This is not a car port…
It’s a car house. The pretty car house is near Judkins Park.
Charles Mudede—who writes about film, books, music, and his life in Rhodesia, Zimbabwe, the USA, and the UK for The Stranger—was born near a steel plant in Kwe Kwe, Zimbabwe. He has no memory... More by Charles Mudede
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That’s a two-car garage. In this day and age, when suburban McMansions can have garages with room for up to six cars, calling this a “car house” is dumb.
I think his point is that when you look at the ‘public face’ of the house, you see only a portal for cars. No people doors, no windows.
CHARLES MUDEDE: The Terrance Malick of architecture journalism.
@ 3, I can see that, I guess. His comments seem to be specific to the garage, though. “This is not a car port…” not “This is not a human house” or something like that.
I’ll go ahead and be pedantic, and point out that it really isn’t a car port anyway. A car port is a cover that shield the car from the elements, but is either only partially enclosed or not enclosed at all. They don’t have garage doors.
“Shields” not “shield.” doh…
It’s a god damned garage, Mudede. Not a car port, nor a car house.
Jesus christ, people: do you seriously have nothing better to do on a friday morning than troll someone whose job is more fun than yours?
Why do post such mundane observations? This is the reason I don’t do the facebox or tweeter.
Looks like Doc Emmett Brown’s laboratory from the street in 1984.
We have a car house! Unfortunately, it’s too full of junk to fit a car in it, so I guess it is a junk house. But “garage” sounds prettier than “junk house”, so I think I’ll just keep calling it a garage.
What’s so special about this garage, again?
Maybe it’s a rental, in which case it is properly an “autopartment”.
Yeah, very unappealing to give the garage such prominence.
I understand exactly what you’re saying, Charles, and I agree. People design houses like this where the most prominent element is the garage. There’s no humanness to them. They are an atrocity.
The downside to not having alleys, I suppose.
@ 8, complaining about complainers is 1,000 times worse than the original complainers are.
You’re on the list, dippy.
@17 …and you live in Denver and waste your day trolling on a Seattle based newspaper site.
I like it.
My sister and her husband used to live in my brother’s two-car garage for his Santa Barbara house.
You never know what’s inside … could be an anarchist laboratory, could be anything.
Not everyone puts cars in there.
Charles, you seem to shift from the turgidly philosophical to the inanely irrelevant. How about something from the interesting and entertaining middle once in a while?
@3, this super-original observation about street-front garages was first made forty years ago when they first became ubiquitous. This particular one was probably built in 1968. At this rate, Charles will be a full-fledged New Urbanist in, let me see, 2032.
16/Subdued, when there are no alleys, and the lots are narrow, then there’s not much of an option; the garage has to go in front. But that doesn’t mean it has to take up the entire front. Houses in San Francisco are an excellent example. The lots there are narrower than they are in Seattle so garages are in front but they are typically just one-car garages and don’t take up the entire front, hiding the house, like this garage does.
This is some cutting edge people-have-different-taste-than-me shit. Aw, snap! That house is bland and unappealing! I bet those people watch TV!
@ 22, maybe in Seattle? Or does “street front” mean something dominating the front of the house, as opposed to a garage that simply “faces the street?” Because houses with the latter have been ubiquitous since a lot earlier than 1971.
Please just get your own blog, Charles, so I don’t have to be insulted by this inane BS any longer and get back to reading something interesting on SLOG.
That is what Americans call a “garage,” charles. Garage. Ask one of your American coworkers to say it out loud so you don’t mispronounce it. It is a building usually attached to a home where vehicles are parked, and many store some their things in.
This is what social criticism has been reduced to.
Charles doesn’t like any building that’s no covered in illegible graffiti – er, sorry, “street art”. Get that thing covered with some cool “tags”, and he’d want to move in!
OK, it looks nice. The shrubbery needs to be maintained in my opinion, though. If Kobe Bryant owned a car house, I hope it would look at least this good.