Best Of MetaFilter

Screenshot from Stewart Hickman video

Come for the McMansion-enabling truss connector plates, stay for the malt liquor, beer cans, and blunts.

Lennar ICON 3D printed model home in Georgetown, Texas

here are the most common distortions of truth when it comes to "printed" buildings ... q*ben commenting in a very interesting discussion about 3D printed houses / neighborhoods.

Photo by Kübra Arslaner

"This was not only an aesthetic issue, cracks are where the light gets in, but also where moisture, dirt, cold air and pests get in ...": mumimor has a fantastic comment discussing the architectural history of ornamentation – practical, industrial, and societal – in the The beauty of concrete thread.

Chiesa di San Nicolao della Flue in Milan, Italy via dezeen.com

"All of these look like first-person shooter levels" (– egypturnash): kaibutsu posted Brutalist Churches, and opinions amble the gamut.

There's a absolutely fantastic post from user 'dhruva', about photographer Fyodor Savintsev and his gorgeous photos of dachas, the Russian wooden houses built in the woods or countryside.

McMansion by pasa47 (cc by)

Hello! Professional architectural historian checking in here ... Preserver addresses Mchelly's question about "McMansion" as architectural nomenclature.

07 pole by london road (cc by)

A very interesting discussion of architecture, operational energy, design, density, carbon costs, and urban planning in this thread.

John Margolies photo via publicdomainreview.org

Great post by zamboni about John Margolies’ photographs of roadside America

Goat by www.metaphoricalplatypus.com (cc by)

In jessamyn's post about the man who lived in a huge secret apartment in the landmark historic theater he rescued, other stories of secret spaces including secret tunnels all over a city.

Gimme some stories of goats misbehaving!

...or some eerie spooky stories that aren't gross or horrible

...or some websites with fun interesting stuff for when the news gets me down.

Painting over a mural by WarmSleepy (cc by)

Some interesting ideas and answers in mermaidcafe's Ask Me post looking for examples of erasure in architecture, audio recordings, science, art, and other fields.

Haunted House by Sean MacEntee (cc by)

In short, it describes the interwar period as formative for creating the idea of the Gilded Age mansion as a place of mongrel (sic) agglutination in architecture and interior design, thus impure, and a sign of the excesses of the time, anti-industrial and anti-progress. In addition, there remains the idea of the grand old family and the secrets, hidden unhappiness, and isolation which may have remained in the childhood memories of artists creating in a post-WWI era - which has its own Zeitgeist, a combination of glitter and ennui/angst, both meanings of decadence. So by the 1930s the decrepit mansion 1. was actually decrepit when seen and 2. was not appropriate in several ways by economic/socio/cultural standards.

Citations and conjecture about why the Victorian house is always where the monsters live.

Madison at Clark, in the Loop by heyho linda

MetaFilter member heyho shares why she chose to live in Chicago and all the bits of art and architecture that convinced her to stay there forever.