Timeless design principles beat suburban McMansions for beauty

I shot a casual photo of Lucy in front of our house this afternoon. She was happy in the warm summer sunshine. And I liked the perspective of the house behind her. It made her seem like the world’s friendliest guard dog.

After I posted the photo in a couple of places, a friend called me to say how much she loved it. Then she asked if I could take the same sort of picture of her dog in front of her house. I hesitated.

My house is an inexpensive old home in a mixed neighborhood. It was built in 1927. It originally didn’t even have running water. (I don’t know when the kitchen and bathroom were added.) I bought it six years ago as a cheap foreclosure. It’s nothing fancy.

My friend’s home is in a high-end suburb in a much nicer part of town. It’s worth about half a million dollars. The house has all the features that modern consumers want. But to anyone who understands symmetry and principles of design beauty, her house is a monstrosity. It’s an ugly crime against design.

How could I explain to my friend that her fancy house would look terrible as a background for her dog? How could I say that without insulting her taste?

This wasn’t going to be easy. I took a deep breath.

I asked my friend what she liked about my photo of Lucy with our house. I mean, what did she like about it enough that she wanted one of her own dog with her house?

She thought about it for a minute. Then she slowly tried to explain. She said it was cute to see a small dog look as big as the house by the perspective. Then she said that the combination of Lucy’s vertical shape and the house’s horizontal shape made an interesting visual contrast. And then she had an epiphany.

“The house looks balanced behind her,” she said, as though nothing like this had ever occurred to her. “Even though the halves are different, the parts behind her are equally weighted — and they’re nestled in all that greenery. It just looks like something from a magical fairy tale.”

I asked her to imagine exactly the same sort of photo in front of her own house. She was quiet for a long minute. Then she finally laughed softly.

“A picture like that would look awful with my house,” she said with surprise. “There’s no balance.”

We talked about design for another 15 minutes or so. I never did call her house ugly, but she finally said that she was starting to see her house in a very different way.

The front of her house is oddly balanced. She lives in a suburb where almost all the trees where clear-cut to make construction easier. (There are a few strategically placed smaller trees, but none of the natural ones were left.) The design of the front facade seems intended to be a mishmash of styles — combining whatever features the builder thought might be popular.

Her house would get a rough review on the snarky architectural design site called McMansion Hell.

I ended up agreeing to make a photo of my friend and her dog, but not anything like Lucy’s picture in front of our house. My friend sees her own house in a new way now and she might even be sorry she got into a conversation about design with me. (She works with business accounting, so I doubt she’s given much thought to design before.)

My inexpensive little house isn’t a marvel of design. It never was a fancy house and it’s seen better days. When I decide where I want to move next, I’ll use this house as a cheap rental. It was never intended to be a long-term home for me. I didn’t buy it for its design or charm.

But a cheap 1927 working-class house with design integrity beats a fancy 2012 McMansion any day, at least in some basic ways. Why? In ways that are hard to explain, it has integrity. It’s not a grab-bag of features thrown together to attract tasteless people with money.

No matter how much money you have, you can’t buy good aesthetic taste. But if you take the time, you can learn good design — and you’ll be surprised how much more you appreciate your world when you do.