It's Time for Cities to Build "Lovable" Again

If a building cannot be loved, it will not last.
— Steve Mouzon, "The Original Green"
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I read many articles and books on urbanism. There’s lots of repetition, but every so often I read a paragraph that connects a missing link. The concept of a building being “lovable” was one of those missing links for me. It’s an exciting point partly because it can be understood by anyone.

Steve Mouzon’s book, The Original Green, is about the different aspects that add up to true sustainability. One aspect of overall sustainability is described as whether or not a building is lovable—in plain words, whether a building is judged by our human eyes to be deemed worthy of efforts at upkeep and finding new uses for…as opposed to tearing down and starting over. “[The] carbon footprint of a building is meaningless once its parts are prematurely carted off to the landfill because it could not be loved.” What’s great about lovability is its simplicity: no amount of reading or education can overrule what your eyes innately tell you about a building.

The Pantheon in Rome has been continuously used for almost 2,000 years. No building would stand for long if it were unused. The sturdiest of buildings will stand 100 or 200 years at most without the attention of loving hands replacing bricks, applying paint, patching leaks. The Pantheon was built before Christianity was mainstream, but has served as a Christian church for hundreds of years. It is now a tourist destination. It is an amazing building worth visiting, worth enjoying. It has proven worthy of finding new uses for as opposed to being torn down. Much because of its durability, but also because of its attractiveness, its ease of being loved.

On a drive out on White’s Creek Pike in Nashville, I passed by an old house at the intersection of White’s Creek Pike & Knight Drive. It catches your eye because of the style and details. This house was built in 1920. It has boards over the windows and looks like it needs a complete overhaul. But even in its current state it evokes a dignity. It is worth saving. I hope someone does save it. You don’t need an architecture degree or other expertise to know that this home is lovable.

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A few hundred more feet down the road is a tract of “McMansions,” built around 2013. These homes are new, but when they’re 40 or 50 years old, will they be loved? Or will they be torn down? Their current owners may love and enjoy their homes, but even in their new state, they are less lovable than the 1920 house.

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Older homes were built with the intention to be loved. The character of design was inherent as opposed to planned. A peacock doesn’t plan to grow ornate feathers.

The reaction older homes elicit is the result of thousands of years of evolution of competing ideas; the best ideas surviving and being included in common building designs. Think of the 1920 house. It has something in its DNA that makes people fight for it. Maybe a home built with attractive features was more likely to survive a hostile raid by marauders, or more likely to be kept up by future generations of the same family? Maybe it signaled wealth and status which resulted in favorable marriages for the home’s inhabitants? The reasons for that attractiveness are as complex as human DNA because buildings are built by humans. But the result is a signal to our brains that this building contains a mysterious pleasantness. (For further investigation, Cognitive Architecture by Ann Sussman and Justin Hollander is a book full of insights on how our humanity shapes the built environment.)

Homes built 100 years later lack that ingrained character and thus often invite scorn. It’s unlikely that in 100 years, citizens will fight for an overlay to protect homes built from 1970-2020. Certainly not in the same way we currently battle to preserve homes built from 1870 to 1920. The lovability has largely been lost in modern building techniques. Why exactly this loss occurred is a complicated issue. But to simplify it, in our hubris as a society we thought we could discard certain things without consequence. The result is a generation of unlovable buildings. We viscerally know they are not lovable. Our eyes tell us and nobody can tell us different.

Cover image by Wynand van Poortvliet on Unsplash



About the Author

DJ Sullivan is a native of Rochester, New York. He currently lives in Nashville, Tennessee. Reading Walkable City by Jeff Speck in 2013 kindled his interest in urban planning. He is an accountant and enjoys writing and traveling. This article originally appeared on his blog, East Nashville Urban Design. You can connect with DJ on Twitter at @UrbanEastNash.