Has it ever happened to you where sometimes you just run out of ideas?  Like, “OMG, what should I make for dinner tonight?” or “What should I get X for their birthday this year?” or “How should I entertain the kids this weekend?”  Really very small decisions when it comes to the grand scheme of things but most likely you will try to switch things up as variety is the spice of life and as I always say ‘change is good’.  Which is probably the reason why the other day while sitting at a traffic light waiting for the light to change I looked down a side street and I was dumbfounded? I made a quick U-turn as I just had to get a closer look.  What I noticed was that on both sides of the street all the houses (more than 40) were identical.  They were perfectly aligned; every rooftop, every peak, every window, every porch, everything!  There were slight colour differences but other than that these homes were all the same.  Total carbon copies.  I could understand if these truly were row houses but they weren’t, they were all detached homes built identical to the one next to it.  It made me wonder, did the builder/architect/designer run out of ideas after the first design?  Did the idea of altering a roof angle or a window dimension or a street setback never make it into the design strategy?  Did someone believe that the one design was good enough so let’s repeat it over and over and over and over?  I understand running out of ideas for dinner but really…!  As I wrote before ‘good design is obvious, great design is transparent’.