Ooooof. I'm no architect but there *are* ways to make simple cheap boring boxes non-hideous. www.offsetengineering.com/1230-w-sunse... la.urbanize.city/post/renderi... la.urbanize.city/post/47-unit...

That looks like a great canvas for some vibrant art.

Honestly from this angle this feels like a good candidate for my "a lot of 'ugly' buildings are just mediocre buildings in ugly contexts" hypothesis

this building is uggo, sorry. biggest problem is windows are too small, hard to get anything good out of that. regardless this doesn't succeed and by a lot.

I dunno I genuinely don't mind the long facade

Too few windows on the front facade for sure, but overall the glazed area is about fine. I think the issues are, in this order: 1. It’s oriented towards the lot line rather than the street 2. Awful packaged a/c units 3. Windows totally flush with the facade 4. No money spent on any design whatsoever

💯

on the one hand, making housing cheaper to build is good, on the otherhand, this definitely reaches the point of making people more opposed to building housing if this is what it is going to look like.

perhaps but the "it's ugly" argument is almost always just cover for not wanting more traffic or property values to go down or more ~renters~

sometimes things are just really ugly though fr

having thought about it. i think if you put up a bunch of murals, using that massive blank canvass, it could be a lot more tolerable.

i mean i literally think a solid concrete box with larger windows would be better. but in any event, yeah, i really don't think looks are a valid argument for not building housing so much as an argument to hire a different developer/architect next time.

I mean yeah, I'm an architect and lots of these designs literally pain me to look at lol, I just know NIMBYs aren't really pure in their hatred for them and use it as pretext for stopping housing

oh yeah. just like their enviornmental objections (to housing. i can understand, no you can't build a cement plant near me) aren't genuine. i perfectly find if someone constructs a 20 story concrete tower next to my house (although given my location that would be a bizzare decision).

globalvoices.org/2025/08/19/h... speaking of cement plants and land use, reminded me of this story which is sorta the inverse of our issue where the government is sp focused on development, they will pass retroactive laws specificly to invalidate court decisions.

also the simplest way to reduce traffic is make it so there is no place to park.

saying this is a good way to get knifed at a community meeting lol

i bike everywhere so i'm faster than all the old, unathletic people who spend all their times in cars. not too concerned.

Like I don't even know what an attractive building would look like in that site

hold my cappuccino

Just being white and the balcony railings being... railings would do a huge amount of good

like so bsky.app/profile/holz...

Here's a much better-looking proposed project on a similar site. Obviously, much more expensive to build, though

gross, a parking structure. …wait…are those…windows??

dawg