“please help me!” the house screams out in anguish. what have they done? they created a monster.
what is going on here? this house in the listing states that it is less that a year old. do the designers have no taste or a clue for that matter? what is that contraption on top of the house? so thoughtless with the selection of ‘architectural character’. you gotta love all those box outs on every side of the house and probably every room in the house. the reason for the box-outs is simple : greed. because the city zoning allows for box-outs to be excluded from floor area, the builder/owner insist on putting in as many of them as possible without any though to the aesthetics of the home. I also gotta hand it to them for building a fireplace projection with no chimney. maybe cookie monster lives here?
modern vancouver houses 
dont blame the designers for this house, its the builder, fireplaces on new house typically have no chimneys cause they are all direct vent.
yup its is an ugly house, and that contraption on top of the house is a roof that was added to the house after the city did the final inspection,
you can complain to the city about it and they would make the owner take it off. and as much of an eyesore it is, thats what sells now, i guess.
yes, that is one thing : most builders are only interested in the bottom line : how much money they can walk away with by doing the minimum amount of work. note that I said most builders. there are some very good builders in this city that do care about good design and craftsmanship. the main concern i have about the new buildings in this city is that we (as a whole society) can do a whole lot better. why on earth would anyone decide to spend their entire life savings to build a house like this, since we know that building a house will be the most major purchase in most people’s lives?
there are so many things about this house that could have been fixed if more time was spent on the drawing board : stupid entry gable with no posts, chimney projection that does nothing, cheap stone cladding at the ground floor (not fooling anyone), bad layout of windows altogether and all those box out windows. good thing city of vancouver has clamped down on all those horrid box windows now.
rs-1 zoning now states in 4.7.2 (d) the floor area of bay windows, regardless of seat height, location on building or relationship to yard setbacks, in excess of the product of the total floor area permitted above the basement times 0.01. (small victories!)
people need to learn that they don’t have to settle for knock-off ‘neo-craftsman-wanna-be’ 2×6-stud-framed houses with poor insulation (fiberglass batts) and lousy vinyl windows.