Spotted: more residential architecture atrocities

What's up with Colorado and crappy houses these days? The multi-unit rectilinear abominations sprouting up in West Highland and Sloan's Lake led to a neighborhood-splitting battle last spring about how to stop them (to get a taste of what we're talking about, here's a gallery of some of the most...

By Joel Warner

December 15, 2008

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What's up with Colorado and crappy houses these days? The multi-unit rectilinear abominations sprouting up in West Highland and Sloan's Lake led to a neighborhood-splitting battle last spring about how to stop them (to get a taste of what we're talking about, here's a gallery of some of the most hideous houses in Highland). More recently, the mega-monstrosities blooming like bad fungus in other parts of the city have led to controversial rezoning fights in West Washington Park and in South Park Hill, anti-duplex plans that are vehemently protested by Denver realtors.

Turns out Denver isn't alone around here in its propensity for architectural insanity. Some of the incongruous residential mash-ups turning up in Boulder are so outlandish they made the national blog Boing Boing last week. The example pictured here involved the wholesale moving of the old stone cottage on the property to the far corner of the lot so the owners could shit out a monolithic behemoth of an addition.

Here's a suggestion that should do away with these eyesores without resorting to insanely complex and divisive rezoning attempts. Just pass a state law that forbids the building of anything that looks like a Lego structure built by a dyslexic: That should take care of the problem. -- Joel Warner

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Joel Warner is a former staff writer for Westword and International Business Times. He's also written for WIRED, Men's Journal, Men's Health, Bloomberg Businessweek, Popular Science, Slate, Grantland and many other publications. He's co-author of the 2014 book The Humor Code: A Global Search for What Makes Things Funny, published by Simon & Schuster.

Contact: Joel Warner