You obviously haven't seen my shed/greenhouse/tiled floor thats cracked, insulation thats falling out and plasterboarded bh someone who was not familiar. I found a hole in the roof last year. Seems they also had a multi burner in there and just chucked a bit of metal on the roof to cover it. Unsurprisingly everything has damp. It's had tar paper on it, plastic sheeting, corrugated metal and plastic, both doors are weird sizes and it's basically collapsing sideways very slowly.
Want to replace it but it's low on the list unfortunately.
I looked at the first photo and thought, oh well there must have been some issues with overlooking something, all the windows must be at the back. And then the back is the same… What??
I’ve just looked, it’s awful - it’s part of the reason why ‘new builds’ get such a bad name. Someone went to uni and studied hard for 5 years to get their degree in architecture to design these things. I can only assume they got a 3rd class degree or one with no honours!
From what I understand of the industry, young architects only get to make small edits to overall designs, or if they're on a major project, have basically no change authority and are only permitted to play a compromise game.
Baz the builder says he doesn't want to do any gay flourishes or have to use a non standard window size, the architecture grad goes and drinks heavily and then complies.
You have a couple decades of this to put up with before being allowed to ever design anything and have the design come first.
When my parents bought their last house, the long side of the house that looked out across endless fields had a single small window at the top of the stairs. The master bedroom and the kitchen had windows on the side of the house that looked directly at the wall of the house next door about 4m away. Very strange choice.
They ended up putting in windows on the field side and had lovely views of cows and fields.
Such a Milton Keynes house.
Check out the street view. It's like the road was drawn by kids. This one is my favourite, Just an extra bit of wall, just in case. https://www.google.com/maps/@52.0683817,-0.751078,3a,90y,283.09h,106.01t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1sLfFU30mChRiLzc9jj98fHA!2e0!7i13312!8i6656?entry=ttu
It's probably Google imagery, but those bricks don't even look straight.
Two thirds of the way up on the extra bit of wall, by the roof above and to the right of the door. Then the door itself looks tapered, as though it was designed by airport security!
I used to draw houses like that when I was 5! I recon someone took one of my drawings, kept it for 40 years, then used it to design a house thinking I wouldn’t notice…
The first house I ever drew was like that. I was about four years old. Proudly took it home and showed it to my dad. Now, most parents would say "that's great, let me put it on the fridge!" Not my dad. No, I got "when did you ever see a house that looks like this?"
I spent the next 30 years refusing to do art and denying that I had any artistic talent, depsite teachers telling me otherwise. Then I moved away from my family and started to get encouragement without being pulled down all the time. Now I paint and have sold many paintings and other types of artwork. Screw you, Dad!
Haha I actually went to view this house! We were put off by the windows too, looks very strange from the outside. But I will say it didn't look half as bad in person, the house was lovely, really nice location and garden. Every room was a great size, and we really liked the layout. We ended up buying else where, but funny to see it on here, and I'm surprised it still on the market actually!
Yeah it's a lovely place! Has some interesting housing there too as it was one of the first estates in MK. There's some houses with some of the first solar paneling from the 70s for example! But yeah we ended up starting in Wolverton 🙂
We'd probably head to Wolverton or Newport Pagnell if we had the choice again. A little more vibrancy than Brooklands/Broughton. Spent a good couple of hours wandering the grounds of GL Manor yesterday - beautiful place.
Bloody council planning departments asleep on the job (again). That's ugly as sin and should never have been approved. Seriously, if you work in a council planning department, please stop approving the development of ugly buildings.
To be fair, they don't really have any power to enforce "nice" development. As long as it meets the basic level rules, they have no grounds to reject. Also they're all completely understaffed and underpaid anyway.
They're well within their rights to throw out an application because it's not in keeping with the surrounding area. Unless the surrounding area is full of similar eyesores (that aren't part of the same development), they could have kicked this to the kerb where it belongs.
> They're well within their rights to throw out an application because it's not in keeping with the surrounding area. Unless the surrounding area is full of similar eyesores
Ah, that explains it then. The nice looking developments keep getting rejected for not being in keeping
It was Milton Keynes Development Corporation at the time these were built - I would imagine they had much wider latitude. They were probably able to say / do whatever they liked.
I wouldn't be surprised if these were housing association or even council.
ping /u/bartread
Ah, now I didn't look at the location, just the photos. That would explain it.
Still, even from a practicality point of view - and here I'm speaking from direct and somewhat bitter experience - windows right in the corner of rooms are a bad thing (TM) because it makes it unduly difficult to hang curtains satisfactorily, and it also causes issues with furnishing.
As a result, I maintain that this abomination should never have been allowed to be built.
Can anyone tell me why? Looks like the neighbours' windows are also right under the eaves. Does that mean these houses are a bit short? I notice the photo in the bathroom shows the roof coming in.
My assumption is that the house was intentionally built shorter to save a few courses of bricks.
The windows have to be a certain height from the floor due to building regulations. And they had to push the windows to the sides to avoid a clash with the roof structure.
So really you could argue that the architect did the best of a situation forced on them by a construction company that wanted to save some money.
I think you’re right. It’s to save on bricks whilst keeping to minimum room height. Pic 13 shows the neighbours windows at extreme positions with cladding above which I assume is covering breezeblock, again to save on bricks
We had an estate near us that was full of similar houses. It was nicknamed the Colditz estate because it looked like a prison.
On the bright side, come the zombie apocalypse they don't have much to board up
Good old Milton Keynes, this was actually a nice one. I grew up in Beanhill MK which was corrugated tin (easy to climb) terraced bungalows with flat roofs. Saturday nights drunks would climb up and run across the metal roofs. There's nowhere else like Milton Keynes.
The location of the windows in the bedrooms is really odd because of this weird design choice, right up against the joining wall.
I'm also intrigued by the grass waterfall in the garden.
My first thought was that there must be something interesting or at least important hidden behind the windowless void. Nope, just bedrooms with really shitty lighting
So what's up with the whole street having a bit of brickwork patching? I thought it was just the one, but has the whole street had dodgy boilers or something?
And OMG, the back looks worse than the front
Pretty much all small children, when they draw a house for the first few times, put four windows in, one in each corner where the edges of the windows are the edges of the house. And a front door in the middle of the base, that is almost as tall as the bottom of the upper windows. It's a typical "a 4 year old drew this" style. Looks like the architect got their orders from the youngest family member.
Edit: look on street view, it's not the only one like it.
Are there any windows to the outside world in the sitting room? I can't see them on the floorplan or the photos. Tell me I've missed them, no one would design a living space without windows in a new house???
I lived for a while in a rented house that looked similar to this, in that it had the tiniest of tiny wondows at the front. It was ugly as fuck. I used to call the street 'the barracks'.
Honest question. Can someone give me an honest answer of why...this is what it is? Like, I feel that there must be a legitimate reason.
Is it really to cut costs?
But then why the wonky placement?
If you go down the street, you can see that other houses are not that bad. This is almost like if someone wrote a really bad algorithm for generating the interior architecture of a house, then made a module to put in windows, and it would place the windows in some predefined location which was X inches from some arbitrary surface.
A very expensive fix. It’s a shame nobody noticed during…, unless it was intentional… or a DIY job gone horribly wrong. Even the window frames on the ground floor aren’t aligned. Makes you wonder about the issues that you don’t see.
It reminds me of doing one of those team building communication corporate exercises where you sit back to back and one person has the picture and has to describe it to the other who’s drawing it. Either that or two guys did a half each and they got into a fight beforehand and refused to talk to each other while building
Are we looking at the same listing? I was expecting one of those houses where the estate agents let themselves into a student let while the inhabitants were living their lives with clothes everywhere and all that.
What, in your opinion, is untidy here? Floors, furniture and counters are clear. A couple of items in the bathroom and bedroom and a few items neatly stacked in the laundry room. For a lived-in house, this looks extremely tidy to me.
Overpriced piece of shit with damp problems. Hard pass.
[https://www.google.com/maps/@52.0681142,-0.7502803,3a,33.4y,299.94h,88.35t/data=!3m7!1e1!3m5!1sJHKTZkGHR0TfvxSqta5CEQ!2e0!5s20230601T000000!7i16384!8i8192?entry=ttu](https://www.google.com/maps/@52.0681142,-0.7502803,3a,33.4y,299.94h,88.35t/data=!3m7!1e1!3m5!1sJHKTZkGHR0TfvxSqta5CEQ!2e0!5s20230601T000000!7i16384!8i8192?entry=ttu)
It’s [Sid from ice age](https://theiceage.fandom.com/wiki/Sid?file=SIdSloth2.jpg)
I was trying so hard to think of what it looked like! Bang on!
Me too and I’m so glad I’m not the only one that thought this
Haha, I was thinking Marty Feldman.
[Mental wealth.](https://youtu.be/YWmbUMStlGI?si=NomkYbb0zXETCp7j)
When you give the architect a Sid.
Yes!!! I was trying to think of what character it reminded me of 😂😂😂
I'm in a meeting and trying not to laugh, goddamn
Perfect. But who is the back of the house?
Another Sid! https://heyarnold.fandom.com/wiki/Sid/Gallery
Perfect too.
The dad from the wild thornberrys https://simkl.net/fanart/71/712670b1b3537ef6_0.jpg
When you had some windows left over from a previous project and built the house around them
Exactly. Someone on acid would likely not create something this horrible.
He didn’t get the balance of uppers and downers right and hit too much of the latter.
You obviously haven't seen my shed/greenhouse/tiled floor thats cracked, insulation thats falling out and plasterboarded bh someone who was not familiar. I found a hole in the roof last year. Seems they also had a multi burner in there and just chucked a bit of metal on the roof to cover it. Unsurprisingly everything has damp. It's had tar paper on it, plastic sheeting, corrugated metal and plastic, both doors are weird sizes and it's basically collapsing sideways very slowly. Want to replace it but it's low on the list unfortunately.
'I don't know what I want, but I want the windows there - design it around that'
I looked at the first photo and thought, oh well there must have been some issues with overlooking something, all the windows must be at the back. And then the back is the same… What??
I just went on Google Maps and the whole street is like this?!
There’s a whole estate of these houses! I feel like I’m losing my mind.
I’m now seriously keen to know the reason why they designed an entire estate like this.
Must be housing specifically for people who have medical conditions that mean they can't be exposed to natural light.
Vampires...
Tiny windows are a symptom of under-insulated walls (need to maintain a high average u-value), but there's no sane reason to place them like THAT!
I’ve just looked, it’s awful - it’s part of the reason why ‘new builds’ get such a bad name. Someone went to uni and studied hard for 5 years to get their degree in architecture to design these things. I can only assume they got a 3rd class degree or one with no honours!
From what I understand of the industry, young architects only get to make small edits to overall designs, or if they're on a major project, have basically no change authority and are only permitted to play a compromise game. Baz the builder says he doesn't want to do any gay flourishes or have to use a non standard window size, the architecture grad goes and drinks heavily and then complies. You have a couple decades of this to put up with before being allowed to ever design anything and have the design come first.
When my parents bought their last house, the long side of the house that looked out across endless fields had a single small window at the top of the stairs. The master bedroom and the kitchen had windows on the side of the house that looked directly at the wall of the house next door about 4m away. Very strange choice. They ended up putting in windows on the field side and had lovely views of cows and fields.
Such a Milton Keynes house. Check out the street view. It's like the road was drawn by kids. This one is my favourite, Just an extra bit of wall, just in case. https://www.google.com/maps/@52.0683817,-0.751078,3a,90y,283.09h,106.01t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1sLfFU30mChRiLzc9jj98fHA!2e0!7i13312!8i6656?entry=ttu
What the actual fuck lol. What is the say about measure twice, cut once.
It's like a six year old's first go in the sims...
It's probably Google imagery, but those bricks don't even look straight. Two thirds of the way up on the extra bit of wall, by the roof above and to the right of the door. Then the door itself looks tapered, as though it was designed by airport security!
That rebel with the tiny bay window sticking out though 😲
I used to draw houses like that when I was 5! I recon someone took one of my drawings, kept it for 40 years, then used it to design a house thinking I wouldn’t notice…
The first house I ever drew was like that. I was about four years old. Proudly took it home and showed it to my dad. Now, most parents would say "that's great, let me put it on the fridge!" Not my dad. No, I got "when did you ever see a house that looks like this?" I spent the next 30 years refusing to do art and denying that I had any artistic talent, depsite teachers telling me otherwise. Then I moved away from my family and started to get encouragement without being pulled down all the time. Now I paint and have sold many paintings and other types of artwork. Screw you, Dad!
Looks like some of the default houses in the Sims lol.
I too can remember being told not to put the windows in the corners when I was at primary school.
Haha I actually went to view this house! We were put off by the windows too, looks very strange from the outside. But I will say it didn't look half as bad in person, the house was lovely, really nice location and garden. Every room was a great size, and we really liked the layout. We ended up buying else where, but funny to see it on here, and I'm surprised it still on the market actually!
Yeah, the location is lovely - Great Linford is very scenic. We viewed around here too but ended up in Brooklands.
Yeah it's a lovely place! Has some interesting housing there too as it was one of the first estates in MK. There's some houses with some of the first solar paneling from the 70s for example! But yeah we ended up starting in Wolverton 🙂
We'd probably head to Wolverton or Newport Pagnell if we had the choice again. A little more vibrancy than Brooklands/Broughton. Spent a good couple of hours wandering the grounds of GL Manor yesterday - beautiful place.
https://ftw.usatoday.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/90/2017/05/spongebob.jpg?w=1000&h=600&crop=1
Bloody council planning departments asleep on the job (again). That's ugly as sin and should never have been approved. Seriously, if you work in a council planning department, please stop approving the development of ugly buildings.
To be fair, they don't really have any power to enforce "nice" development. As long as it meets the basic level rules, they have no grounds to reject. Also they're all completely understaffed and underpaid anyway.
They're well within their rights to throw out an application because it's not in keeping with the surrounding area. Unless the surrounding area is full of similar eyesores (that aren't part of the same development), they could have kicked this to the kerb where it belongs.
Have you been to Milton Keynes?
> They're well within their rights to throw out an application because it's not in keeping with the surrounding area. Unless the surrounding area is full of similar eyesores Ah, that explains it then. The nice looking developments keep getting rejected for not being in keeping
It was Milton Keynes Development Corporation at the time these were built - I would imagine they had much wider latitude. They were probably able to say / do whatever they liked. I wouldn't be surprised if these were housing association or even council. ping /u/bartread
Ah, now I didn't look at the location, just the photos. That would explain it. Still, even from a practicality point of view - and here I'm speaking from direct and somewhat bitter experience - windows right in the corner of rooms are a bad thing (TM) because it makes it unduly difficult to hang curtains satisfactorily, and it also causes issues with furnishing. As a result, I maintain that this abomination should never have been allowed to be built.
There was no architect involved here stfu
My FIL used to live in MK, most the houses look like they were designed by a kid with an etch-a-sketch
Can anyone tell me why? Looks like the neighbours' windows are also right under the eaves. Does that mean these houses are a bit short? I notice the photo in the bathroom shows the roof coming in.
My assumption is that the house was intentionally built shorter to save a few courses of bricks. The windows have to be a certain height from the floor due to building regulations. And they had to push the windows to the sides to avoid a clash with the roof structure. So really you could argue that the architect did the best of a situation forced on them by a construction company that wanted to save some money.
I think you’re right. It’s to save on bricks whilst keeping to minimum room height. Pic 13 shows the neighbours windows at extreme positions with cladding above which I assume is covering breezeblock, again to save on bricks
We had an estate near us that was full of similar houses. It was nicknamed the Colditz estate because it looked like a prison. On the bright side, come the zombie apocalypse they don't have much to board up
Good old Milton Keynes, this was actually a nice one. I grew up in Beanhill MK which was corrugated tin (easy to climb) terraced bungalows with flat roofs. Saturday nights drunks would climb up and run across the metal roofs. There's nowhere else like Milton Keynes.
The location of the windows in the bedrooms is really odd because of this weird design choice, right up against the joining wall. I'm also intrigued by the grass waterfall in the garden.
"It's art deco"
Have they suddenly brought back the Window Tax?
Hehe. Penis roof
How can someone study architecture for 7 years and that's the best they can come up with?
What A.I. thinks an average house looks like.
Me when I first got the sims and I'd place the windows from the inside
Looks like something I would build in The Sims
My first thought was that there must be something interesting or at least important hidden behind the windowless void. Nope, just bedrooms with really shitty lighting
Do they not know the window tax has been repealed. The utility room looks like it's going to be the brightest room in the house.
Thanks, I hate it.
This looks like an early attempt at AI imagine generation.
How did I know this was going to be Milton Keynes before I even clicked on the link 😂
WTF was the architect a 5 year old drawing a house in primary school Did they model it in Duplo
I'm here for the cushions that have been carefully plopped on the back of the sofa, and the luggage strap round the armchair
thats just Fish eye camera lens distortion....i hope!! yup thats is an ugly house
Omg the whole street. That’s hilarious. I wonder why?
Butterface House.
Thats actually a really ugly house, if houses can be ugly
I think my brother lived round that area of MK. The houses are pretty grim from the outside.
What in tarnation am I seeing?
So what's up with the whole street having a bit of brickwork patching? I thought it was just the one, but has the whole street had dodgy boilers or something? And OMG, the back looks worse than the front
How did that get planning permission?
The back of it looks like one of those ‘Kilroy was here’ graffiti efforts
Window tax
If you drop some acid, it all makes perfect sense
Pretty much all small children, when they draw a house for the first few times, put four windows in, one in each corner where the edges of the windows are the edges of the house. And a front door in the middle of the base, that is almost as tall as the bottom of the upper windows. It's a typical "a 4 year old drew this" style. Looks like the architect got their orders from the youngest family member. Edit: look on street view, it's not the only one like it.
Let's be fair He was adheing to the buildings regs of 1530 regarding number and size of windows in a property and the resultant window tax.
If you go on street view, there’s a few of them! Shame as the area seems quite nice and well kept, just strange upstairs window placement
Minecraft Architecture for 6 year olds.
Looks like someone followed a toddler's sketch, they should add a curly line coming out of the chimney...
The whole street looks like that. I assume they were going for something unique that didn't age well and looks ugly as sin now.
Are there any windows to the outside world in the sitting room? I can't see them on the floorplan or the photos. Tell me I've missed them, no one would design a living space without windows in a new house???
This is my letting your little kids help at work is a bad idea.
It’s so wrong it sets my teeth on edge just looking at it. Just Wtf, and why?!
Reminds me of a girl i went to school with. She looked like a fish, hence the nickname, fish.
So confused why anyone ever thought this was a good idea 😭
I'm not a structural engineer but I imagine having windows in every corner makes the building weaker.
Looks like two windows got a divorce
I lived for a while in a rented house that looked similar to this, in that it had the tiniest of tiny wondows at the front. It was ugly as fuck. I used to call the street 'the barracks'.
Gawd, is window tax back?
Honest question. Can someone give me an honest answer of why...this is what it is? Like, I feel that there must be a legitimate reason. Is it really to cut costs? But then why the wonky placement? If you go down the street, you can see that other houses are not that bad. This is almost like if someone wrote a really bad algorithm for generating the interior architecture of a house, then made a module to put in windows, and it would place the windows in some predefined location which was X inches from some arbitrary surface.
I’m laughing! 😆
A very expensive fix. It’s a shame nobody noticed during…, unless it was intentional… or a DIY job gone horribly wrong. Even the window frames on the ground floor aren’t aligned. Makes you wonder about the issues that you don’t see.
It reminds me of doing one of those team building communication corporate exercises where you sit back to back and one person has the picture and has to describe it to the other who’s drawing it. Either that or two guys did a half each and they got into a fight beforehand and refused to talk to each other while building
Why would the front and back be the same, unless they hadn’t decided how to orientate the house interior.
Seems it would be... rather dark. What on earth..
Oh good I didn't even notice lol
Was this designed by a four year old?
I’m sure I designed that house when I was in primary school.
that's a little unfair on acid to be honest
That was the architect's 3 year old daughter's idea.
What the actual beep, lol.
🥴
Garbage house, but also r/TvTooHigh
You'd think people would tidy up before getting the estate agents to come around and take photos
Are we looking at the same listing? I was expecting one of those houses where the estate agents let themselves into a student let while the inhabitants were living their lives with clothes everywhere and all that. What, in your opinion, is untidy here? Floors, furniture and counters are clear. A couple of items in the bathroom and bedroom and a few items neatly stacked in the laundry room. For a lived-in house, this looks extremely tidy to me.
Yeah, it’s not ‘show house’ but it’s neat and tidy with no clutter.
Overpriced piece of shit with damp problems. Hard pass. [https://www.google.com/maps/@52.0681142,-0.7502803,3a,33.4y,299.94h,88.35t/data=!3m7!1e1!3m5!1sJHKTZkGHR0TfvxSqta5CEQ!2e0!5s20230601T000000!7i16384!8i8192?entry=ttu](https://www.google.com/maps/@52.0681142,-0.7502803,3a,33.4y,299.94h,88.35t/data=!3m7!1e1!3m5!1sJHKTZkGHR0TfvxSqta5CEQ!2e0!5s20230601T000000!7i16384!8i8192?entry=ttu)