whether outcome can be involved as having something worth describing as “architectural design of prior rank to utility value” is often hotly debated and disputed and mocked
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A building must not be aestetical or architecturally rich to qualify for being a villa. Some people will like it, other not.
In your first sample pic not much can be seen from the building behind the wall and the hedge. It could be a villa, but in case of any doubt I would always tag it as detached house. No doubt about the second pic showing an representative modern villa - which does not mean that everybody will like it or will be impressed.
People spending lots of money to get a residence of exclusive and impressive design definitely rank the design (normally done by an architect) clearly above the plain utility value which could much better and more economically be achieved by a simple shoe-carton like building.
If the outcome of such idea is aesthetical, impressive, beautiful or the very reverse is another story and will surely be seen different by different people.
What do you mean by “it could be a villa”? What is hidden behind that small wall that could tell you if it’s a villa or not? That’s probably what you should focus on explaining. You said:
But then you said:
So how does a building qualify as a villa?
I find it hard to follow the argument that architectural distinctiveness and non-utilitarian design is a defining characteristic of what might make a building a villa or not. It seems to me that, while there’s a lot of overlap, these properties are consequences of the properties of what a villa is or how it comes to be, than essential properties of the concept of a villa itself.
Besides some suggestions offered by a few people in this thread, I think looking into Wikipedia’s description of a villa, as mentioned earlier by @Fjellrev and @Kovoschiz, can be helpful for this discussion (emphasised passages mine):
A villa is a type of house that was originally an ancient Roman upper class country house that originally provided an escape from urban life. Since its origins in the Roman villa, the idea and function of a villa have evolved considerably. […] Then they gradually re-evolved through the Middle Ages into elegant upper-class country homes. In the early modern period, any comfortable detached house with a garden near a city or town was likely to be described as a villa; most survivals have now been engulfed by suburbia. In modern parlance, “villa” can refer to various types and sizes of residences, ranging from the suburban semi-detached double villa to, in some countries, especially around the Mediterranean, residences of above average size in the countryside.
From the emphasized passages, it seems to me that some properties have been mostly preserved as the concept evolved over the years; specifically:
- being outside main urban areas (at least at the time of construction)
- being large, detached, and having considerable outdoor grounds
- being associated with the upper class
(I am not as confident in including the criterion of being a vacation home, or at least not the primary residence of the owners, but that too wouldn’t feel off to me.)
It would also be important to distinguish building=villa from historic=manor; The current descriptions in the wiki (“historic manors/mansions having different use today” and “representative buildings that are or were once the administrative center of a large agricultural estate”) may hint at the latter being used for buildings that no longer serve a private/residential function, but instead have some sort of public significance, be it an official use, a tourist attraction, identified as heritage, etc.
In any case, I do agree that agreeing on a consensual description (or at least a set of broadly acceptable interpretations) and providing guidance on the wiki would be a better situation than what we have now.
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But are we trying to document how the tag is currently used, or how it should be used?
Earlier in the thread it was stated that the tag is already in use and the intention was to document that.
Yet the discussion seems rather detached from existing use, aside from an early reference by @Kovoschiz. Has anyone tried asking the mappers why they chose villa instead of a more commonly used value? If it was only ever used by a handful of mappers, could we just say that in the documentation, rather than spending time wondering what those mappers had in mind and wrestling with definitions of a vaguely defined concept?
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not really? AFAIK it is in general used for “home of a rich person who spend a lot of money on this”
no, this is not sufficient as a definition, requisite is it is freestanding, for example there are luxury apartments in towers or building blocks that are meeting your definition but are by no means a “villa”, same for townhouses (terraces).
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and they both clearly are, I wouldn’t hesitate to call them villas. Can you describe what irritates you?
this isn’t important at all, as you can use both tags independently, but the historic=manor wiki definition gives clear indication: the tag should only be used when the building is a representative building that is or was once the administrative center of a large agricultural estate.
The top one just looks like a large detached house to me. From what we can see, the architecture seems fairly plain and functional. What makes this a villa?
By the way, the word “representative” has been used several times. What does it mean in this context?
plain and functional is a result of epoch and style. Architectural ambition, combined with the typology (freestanding, residential home), makes it a villa.
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From what I understood, the current usage is inconsistent and ill-defined (and that’s natural given the absence of shared documentation) so I’m not sure it’s even practical/desirable to attempt to consolidate it in writing as if it had been based on a clear consensual view of what a villa is. Therefore, it seems to me that providing clear guidance for using this tag (while acknowledging the existence of instances that may deviate from that recommendation) would be preferable. But your point about reaching out to the mappers is a good one, if indeed there’s only a handful of them.
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That much is clear. What I meant is that the eventual documentation for building=villa should make the distinction clear as well, and ideally give examples where one, the other, or both tags can be used.
That much is clear. What I meant is that the eventual documentation for
building=villashould make the distinction clear as well, and ideally give examples where one, the other, or both tags can be used.
from the keys I would say historic=manor has functional implications while the building values are about architectural types (both may be correlated, as you may need a certain structure to provide certain functions)
note that describing this tag as not a good idea can be also considered
we should not invent narrow definition for in use tags and we should not pretend there is some consistent use where it does not exists
at the same time I think it makes sense to describe in-use tags
(and as someone working on OSM editors: I really dislike this tag, we really do not need one more top-level building tag for houses, especially so poorly defined)
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Yes, that is what we are talking about.
Most villas are built in the suburban districts of big cities, also many in the countryside but in smaller towns you may also find villas in urban areas when these are not densely populated.
Again villas are associated with the upper class, but “upper class” “wealthy people” or “rich” is something not really verifyable on the ground. One can assume that a villa belongs to a rich person but it could also be an average employee who has borrowed the money to build himself a villa just for show.
What you can verify is that it is a large, detached building and that the owner paid a lot of money to the architect to make his house look unique. You will hardly find a shoebox shaped functional building in a district build up with villas. And it is not only the owner but also the architect who wants to impress by the design of the house. dieterdreist has already said it:
The result is a building, where architectural design is ranked higher than utility value. If such design is beautiful or aesthetic is not a feature of the building but in the eye of the beholder. Some may like it, others will find it disgusting. What remains is that these buildings are not designed for a maximum in functonality but for a visual impressive appearance or driven by a passion for a certain architectural style.
Tagging such a building as “villa” gives definitely more information about the building than just tagging it as “house” or “detached”.
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though putting it into building key makes things harder to process
such semi-subjective classification is much less frustrating when kept into a separate key where it can be easily ignored
Ok, but this is not the issue here. I did not introduce building=villa and
I would not have any objection to use building=house + house=villa instead of it, but the same applies for the other building=* values like “detached”, “semi_detached”, “bungalow”. All of these values are refinements of building=house and should be treatet in the same way.
And because all these values are much more often in use with building=* than with house=* I doubt this would be a good idea.
So the question in regard of building=villa is:
Shall we ignore ist or shall we deprecate it or shall we document it to give it some definition, trying to limit the use of it to a certain kind of building.
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I think I can understand your reasoning better now. Would you agree with an amended set of criteria along the following lines?
- being outside main urban areas (at least at the time of construction)
- being large, detached, and having considerable outdoor grounds
- having a unique design that prioritizes appearance over function
I can think of other criteria (e.g. being aimed for private use as a secondary/vacation residence, etc.) but as you say, those can be much more subjective and hard to verify.
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Documenting this tag in way that suggest it is a good idea or in a way that suggests it has a clear definition can make it worse.
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In some kind of way it is documented since 2018, see Tag:building=house - OpenStreetMap Wiki
in a list headed with
what may be the answer to the question of @alan_gr
I looked at the distribution of building=villa via Overpass Turbo:
About two third of these values (~420) are situated in Italy, with additional ~110 in Austria, Belgium, Germany and Switzerland. Those that I looked at, looked the descriptions of @Map_HeRo and @waldyrious (the 5 in Poland too), while the values in India and Thailand matched more that:
The meaning seems to have changed in the last thirty years. In my Webster’s New Encyclopedic Dictionary from 1996 I can read
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