French Chateau Calgary style...........

http://www.calgaryherald.com/busines...48674&tab=PHOT

Is the housing market booming in Calgary?

Seen this property and it is nice looking house if you have the money, mind you i'd expect its not got the biggest price tag many of the properties in Springbank are up in the several million dollar price bracket

I think it looks bloody ghastly...yes, if I am in a secret promise...please give it back! It's ugly as sin.

It looks more like a French barn conversion than a chateau, however the inside is classic American nouveau riche. Marks out of ten? Maybe 5.

Quite. There is nothing terribly French about that place.

It's too plain, it needs more shiny stuff.

You have to applaud the way that even the mentally challenged can get a job as a journalist in Calgary. Or an architect.

Do you think anyone in Canada has ever actually been to France?

An architect is a person you employ once. It said in the Guardian this week, part of a feature on dysfunctional buildings awarded the Stirling Prize. After reading the article twice I was still unclear if the prize was one for the most awful recent buildings, like the Carbuncle Cup, or one awarded for recent buildings that are incidentally awful. The Scottish Parliament buildings featured, devolution seemed the least one could wish upon people who spent money on that.

I actually knew a McMansion architect, a man who's days were spent imagining and drawing seven and nine car garages with swimming pools, built-in hot dog stands and roof top golf courses. I got all schadenfreudy when the collapse of the housing market (in Phoenix) meant he had to live in one. It was surreal, not content with 12' internal doors usual in such a monstrosity, it had 16' doors and 20' ceilings. In the smaller rooms it felt as if the house had fallen over.

This reminds me of the many things I see described over here as "European style" and I think what's European about that?

Here's an example of proper Frenching of a house:

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2125666/

I liked the film, the people in it are engagingly unsubtle.

This more of a French type of house.

Typical French Style House

I wish I owned it ......so I could sell it.

IN Van "european style" is code for "built by Italian builder"

which means there will probably be statues of lions in the front of the house

Not french style per se., but under the heading of "god awful gaudy manors-of-bling", I present Newfoundland & Labradors entrant...

http://beta.realtor.ca/propertyDetai...rtyId=13586393

Dear God. It's like Alan Partridge actually got a a real house built.