Why New Apartments Look Ugly

And a solution to that problem.

Many will be shocked but I have a confession to make: many new apartments do indeed look ugly, or at the very least uninspiring. Urbanists sell single-family obsessed Americans on residential density by pointing out that Americans vacation in Europe where they greatly admire the density of places like Venice, Paris etc. But Americans get annoyed that we don’t get beautiful Barcelona apartments and Parisian Haussmanns, but buildings like the ones in the picture above.

Some argue we should regulate building design to make them attractive. I agree but here’s the thing: it’s already regulated and that may be part of the problem. Most cities and towns have a Design Review board, which gives guidelines on how to build new homes. In San Francisco, the design review process pushes new homes to have things like bay windows. Some cities regulate the appearance of balconies. There are city mandates that buildings consist of multiple colors resulting in apartments that resemble legos. A common mandate to not have buildings be a single shape which results in funky structures with peculiar asymmetry.

We ought to be honest that design reviews have not produced attractive mid-rise homes that the public appears to like en-masse. If anything, they might have contributed to the unattractiveness. In contrast, people generally like the architecture of new single-family developments and townhomes. Lennar Corporation is seen as the McDonalds of single-family home construction but few would argue their creations are unattractive. Lennar incorporate features that are aesthetically pleasing to Americans: shingles, ornaments, simple stone masonry, plastered on wooden paneling etc. I find some of these homes to look quite silly, but I don’t think the average American disapproves. So why can’t we build apartments in similar styles?

Townhomes designed by the developer Lennar Corp.

This is anecdotal but condos (or owner-occupied housing) tends to look much better than even contemporary design apartments. Most new multi-family homes are rentals and the buyers of apartments are not average people but corporate landlords. Very few prospective tenants looking for rental listings are paying an ounce of attention to the building’s exterior. (If you do, you’re a bit weird or snobbish.) A condo and single-family developer’s market is mostly average people looking to own a home, so they care deeply about the exterior. Some developers are going to invest more money into hiring architects to build their projects with homey features or go for the neo-classic look.

Because architecture is subjective in attractiveness, it’s often hit or miss. Some developers hire architects that will get the job done cheap, with minor altercations of pre-existing designs from their portfolios. Others, in an attempt to appease architecturally critical communities, will hire architects that will use more expensive materials to achieve a pleasing design.

Design review as it currently exists doesn’t seem to make people happy and probably should be abolished entirely. Any design standards that aren’t directly about public safety or are extremely vague and lack explicit design features should probably be eliminated. D.R.s are staffed with fellow architects who tend to be snobby and have very insular conversations about their industry.

It’s rather rare but some cities have begun to pre-approve architecture for developers to follow. Planning Departments basically pre-design buildings, fixtures and all, for certain building types and heights, and the developer can choose which one best suits their project and build it. This is far more strict than the current process and architects would hate it because it curbs their free expression, and in many instances ousts them from the development process entirely.

But I think a pre-approved design can be used to quell discontent with the un-attractiveness of higher-density buildings. I wouldn’t mandate pre-approved designs city wide, just in specific zones where a lot of well-liked architecture exists and the neighborhood lacks many modern, contemporary designs.

I’m not saying the blame for the distaste in new housing architecture is entirely on architects. They’re hired to minimize construction costs for the developer, use mass-produced materials like paneling and glass from known vendors that’s economical, and abide by general guidelines from cities that are often incoherent in vague design instructions. As ugly as some new apartments may be, they are considerably more energy efficient, structurally safer and less carbon intensive than the mercury-filled, lead infested, and asbestos infused old houses we idolize.

From a Planning Commissioner’s point of view, this might be frustrating since it would result in a homogeneous look. As I said, I would confine various districts of a city to specific palate of architectural, pre-approved designs. For example, in my hometown of Berkeley, I don’t think most of our major corridors or downtown area warrants any pre-approved designs. I think many contemporary designs (particularly those by Trachtenberg Architects) look quite nice.

But as we expand housing projects to neighborhoods with more upscale and old fashioned architecture, new buildings using pre-approved architecture in the style of shingled buildings or curved roofs for example, would soothe a lot of my old timer neighbors who are politically supportive of density, but are worried about chrome blocks next door.

I went walking around the Mission District yesterday and thought that the newer apartments looked unattractive compared to the historic Victorian apartments. The Victorian apartments aren’t architecturally complicated or intricate. They’re boxes with bay windows and mass-produced ornaments shipped by rail to San Francisco and a thousand other cities from eastern factories, plastered onto the roofs of apartments built in the late 1800s.

Would a faux-Victorian using materials that are mass produced today appeal to people? I think so. This low income housing project in Berkeley designed by HKIT Architects looks like it would fit right into the Mission District more than most apartments built there in the last 20 years. Although some opposition at the design hearing I attended complained about a lack of color, elderly neighbors generally thought the design looked good and appreciated the Victorian-esque elements that paid homage to the grandiose Victorians in the neighborhood.

Jordan Court. A low-income senior housing project with neo-Victorian elements. A peculiar classical design from an architecture firm that otherwise produces contemporary styles.

I’m not sure how pro-development advocates and builders would take such a proposal. Some would be wary that pre-approved designs would be over-complicated with ornaments and fixtures that are not mass-produced, thereby inflating construction costs with custom materials. If this were mandated, I would oppose it as it’s not economical and even the famous Victorians of San Francisco were largely made with off-the-shelf fixtures. But the number one worry for most advocates would be that pre-approving designs would be time spent for nothing. It doesn’t matter how nice or neo-classical you make new homes look, they may say, the opposition’s issues are fundamentally about density and height.

They’re right to a degree.

In my neighborhood, an old tudor single-family house that had structural problems was replaced with a modern, contemporary design that looks very unattractive. Yet I didn’t see much backlash to it. In comparison, a decrepit and unattractive shingled house was to be replaced with an arched-roof, but still contemporary-styled townhomes that I think would’ve been a tremendous improvement, and the neighborhood had a huge fight over it and a failed landmarking attempt.

Here’s another example. A very attractive apartment house on top of a new grocery store in Berkeley was designed by an architect (Kirk E. Peterson & Associates Architects) who specializes in neo-classic designs. This building was extremely controversial in 2009, and spent six years before 2009 getting approved. It went through fights with neighbors claiming it would overshadow everything and freeze people death with imposing shadows. Wacky statements like that were said in earnest at meetings. I was in middle school at the time, largely oblivious to housing politics, and I still remember this fight seeping into my world of information via newspapers clippings and online articles.

A six year battle ensued to prevent the parking lot on the left from becoming the apartment on the right.

Today, if you go to random people on the street today and ask them what their opinion is about this building’s architecture, most would say they think it’s very pretty. I sat on a bench and just asked people walking by what they thought of the architecture and most liked it, especially the old folks. Even the people who fought the project begrudgingly admitted it was a “graceful” building. Most of Kirk E. Peterson’s designs appeal to Americans who have only seen high density homes in a more European-esque look. As a result, most people I know in my town refer to his building’s as the most attractive of new development projects. His Trader Joes building is already an iconic symbol of downtown Berkeley.

Kirk E. Peterson buildings in Berkeley, California. Beautiful but likely more expensive. I suspect he's using materials not mass-produced by vendors which can increase construction costs. Some buildings like the bottom pictures are more economical in ornamentation than the two above.

Walking around downtown Berkeley, I asked some older residents for their opinions on the new, revivalist building. Particularly since their generation is so culturally traumatized by homes greater than 3 stories tall. Surprisingly, most spoke highly of the revivalist buildings! They were the only ones to occasionally rant about the buildings being tall, but they still complimented the revivalist designs and lamented others didn’t resemble them. Now again, Peterson’s buildings don’t relate in any way to the architecture heritage of Berkeley, but they look classical and for average Americans, that’s usually enough.

I’m not trying to convince the fervent opposition who is frightened of buildings taller than 3 stories, I’m trying to convince the average person to politically support density initiatives. Japanese cities are some of the world’s most impressive cities, but jumbled styles in their fashion makes for its own kind of uniqueness. I don’t think it has the political support in American cities experimenting with density for the first time. Many urbanists will disagree, but I think it’s extremely important to build political support with architecture that looks good to the widest amount of people.

Berkeley recently passed its “Middle Housing” program to encourage low-density, 3 story apartments in single-family areas. It took a lot of heavy lifting to accomplish and citizens have so far shown no backlash and have been supportive to this initiative. But now that the ball is in our court and we’re all holding our breath, waiting to see how the first batch of Middle Housing projects look in a city that hasn’t had them in a half-decade. If they look like the kind of three-story homes suburban developers like Lennar Corporation build: curved roof, wooden or stucco houses, faux-classic feature, the people will be supportive. But if the first batch is metallic structures with asymmetrical, contemporary oddities, it’s going to be plastered on every poster as a fearmonger for years to come.

(Note: after posting this, some middle density projects have begun trickling into our building department and so far I’m impressed with the reserved and lightly-revivalist designs. Skeptical neighbors have even praised the look of a 3-story apartment being built beside a Bernard Maybeck house while still offering muted complaints about its height. )

To avoid backlash, South Bend, Indiana has utilized this pre-approved design approach for their own Middle Housing projects. New state law in California allowing for multi-unit townhomes requires local jurisdictions to pre-approve architectural designs. I hope more jurisdictions including my own will experiment with pre-approved designs in limited spaces and see if it changes the political support for density.

However, there is a fear I have which is that this may not matter at all. Despite the complaining about the appearance of buildings, what the core of anti-construction complaints are is density and height. Older generations have just been infused with decades of media about how terrible buildings taller than a single-family house is. Americans are just thoroughly taught to idolize living in a single-family home.

In Berkeley, when an angry resident accosted a councilmember during a zoning meeting to allow more multiplexes, it was revealed that he himself lived in a triplex. When asked the logical follow up of why he opposes zoning reform to allow the housing he lives in, his response was that he didn’t want more of his own home.

In a twist, Grove lives in one such building. The three-story, three-unit apartment building where he lives, set among single-family homes in the Elmwood District, could be a poster child for what housing advocates hope the rezoning process encourages throughout Berkeley. An artist, Grove inherited the 1930s building from his mother and moved into it after raising his family in a bungalow elsewhere in Berkeley.

But, Grove said of his home, “This would not be the kind of construction that I would support now.”

When people complain about new apartments looking ugly, what they often mean is a non-single family houses are ugly. There’s a reason photos of the famous Painted Ladies of Alamo Square in San Francisco tends to omits the beautiful, Victorian, 8-story apartment complex right beside them. Every TV show. Every novel. Every movie. The Full House TV show was an icon of American living, but honestly a sports anchor, comedian and a musician could not afford the house at 1709 Broderick Street in San Francisco, even in the 1980s.

My hope is that pre-approved designs with classical features that are economical to acquire may push Americans, particularly of older generations, to support density in their own backyards.