The hateful sterility of new-build houses

Where do you stand on new houses? You know, the little red boxes you see massed along the sides of motorways or clustered on what used to be flood plains? They’re hateful, aren’t they?

Now, I know many people (my mother included) who own perfectly lovely new houses – and these houses are indeed all very lovely, and I bow to their pragmatism in putting basic necessities such as effective heating and draught-free corridors above the concerns of taste or aesthetics. But I can’t do it.

Whether it’s down to the fact that the windows are a funny shape and as impossible to open as those on an Airbus, or that there are fire doors everywhere with nasty brass handles, or that the ceilings are too low, I could not tell you. Perhaps it’s the fact that the space in each new-build property has been apportioned so efficiently that you feel like its design has been an act of actuarial precision rather than architecture.