4 ms·

>, a lot of these analyses are post-hoc, but this isnt really a problem; It actually is the source of the problem because his rules end up being inconsistent.

by jasode 10y ago

>, a lot of these analyses are post-hoc, but this isnt really a problem; It actually is the source of the problem because his rules end up being inconsistent. There are billionaire estates in the ultra expensive zipcodes of the Hamptons[1] (NY) and Atherton[2] (near Silicon Valley) that people would not call "McMansions" that violate the author's principles about "voids and masses". Put another way... as a thought experiment, suppose we had the AutoCAD drawings of every house from modest cabins to mega estates. We attempt to write a computer program that has a boolean function called IsMcMansion(AutoCAD_file) that returns either TRUE or FALSE using the blog author's criteria. We can attempt to tweak the logic of the program to analyze and weigh the geometries of the "masses" and calculate the proportion of "voids" but we'll never end up with a program that 100% correctly predicts what humans label as "McMansion" Why? Because, those rules don't work! E.g.... IsMcMansion(famous_novelist_house)==TRUE is determined to be wrong because us humans look at that house and say "that house isn't a McMansion because it was built in 1914 and has so much _character_" That's what we humans do. We post-hoc a lot of judgments with a veneer of authoritative-sounding logic. We actually arrive at "McMansion" by combining a bunch of other attributes like: lot size, building materials, builder, socioeconomic rank of buyers, year of construction, trendy styles, etc. E.g. IsMcMansion(Graceland)==TRUE because of the algorithm penalized its oversized portico. However, it is judged by humans to be misclassified because... Elvis once lived there. Hence nobody calls the Graceland Estate a McMansion. If the exact same house was built by a national builder like Toll Brothers[3] and the people living in it were social-ladder-climbing yuppies, we very well might call it a "McMansion." [1]https://www.google.com/search?q=mansions+hamptons&source=lnms&tbm=isch https://www.google.com/search?q=mansions+hamptons&source=lnm... [2]https://www.google.com/search?q=mansions+atherton&source=lnms&tbm=isch https://www.google.com/search?q=mansions+atherton&source=lnm... [3]https://www.tollbrothers.com/ https://www.tollbrothers.com/

wpietri 10y ago
I don't quite get your point here. Nobody is suggesting that the term McMansion is purely about architecture. There have surely been terrible buildings as long as there have been buildings. But this particular kind of terrible building is notable because of the socioeconomic factors that created so many of them. The point of a McMansion is essentially social. Once you get past the structural basics, the point of most architecture is social. Humans are social primates. Yes, of course, if you construct a program without regard to sociality it will not be very good at understanding social phenomena.
ubernostrum 10y ago
It actually is the source of the problem because his rules end up being inconsistent. Generally, rules about what constitutes "good taste" or "aesthetically pleasing" are derived not just from wealthy people but from established wealthy people. This is something that goes back centuries, to when Western cultures first started having a bit more mobility and it was possible for a person who wasn't born into a family of hereditary land-owning aristocrats to accumulate enough wealth to start having nice clothes, a large house with servants, etc. The hereditary aristocrats, of course, didn't care much for this and so wanted some way to distinguish themselves from the jumped-up nouveaux riches, some of whom even became rich enough to buy (or obtain through rendering financial "service" to a monarch) their own heritable noble titles. And so began a complex, inconsistent and ever-changing set of standards of aesthetics and behavior, designed to act as a kind of shibboleth: if you hadn't been brought up among people who'd been doing this their whole lives (and who in turn were brought up by people who'd been doing it their whole lives), you'd never quite get it right and the older established noble families would be able to tell you didn't really belong to their social class (and would treat you accordingly). Many of these rules about architecture are artifacts of this system: they are the evolved result of established wealthy families trying to find ways to make sure their homes were distinguishable from the homes of the vulgar arrivistes. And in fact this is precisely what the backlash against the "McMansion" is about. Newly upper-middle-class people, and even newly-extremely-wealthy people, can still be singled out by the way their homes merely imitate the homes of established old-money people, and by picking out the ways the imitation fails. And remember that to the old money, a Silicon Valley billionaire who started out in a working-class family is worse -- because they jumped far too many social classes in one generation -- than someone who merely hopped into upper-middle-class suburbia. So just looking at recently-built megahouses won't tell you much because many of them will be built to the tastes of people who, by definition, cannot have good taste (remember: if you haven't had it for at least three generations, you don't have it at all).

by jasode 10y ago

wpietri 10y ago

I don't quite get your point here. Nobody is suggesting that the term McMansion is purely about architecture. There have surely been terrible buildings as long as there have been buildings. But this particular kind of terrible building is notable because of the socioeconomic factors that created so many of them. The point of a McMansion is essentially social. Once you get past the structural basics, the point of most architecture is social. Humans are social primates. Yes, of course, if you construct a program without regard to sociality it will not be very good at understanding social phenomena.

ubernostrum 10y ago

It actually is the source of the problem because his rules end up being inconsistent. Generally, rules about what constitutes "good taste" or "aesthetically pleasing" are derived not just from wealthy people but from established wealthy people. This is something that goes back centuries, to when Western cultures first started having a bit more mobility and it was possible for a person who wasn't born into a family of hereditary land-owning aristocrats to accumulate enough wealth to start having nice clothes, a large house with servants, etc. The hereditary aristocrats, of course, didn't care much for this and so wanted some way to distinguish themselves from the jumped-up nouveaux riches, some of whom even became rich enough to buy (or obtain through rendering financial "service" to a monarch) their own heritable noble titles. And so began a complex, inconsistent and ever-changing set of standards of aesthetics and behavior, designed to act as a kind of shibboleth: if you hadn't been brought up among people who'd been doing this their whole lives (and who in turn were brought up by people who'd been doing it their whole lives), you'd never quite get it right and the older established noble families would be able to tell you didn't really belong to their social class (and would treat you accordingly). Many of these rules about architecture are artifacts of this system: they are the evolved result of established wealthy families trying to find ways to make sure their homes were distinguishable from the homes of the vulgar arrivistes. And in fact this is precisely what the backlash against the "McMansion" is about. Newly upper-middle-class people, and even newly-extremely-wealthy people, can still be singled out by the way their homes merely imitate the homes of established old-money people, and by picking out the ways the imitation fails. And remember that to the old money, a Silicon Valley billionaire who started out in a working-class family is worse -- because they jumped far too many social classes in one generation -- than someone who merely hopped into upper-middle-class suburbia. So just looking at recently-built megahouses won't tell you much because many of them will be built to the tastes of people who, by definition, cannot have good taste (remember: if you haven't had it for at least three generations, you don't have it at all).