to symbolically repeat this idea of being a village unto itself. The added expense in gutters and flashings can easily mount up above $20,000 in a house like this one outside Kansas City.