September 2003 | Eyesore

Commentary on architectural blunders in monthly serial.

Don't you wonder why practically every house built in America after World War Two is a design abortion? The answer is actually simple but a little abstruse: ugliness is entropy made visible.

When you live in a high entropy society, as we do, the entropy manifests in many ways: toxic waste, poor air quality, social alienation, epidemic obesity, odious popular culture, AND immersive ugliness.

Everything that could have gone wrong with this house did go wrong. Garage facing street, monkeyshit brown and beige paint job, horrible window proportioning, screw-on shutters, pitiful canopies, service cables and pipes visible, stunted fake cupola, roof pitch sandwich on right, yard 50 percent asphalt and filled with automobiles, chain-link fence. . . .

And let's not forget the eagle right between the eyes. Perfect.