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I don't really agree that most of what he says is a bad thing. E.g.: " Another issue with McMansions and mass is the use of too many voids. Some McMansions are

by lnanek2 10y ago

I don't really agree that most of what he says is a bad thing. E.g.: " Another issue with McMansions and mass is the use of too many voids. Some McMansions are so guilty of this they resemble swiss cheese in appearance. In the below example, the masses are so pockmarked with voids, they give the façade an overall appearance of emptiness. " So what? Personally, I'd prefer the 26 voids example he gives because it looks like a nice place to sit in a chair reading a book by sunlight. He's recommending making a much worse lighted set of rooms just to change the outside appearance, which I couldn't care less about. Similarly his complaints about secondary masses. His example photo shows a big offshoot of a house sticking forward, but I'd rather have the extra room than cut it off and have less space, or make it a separate garage I have to put my shoes on a trek out to instead of just being able to walk over there inside. The whole thing sounds like what programmers and designers get up to if we don't have usability studies with users showing us how stupid we are, thinking the huge buttons we make are titles and never pressing them, or not finding actions we think are obvious in our apps. Sounds like he's just going on without caring about the people who live in the house.

robotresearcher 10y ago
The whole thing is an aesthetic argument. You aren't obliged to agree or defend yourself if you disagree. Similarly, some people get value from the simplicity and symmetry of the MacBook Pro/Air design, while others don't care at all what the bottom of a laptop looks like if the tech specs and price are good. https://tektype.files.wordpress.com/2010/07/laptop-bottom.jpg https://tektype.files.wordpress.com/2010/07/laptop-bottom.jp... http://www.ishootshows.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/02/apple-macbook-air-11-inch-0811.jpg http://www.ishootshows.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/02/apple-... The principles the author describes are not telling you what you should think, but rather they are patterns that predict the reactions people have had historically. As other commenters describe, some well-regarded designs have come about by people deliberately acting against the accepted principles. But it doesn't hurt to know what they are.
- cstejerean 10y ago
  Tastes in design change over time. I have seen plenty very ugly houses, but some of those examples actually look great to me. Not everyone wants to live in a symmetrical box without a garage.
  - jessaustin 10y ago
    People like garages, but at least with the parcels of land discussed in TFA, it ought to be possible not to make the garage the focus of the house. That is probably my biggest complaint about contemporary residential architecture.
jernfrost 10y ago
Quite the contrary, as someone who has spent a lot of time doing and testing GUIs in complex applications, the things he talked about was very relatable from a GUI design perspective. People who are poor at GUI design do exactly the same sort of things as has been done with the McMansions. When you do usability tests and people don't like a GUI, they often don't know why. But if you know design principles you can tell almost right away why they don't like it. It is because common design principles have been broken. Like with a house, a magazine page or a GUI design should have visual balance e.g. Your complaints really show that you didn't fully comprehend the problems and their potential solutions. The solution to the off-shoot sticking out isn't necessarily cutting it off. You could have achieved balance in multiple ways: Cut it off, expand the central mass, reduce secondary masses, simplify overall design. A big box of a house would have had better balance and more space. You could have solved the problem with excessive amounts of voids by simply having larger windows and simpler design. That would have had the opposite effect and given you more light, not less.

by lnanek2 10y ago

robotresearcher 10y ago

The whole thing is an aesthetic argument. You aren't obliged to agree or defend yourself if you disagree. Similarly, some people get value from the simplicity and symmetry of the MacBook Pro/Air design, while others don't care at all what the bottom of a laptop looks like if the tech specs and price are good. https://tektype.files.wordpress.com/2010/07/laptop-bottom.jpg https://tektype.files.wordpress.com/2010/07/laptop-bottom.jp... http://www.ishootshows.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/02/apple-macbook-air-11-inch-0811.jpg http://www.ishootshows.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/02/apple-... The principles the author describes are not telling you what you should think, but rather they are patterns that predict the reactions people have had historically. As other commenters describe, some well-regarded designs have come about by people deliberately acting against the accepted principles. But it doesn't hurt to know what they are.

cstejerean 10y ago
Tastes in design change over time. I have seen plenty very ugly houses, but some of those examples actually look great to me. Not everyone wants to live in a symmetrical box without a garage.
- jessaustin 10y ago
  People like garages, but at least with the parcels of land discussed in TFA, it ought to be possible not to make the garage the focus of the house. That is probably my biggest complaint about contemporary residential architecture.

jernfrost 10y ago

Quite the contrary, as someone who has spent a lot of time doing and testing GUIs in complex applications, the things he talked about was very relatable from a GUI design perspective. People who are poor at GUI design do exactly the same sort of things as has been done with the McMansions. When you do usability tests and people don't like a GUI, they often don't know why. But if you know design principles you can tell almost right away why they don't like it. It is because common design principles have been broken. Like with a house, a magazine page or a GUI design should have visual balance e.g. Your complaints really show that you didn't fully comprehend the problems and their potential solutions. The solution to the off-shoot sticking out isn't necessarily cutting it off. You could have achieved balance in multiple ways: Cut it off, expand the central mass, reduce secondary masses, simplify overall design. A big box of a house would have had better balance and more space. You could have solved the problem with excessive amounts of voids by simply having larger windows and simpler design. That would have had the opposite effect and given you more light, not less.