Another one for Mel (Antidote to Burnout). This house is being re-constructed on my alleyway. It is one of those corner houses. I remember what it looked like before and the change is amazing. Nice architecture but I guess I should leave the comments up to the real professional house lookers such as Mel.
(This house used to be an outside coffee shop)
(I love the design)
(Corner house, they had to give more space to the new paved alleyway than their neighbors)
Yup! It’s a nice house. Ordinarily I snear at the historicist designs (the ones with the fake classical columns or spanish colonial balcony railings) since I am definitely a modernist. However, I do hold a secret leaning sometimes to the picturesque. The bronze-like medallion above the doorway is a nice design touch. Even though this is an historicist design, it is not formulaic like most of them — there are some touches of inventiveness.
I am always interested in knowing how non-architects like yourself view architecture. I am particularly interested in how Vietnamese home-owners make the decisions they make about styles of architecture.
— Mel
What caught my eye is how it really flows with the corner of the alleyway. It draws your attention. I wonder if the owners will open a nicer coffee shop since the alley will be much busier now. Big enough for a fire truck and more cars.
I look at the outside of buildings a lot but based on my Peace Corps experience, I tend to view how the building was built on whether it is a good building or not. In Kazakhstan, I saw how they literally used mud bricks to build an extension to my host family’s house. Scary since we lived in an earthquake zone.
In Vietnam. I try to find out where all the wiring is so I can tell my landlord the exact location of the problem. I also try to locate where the water valves are just in case a repair man turns them off (they do for no apparent reason sometimes). Etc, etc.