And yet again? The 2013 Swamplot Awards for Houston Real Estate begin with a category that’s made an appearance every year since the awards first started back in 2008: Favorite Houston Design Cliché.
Aren’t we tired of it? And yet: Each year this particular award has seen a different winner. Last year it was those Humping Bungalows (runner up: the ubiquitous Sago Palm). In previous years we’ve had “Lick ’n’ stick” fake-rock siding, Lone Stars, “Lakes of” subdivisions, and “Tuscanization” grab the award. Whose turn will it be this year?
That’s up to you. What Houston building, shopping center, streetscape, home, interior, neighborhood, or yard cliché deserves recognition in 2013? Your suggestions for this award may be inspired from stories you’ve read on Swamplot or from your own keen eye for overused detail.
Enter your choice in a comment to this post only or — more privately — in an email to the Swamplot tip line, with the subject line “Nomination: Favorite Houston Design Cliche.†Nominations will be accepted for one full week, until midnight this Sunday, December 8, after which the best-presented choices will be put on the official ballot and opened for voting. If you need some guidance, here’s more information on how to make a nomination.
You can submit as many nominations as you like in this category, but your choices will have a better chance of succeeding if you use the opportunity to make your point in a clever and convincing way. When the actual awards are open for voting, each selected nomination will be introduced with some edited bastardization of the arguments made by the readers who submitted them. So be eloquent and persuasive! If you can send your own photos in support of a nomination, that will help a lot — and help you make your case to voters. Send images to the Swamplot tip line, but be sure to identify them and indicate what they’re for.
Comments to this post will be counted as nominations only. Nominations may be seconded, expanded, or improved. Even simple “me too†posts could help an entry find a place on the actual ballot, but they won’t be counted as votes for the winner. The actual voting in this category will begin next week. Are you ready? Send us your favorite clichés!
- The Swamplot Awards for Houston Real Estate 2013: How To Make a Nomination [Swamplot]
- Swamplot Award Nominations 2013 [Swamplot]
I nominate the word “luxury” when used as a standalone design feature.
Are you a 20-something professional who recently moved to Houston for work? Did you decide to adopt the true urban lifestyle by spending $2000/mo for a “luxury” apartment minutes from the CBD? Are you now wondering exactly what part of your mid-stack, ticky-tacky, yuppie trap qualifies as “luxury”?
Here’s the thing: in Houston, the word “luxury” in and of itself qualifies as a luxury feature. Whereas a discerning renter in another city might ask if a unit has ultra high-end appliances and exotic wood floors, the Houston renter simply asks if the project’s developer used the word luxury to describe it. If the promotional materials include the word luxury in an ornate font, all the better.
So if you’re not sure where your money is going, just refer back to the marketing materials that got you into this festering pile of decadence in the first place. See? Luxury!
The ghost of first floor retail-yet-to-come. We’re always reading about enormous plans for sky-high developments that have retail the size of the Galleria stuffed into their bottom floors. With a few notable exceptions, the final results have been more modest, and the retail floors have been downsized or entirely cut out.
tilt walls. as urban sprawl continues unabated along our loops, frontage road real estate fills in with a sea of undifferentiated tilt wall construction. or, if you prefer, the design cliche is the complete lack of design.
Hamburgers & Hot Dogs… not so much an building design concept so much as a menu design concept, one that seems to increasingly occupy so many of Houston’s new buildings, and trucks – so technically it should qualify – it seems half the new restaurant openings in town are for places that cook either irreverent hot dogs or serious, hard core hamburgers… to the point of cliche.
People, they are hamburgers and hot dogs. Ground meat, either formed into patties or encased. They’ve somehow been elevated off of their rightful place on children’s menus, mostly by proprietors from the millennial generation, overgrown children themselves, whose culinary tastes can be outlined by the three primary-colored, non-toxic crayons that often accompany those menus.
The increasingly ostentatious entry waterfall things in front of EVERY new subdivision. One only need to drive south on 288 or FM521 to see that things are getting really out of hand on the entry mountain / fountain front. Rodeo Palms springs to mind as one of the worst offenders.
“Oh darling! I MUST live in an indistinguishable box out in the middle of nowhere! Just look at that pretentions waterfall thing by the highway!”
“Yes Sweetheart, I can see we were meant to live at The Cesspools of Mosquito Crossing.”
“Midrise” ” Luxury” apartments designed with 4 or 5 floors of apartments stacked on top of 2 floors of garage parking whose facade is composed of red brick with some beige stucco for contrast and given a variance to build up to the sidewalk, yet containing no pedestrian-friendly ground level retail. Don’t forget to add in some tiny balconies. Stir, bake, and construct.
There is an unsettling amount of new development coming in the outer fringes of Houston that is billed as “Texas Hill Country” inspired, including that fancy new Kroger they’re building. It’s mostly a marketing thing…and there’s more than one around.
Balcony banisters that are below the window, flush against the wall, and offer no reason for being there. (See Apartment complex across from target off Taylor on I-10) That really grinds my gears…
I nominate the typical inner loop townhouse design: First, start with a three-story stucco exterior. The first floor will have the garage, an office/third bedroom, and full bathroom. The second floor will be the living/dining/kitchen open area with a powder room somewhere in there. The third floor will have the master bedroom with en suite bathroom with a plastic whirlpool tub plus the second bedroom with en suite bath. Round that out with a tiny patch of grass or rocks on the side and a 2nd or 3rd floor balcony measuring 2′ x 4′ and, voila, you’ve got yourself a $300k townhouse! Did I miss anything?
Townhouse complexes with the word ‘Estates’ in the title. Convincing urbanites everywhere that your zero lot line structure is actually a sprawling castle in the country.
“The ghost of first floor retail-yet-to-come. We’re always reading about enormous plans for sky-high developments that have retail the size of the Galleria stuffed into their bottom floors. With a few notable exceptions, the final results have been more modest, and the retail floors have been downsized or entirely cut out.”
– Sihaya
+1
the wrap apartment complex, or should it be hide the parking structure, whatever
I would like to join Spirit of 2005 in nominating “Texas Hill Country” design encroachment. (See the Rock Creek and Towne Lake developments in Cypress.) I’m from the Hill Country – born and raised. It’s a beautiful place. Let’s just leave it there, okay? Houston has its own style and its own natural beauty – from the coastal plains, to the oak savannah, to the piney woods…we get to have a cool mix of “vernacular” here. Stop trying to bring Austin and San Antonio styles here – nearly as obnoxious as that faux Tuscan BS. To me, Houston is Aurora Greenway’s House in River Oaks; grooved red brick houses in Riverside Terrace; tudor cottages in West U. It’s not Limestone-veneer-with-some-iron-and-a-piece-of-metal-roof-over-the-front-door.
I’ll nominate the use of stucco, and in particular, that terrible synthetic stucco you see on West U McMansions and Inner Loop townhouses. Given our climate, it makes absolutely no sense to use stucco in Houston, both practically and aesthetically, yet it is EVERYWHERE.
I second ShadyHeightster, but I’d like to offer up a name to the thousands of units going up across Houston in giant, multi-hundred unit buildings of 4-6 stories with as little character as unbuttered white bread —Apartments from Nowhere. They are placeless things with fit and finish painstakingly calculated for short-term ROI and a Philistine disdain for architecture as anything but a function of how many units can be fit into a lot (after they get a rubber-stamp variance, that is). Streetscape be damned, they seem to say. If you don’t want to be forced to look at our blank walls as you walk down the narrow sidewalk, get a car, you hobo! Then fight for one of only four parking spots we placed by the leasing office and sign on the dotted line before you realize that “luxury” is nothing but hyperbole.
My nomination is for decor that includes dead animals on the walls. I’ve seen listings with hunting trophies in a child’s bedroom, the dining room, and in one case, right above the toilet (a head over the head, as it were). With realtors always advising you to de-personalize, there must be something special about taxidermy that exempts it from this advice. Is it now considered ART?
Thanks to fracking fortunes, River Oaks is losing some beautiful homes in favor of those built-to-the-lot-line faux chateaux made of stucco. This design cliché I call MoFo Chateaux.
Anyone who has done any house shopping, (or simple HAR lurking), has seen this great offender. The innocuous beige tile, be it 12 inch or 18 inch variety. The cheap, you can find it everywhere tile that now is, well, everywhere. Flippers have a special love affair with it, covering floors, making shower stalls, tub enclosures and bathroom counters out of it. Then they get to call it “updated.” It is cold looking, ugly, and needs to just go away.
I have to second those “Juliet” balconies as they are called by the brokers. Useless and tasteless.
The “Texas Doughnut” style block apartments rising throughout the Inner-Loop like fungi. “Luxury” apartments wrapped around a large parking garage with maybe a doggy-run court yard in the middle above a layer of either ground-floor retail, leasing offices, gym/amenities or all of the above.
Polystone-al architecture. It first started showing up as a patch of limestone on what was an otherwise another mind numbing page from a builder’s form book for residential suburban sprawl. Usually over the front entryway, a panel of limestone siding is used to break up the brick siding. Yeah, you know what I am talking about. But, this has evolved into kind of a “put a bird on it” form of home design. Take another boring new house in the burbs and put some slate here, some limestone there, a keystone here, some stucco there, and you have a polystone-al home. And it is starting to creep into some recent Houston wrap apartment complexes too.
Stone, brick and stucco have always had some connection to the region where the home was built. The mish mash of different stone, brick and stucco combinations just create an ambiguous style that kind of looks a bit hill country, a little traditional southern, a bit of New England and everywhere else in between. The worst part is when your kid comes home from college and starts droning on about how the architecture in the neighborhood represents post-modernism in that the traditional sense of place of residential architecture is now nothing more than a social construction of marketing and computer generated design.
+1 I’m surrounded by them.
GL’s comment
“I nominate the typical inner loop townhouse design: First, start with a three-story stucco exterior. The first floor will have the garage, an office/third bedroom, and full bathroom. The second floor will be the living/dining/kitchen open area with a powder room somewhere in there. The third floor will have the master bedroom with en suite bathroom with a plastic whirlpool tub plus the second bedroom with en suite bath. Round that out with a tiny patch of grass or rocks on the side and a 2nd or 3rd floor balcony measuring 2′ x 4′ and, voila, you’ve got yourself a $300k townhouse! Did I miss anything?”
“Balcony banisters that are below the window, flush against the wall, and offer no reason for being there. (See Apartment complex across from target off Taylor on I-10) That really grinds my gears.”
+1
I see this in new construction all over town. These handrails are completely pointless.
I absolutely agree with this silly Hill Country design obsession that started in places like Cypress and Katy and has spread like cancer towards the inner loop. There are no hills around here and living in the nation’s 4th largest city in no way qualifies as country life.
I would also like to nominate the word custom, custom home, custom builder, custom finishes, etc… If the plans to your house are on a builder’s website it is not a custom house. If you’ve never met in person with an architect (and no despite what the salesman in the model home told you, he is not an architect) you didn’t “go custom”, even if your living room has one wall painted a different shade of off white.
I second GL’s nomination. The “typical inner loop townhose design” (ie. the three story stucco buildings sqeezed into tiny lots). Perhaps this trend isn’t “new” for 2013, but these condo/ townhome structures are seen in the Heights, Washington Ave., Midtown, EaDo, etc.
I second GL and Sally re the hundreds of three-story townhouses with the same floorplan and “design.” Sadly, my formerly interesting street in Montrose is being overrun with them.
Can we nominate something that only happens once a year? If so, inflatable holiday lawn art is a steadily rising crime against humanity. Then steadily deflating. Then steadily rising.
The no-previously-known-architectural-style of McMansions, or as I like to call them “Maxi-Pads.” Forget Colonial, Georgian, Mid-Century–create your own instead! Want some stucco? Sure. How about some faux stone? Yep. Then a juiliette balcony or two. Add a turret! Maybe some columns! Add rustic wooden shutters and a matching garage door! Confound the neighbors and don’t even care that it doesn’t match anything in the existing neighborhood.
One more. The whole concept of zero-lot-line homes. No one wants a backyard anymore?
Sadz–once a year? In my neighborhood, they are a constant from mid October to New Years–first inflatable Halloween decorations (the next door neighbor had a giant black cat whose head swiveled back and forth), then inflatable football players (of course, the suckitude of the Texans this year has minimized that particular abomination), and finally Christmas in all its inflatable glory.
+1 for zero-lot-line or no backyard homes. Tear down a ranch and get a McMansion! Go to Oak Forest to see this in action.
The “Midrise††Luxury†apartments! But the three story townhome is a close second.
Perhaps going hand in hand with the standard townhouse design, one atrocity that I can’t ever get over is the front facing garage. Just blargh. I could probably stomach some of the 3 story homes as long as the first floor wasn’t a garage. (I am guessing that people get in through the garage door? Or is there a side door somewhere? It’s mind boggling. And ugly.)
Maybe an addendum to my previous comment:
3 townhouses that are built on a 5k sq ft lot with a front facing garage on the bottom and an electronic gate around it. The sight of this is completely absurd and ridiculous. Since it’s not trendy to live in the ‘burbs anymore, this is your insta-gated community inside the loop! I can’t believe just how many of these have popped up in the Heights and in Montrose this past year.
White or off-white hardi plank. When I travel to different areas, I rarely see this. But driving around Houston, all I see is house after house with white or off-white hardi plank, most of which are usually filthy. Perhaps it is a conspiracy to keep the power washing companies in business.
I nominate the resurgence of subway tiles as this year’s design cliche, as well as their younger, more obnoxious brother, glass mosaic tile. I am tired of looking through pictures of newly-flipped houses in Westbury, Willowbend, Garden Oaks, Spring Branch, etc., and seeing these brightly-colored subway tiles in kitchen remodels and the occasional bathroom shower. They don’t seem to add that ‘pop’ of color the designer intended, but are an unwelcome distraction from an otherwise nicely updated room. Even worse are the unsightly, brightly-colored glass mosaic tiles in zig-zag and brick patterns. With subway tiles I am forever reminded of public restrooms and the dirty subway system from which the style originated. Also, the grout lines are kinda yucky.
Definitely the 3 story townhome fortress. These neighborhoods go from sidewalks and yards and nieghbors to fortresses where there isn’t even an exterior front door!! And not enough driveway to park outside of the garage. But then, in their fortress, I guess they don’t want visitors. And heaven forbid for a neighbor to drop by. Would hate to have a fire start. Would take out the entire block. But wait. That might be a good thing.
Wish I could edit my earlier comment. Realizing now that in my haste and hatred I used ‘brightly-colored’ twice. The latter occurrence should instead read ‘multicolored.’ I am ready for this trend (and I really do think it is just a trend) to die now.
It’s more of a regulatory artifact than a design cliche, but I’m tired of seeing (and avoiding) the car-eating drainage ditch along streets in the Heights.
Glamoflage!
The pic in this post from May 2013 says it all:
http://swamplot.com/houston-home-listing-photo-of-the-day-glamoflage/2013-05-29/
Also, stripper poles!
Can’t remember exactly how many posts there were this year, but I remember at least a few.
http://swamplot.com/houston-home-listing-photo-of-the-day-give-it-a-whirl/2013-05-31/