Details: Caricature or Character?

When we exaggerate the details and general forms, we lose the soul of architecture.

Have you ever seen a caricature of a celebrity?

It’s instantly recognizable—but not because it captures their true essence. It’s because it exaggerates certain features: a big nose, oversized ears, a huge grin. It’s a cartoon. It might be entertaining, but it’s not serious—and it certainly isn’t timeless.

Unfortunately, we’re doing the same thing to our buildings.

When architectural details are out of proportion—too big, too small, misapplied—we create caricatures of architecture. Not character. And instead of designing homes with presence, we end up cartoonifying our built world.

We Live in a World of Architectural Caricatures

Drive through most new developments today, and you'll see it:

• Gables that are too steep.

• Shutters too narrow to ever cover a window

• Column capitals in the wrong spot or the wrong size.

• Brackets too small to ever hold up the thing that it looks like it's supporting.

• Missing stone lintels that give away the stone begin nonstructural.

• Classical details that are only a hint of the original architectural language it's trying to speak.

These details are loud due to their incongruity with physics, or architectural precedent. They’re exaggerate. They’re trying to suggest style—but without the discipline or understanding to make it meaningful.

This is caricature: an exaggerated version of something real, distorted until it becomes parody.We’re trying to evoke tradition, but we’re missing the essence—and it shows.

Caricature vs. Character

So what’s the difference?

• Caricature grabs attention through excess. It amplifies, distorts, and pastes on features without context.

• Character earns attention through restraint. It’s subtle, consistent, and arises from the deeper order of the building.

In a well-designed home, the details belong—they grow out of the form, the proportions, the hierarchy. They support the design, not distract from it.

In a poorly executed home, the details feel slapped on, like costume jewelry on a plastic mannequin.

The Root of the Problem: Misunderstanding Scale and Context

Why do so many builders, architects, and designers get details wrong?

Two reasons, they haven't been trained in traditional architectural languages and they treat details as decoration—not as structure.

Let’s take brackets as an example. In classical and traditional architecture, brackets existed to support an overhang or cornice. Their size, shape, and spacing were a response to actual physics.

Today? Brackets are often glued to façades, oversized or undersized and purely ornamental—and they support nothing.

It’s like drawing big cartoon arms on a stick figure. It grabs your attention—but it doesn’t make the figure stronger. Just weirder. We do it because something is missing or to add visual interest. But it doesn't necessarily feel authentic.

Same goes for shutters, dormers, stone veneers, arches, columns, and more.

When they’re out of scale, out of place, or functionally nonsensical, they become cartoons of what they once were.

How to Tell If You’re Looking at Caricature

Here’s a litmus test:

• Would this detail make sense if it was actually structural and if not structural does it reinforce the structural massing?

• Does it align with the building’s massing, scale, and function?

• Is it there for a reason—or just for show?

• Does it follow the historical stylistic language?

• Do I feel like I need to remodel it because it's gone out of style?

They are expressions of the architecture’s logic and building tradition—of how the building works, reads, and feels.

If they can’t pass that test, they’re likely caricature.

Character Comes from Care and Restraint

You don’t need a thousand details to make a home beautiful. You need the right details, in the right places, in the right scale.

That’s character.

It’s the carefully scaled window casing. It’s the bracket that appears exactly where the roof needs support. It’s the modest cornice that quietly finishes the building with dignity.

Character doesn’t shout. It whispers.

And because it’s rooted in proportion and intention, it lasts.

A Word on “Overdoing It”

One of the most common mistakes in residential architecture is the belief that more is more.

More variety in materials! More trim! More gables! More “interest!”

But great homes aren’t built through addition. They’re built through clarity, order, and restraint.

A house with 10 different “features” often feels like it’s wearing a costume. A house with 3 well-executed, well-proportioned elements? That’s a home with identity. That’s a home with character.

The Risk of Getting It Wrong

Here’s the hard truth: when we get details wrong, we not only diminish the beauty of a home—we also erode trust in the tradition those details come from.

A poorly applied pediment doesn’t just look bad. It makes people think classical design is a cartoon or outdated. It gives traditional architecture a bad name.

But traditional architecture isn’t the problem. Poor imitation is.

We don’t need more decoration. We need more understanding.

Final Thoughts: Return to the Root

In timeless architecture, everything starts with proportion and purpose.

Details aren’t layered on top—they’re grown from within. They reflect the massing, the hierarchy, the human scale.

When we exaggerate, we create cartoons.But when we calibrate, we create character.

So let’s stop cartoonifying our homes. Let’s stop faking tradition.

And let’s return to the root: Character comes from discipline, craftsmanship, knowledge and care. And those lead to beauty. they are architecture.