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McMansion Hell
- rsynnott 3y agoThere’s an interesting series of posts (which the author seems to have abandoned at some point, sadly) following the evolution of these monstrosities, with an example for each year since 1970 or so.
- tiahura 3y agoThe envy is palpable.
- NotYourLawyer 3y agoSo envious of bad architecture.
- bearjaws 3y agoI envy staring into my neighbors AC units from my living room, since McMansions are built 8 ft apart...
- gwbas1c 3y agoI must agree. I'm doing well for myself, and I'd love to have a house with some of the features that are mocked on that site. Except the house has to be net zero or close to it. The nice thing about my house is all the environmental stuff is well-hidden from the street.
- tomjakubowski 3y agoHaving different tastes is fine. It doesn't mean the author is "envious" somehow because they don't like the same thing you do.
- thirdmunky 3y agoWhen I was in high school and planning to study architecture, I came across this blog. I'm glad the author is still here and putting out high-quality pieces after all this time. The author, Kate Wagner, also writes more serious pieces on architecture and housing for The Nation. I recommend taking a look! https://www.thenation.com/authors/kate-wagner/ https://www.thenation.com/authors/kate-wagner/ (warning: paywall after a few articles)
- mattficke 3y agoKate Wagner, the author, is also an excellent sports journalist who covers cycling. A recent piece on Tadej Pogačar and Slovenian cycling: https://escapecollective.com/the-tadej-pogacar-office-park-crit-a-vibes-report/ https://escapecollective.com/the-tadej-pogacar-office-park-c...
- l33tbro 3y ago> Trying to visualize the floor plan of this house is like trying to rotate seven cubes individually in my mind’s eye So many gems on this site.
- martythemaniak 3y agoGreat blog, I did learn quite a bit from it and also the book she recommends - A Field Guide to American Houses by Virginia McAlester. We usually refer to any newish suburban house as a McMansion, but that's wrong. Cookie-cutter maybe, but not McMansion. The defining feature of McMansions is "more is more" mindset, a very large house with a thoughtless mishmash of styles, features, textures, colours, and shapes. Most suburban houses are not large enough nor eclectic enough to be called a proper McMansion. My random suburban house for example, has a needlessly large number of rooflines, but is generally coherent and shapely.
- JohnFen 3y agoI think of a McMansion as an "expensive cheap house". I suspect they are mostly owned by people who aren't truly wealthy but are trying to convince themselves that they are.
- avidphantasm 3y agoI remember seeing commentary like this a few years ago. Looking at this today in the post-generative ML world, I realize that the pictures of these houses look like what such a system would produce as output.
- fknorangesite 3y ago> I remember seeing commentary like this a few years ago. This blog has been around since 2016, so it may well have been the very same commentary. I certainly remember it making the rounds back then.
- boredumb 3y agoI like the terriblerealestateagentphotos.com post from earlier, but this feels like a parody of that. So far all of these places i'd be besides myself to be living in.
- Swizec 3y ago> all of these places i'd be besides myself to be living in I think that’s the problem. All these places look purpose built to project wealth and abundance, but they don’t look nice to actually use. None of those rooms feel very welcoming or even remotely practical. And somehow even the largest rooms manage to feel cramped because there’s too much going on. You just can’t feel at ease in a place like that. Or at least I can’t. If you ever visit Hearst Castle it’s got a very similar vibe. Some of those rooms take 5min to walk across, but when you’re just standing there looking around, it feels cramped and tiny because the walls and floors are so full of … stuff … that it feels almost oppressive.
- kelp 3y agoYeah, Hearst castle is one of the most ugly and uncomfortable buildings I've ever been in. It's like the ultimate example of absolutely no restraint or constraints, without thought for actual usability.
- ragebol 3y agoFor when you have money but no taste. Or modesty perhaps
- HarryHirsch 3y agoIt's the Keynesian beauty contest - if the exterior or the layout conformed to someone's taste or use case the seller will exclude the group with different tastes. So the outcome is a mishmash that appeals badly to everyone. It's no accident that so many supermodels are from Brazil - the nation is a true melting pot of races, it attracted immigrants from everywhere. If you need a clotheshorse you go to rural Rio Grande do Sul and look for "generic white".
- RcouF1uZ4gsC 3y agoI bet a decent number of those homes are cheaper than a 1200 square foot home built in the 1960’s in Cupertino and Mountain View. Despite their issues, I would also bet that the McMansions are much nicer to live in and raise a family in.
- jabroni_salad 3y agoMcMansion is more than square footage, they are also a hodgepodge of impractical design features. Counterstops made of a material that stains, so many glass fixtures that keeping them dusted is somebody's entire job, weird roof shapes with so many seams that water ingress is a certainty, seemingly zero optimization for the sun since the owner can surely afford to brute force their hvac, etc. American Farmhouse and Ranch House will never be out of style and are wonderfully practical to own and maintain.
- tiahura 3y agoRanch is fine until 2 of of your 3 kids are teenagers.
- ghaff 3y agoYou can certainly have expansive single floor houses--although I'm not sure they're "Ranch" at that point. In general, there is a tradeoff between allocating space for open public spaces and bedrooms. My old farmhouse has (now) a fairly open first floor plan but the four upstairs rooms are fairly small (about 10' x 12'). It's interesting if you look at some old opulent mansions in somewhere like Newport. The public rooms are opulent but even the non-servant rooms upstairs are fairly minimalist.
- throw0101a 3y agoProbably a bunch of folks have not read Alexander's A Pattern Language: * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Pattern_Language https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Pattern_Language I'm guessing most of the design elements were the clients' choices and not the architects' (or any architect or interior designer with some semblance of good taste).
- woodruffw 3y agoThese kinds of houses tend to be mass produced, often cheaply, which flies in the face of the luxury and casual wealth they’re meant to evince in the onlooker. Architects aren’t anywhere to be seen in the process.
- rsynnott 3y ago> not the architects' Bold to assume an architect was involved (many of the more ridiculous examples on the site are likely a result of no-architect build-to-order construction...)
- bearjaws 3y agoI think this is the architects idea of McMansion hell. My idea of McMansion hell is how closely they build them together AND the placement of them. For example, many of the big communities built here in Central Florida have your living room facing the ACs of your neighbors unit, and your living room windows facing into their bed room windows. If your homes are less than 8ft apart, JUST BUILD TOWN HOMES...
- kelp 3y agoThe major issue with many of these houses is their design, features and aesthetic is totally incoherent and shows no restraint. They put every kind of shape, texture, and material all into one house, in one room. This kind of maximalist design is trying to seem luxurious. But it ends up being overwrought, shocking to look at, and filled with unusable features like that weird fireplace in the 'dome sweet dome" house.
- martythemaniak 3y agoI agree that the aesthetics of large houses on small lots is bad, but it is more practical, which is why they get built and snapped up. Land is expensive, and whether in Florida where it's hot, or in Canada where it's cold, you get far more use out of enclosed climate-controlled space than a yard which gets occasional use. And with a detached house you don't have condo fees, have less noise, etc.
- taylodl 3y agoMy town was incorporated in 1918 and was largely developed post WWII in the 1940's and 1950's. It's a very affluent "old money", suburban area. The latest craze has been to buy these old houses and then raze them and build a McMansion on them. The problem is the houses just look at of place. They also look as fake as tits on a porn star. I don't know how people can be happy living in them - then again, what do you make of people razing charming old houses? The most ironic thing is the charming old houses were better-built than the garbage they're replacing it with. Just goes to show just because you have money doesn't mean you have sense. Or taste.
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- COGlory 3y agoAdded to my RSS feed, thanks.
- campground 3y agoI'm convinced that wealth and taste are perfectly orthogonal.
- alkonaut 3y agoWho builds these things and why is BOTH the architecture and workmanship so shoddy? Who opted for this instead of making a well-architected and well built home 2/3rds the size (All you save in fake columns and moldings probably gets you some area back). Where I live, a new home is always built by the first owner. That is, the first owner together with the architect creates the home including every plan, every material. Is that what happened here, or is it some sort of "developer" that has tried to make a disneyland looking thing to match what they already sold a buyer with sketches in a catalog?
- drewcoo 3y agoActually, Disney built Celebration, FL. It generally looks better than McMansions, IMHO. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Celebration,_Florida https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Celebration,_Florida https://www.zillow.com/celebration-kissimmee-fl/ https://www.zillow.com/celebration-kissimmee-fl/
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- tetromino_ 3y agoIn the US, new single-family homes are typically built by a real estate developer according to a common design. The first buyers are usually allowed some limited input on the design (choice of colors and decorative materials, size of garage, perhaps an optional additional bedroom or bathroom) but the core architectural design is chosen by the developer and cannot be changed.
- seanmcdirmid 3y agoUsually because a buyer isn’t lined up until the house is half completed. You could always get a builder to do a custom home, but most developers start their projects before the houses are sold, and most buyers are afraid to buy a house that hasn’t been started at all (unless asking for a custom job).
- acer589 3y agoPeople want what they want. Even if what they want is shit.
- markisus 3y agoI’m not sure there is anything objectively bad about these designs. Does it affect the utility of the house? Or is there some inherent ugliness that comes with affordable and popular things?
- balaga01 3y ago> Or is there some inherent ugliness that comes with affordable and popular things? I would question both of these adjectives, where I live, "affordable" is sub-400'000 USD and "popular" is a 3-bedroom terraced house. I would use expensive and extravagant instead.
- markisus 3y agoI realize that calling any type of mansion affordable seems out of touch. I was commenting on the relative expense of some of these design components. The prefix “Mc” evokes McDonald’s. The post pokes fun at a statue of a maid, because the owners could not afford to hire true maids. From the site, I assume that a McMansion is like a mansion, but made with cheaper components and without the taste and class that comes with an elite upbringing.
- denton-scratch 3y agoAn "elite" upbringing doesn't confer taste and class.
- rsynnott 3y ago> From the site, I assume that a McMansion is like a mansion, but made with cheaper components and without the taste and class that comes with an elite upbringing. General consensus on definition seems to be "very large house, not designed by an architect, cheap construction". So they are both expensive (because they're really, really big) but also, well, cheaper than something that big done properly. On the 'elite upbringing' thing, well, ever seen photos of the interiors of Donald Trump's houses? An elite upbringing does not necessarily imply taste.
- munchler 3y ago
- dukeofdoom 3y agoThere's this thing that the more sophisticated the home, the more emphasis on the garden that surrounds it. I've seen a few Bali Villas on the internet, where it's a glass house in a walled garden, and it gives this living in paradise vibe.
- ghaff 3y agoWell, the Bali climate sort of lends itself to that (in addition to the availability of cheap labor to maintain said garden).
- sidewndr46 3y agoI always find these critiques so out of place. Yes, many large houses have weird architectural elements that basically consist of "we copied bits and pieces of historically significant works of architecture". But I've also seen numerous houses that didn't do this, which I often describe as the "assembly hall". It is a house that has no distinguishing features at all. It looks like where you would go to a city council meeting and sit in benches. That's it. I live in a tiny ~1000 sq. ft. home. Per sq. ft. it includes as many of these out of place design elements than a McMansion. Pointless columns, rooflines that come out of nowhere, trim that looks like someone took a set of prison bars for inspiration. Randomly added brick because the developer thought it would increase home value. Vents that are purely aesthetic. A window over the front door, so if you're 9 ft tall you can see the people outside without opening the door.
- DamonHD 3y agoA lot of people would not call 1000sqft "tiny". It's a pretty standard-size UK family home. My family (4 of us) lives in ~800sqft. When you start from this perspective you may realise that the size bloat is just overwhelming well before you get to the detailing. You may be standing too close to the wood to see the trees... %-P
- sidewndr46 3y agoIf you look at the website, none of those homes are under 2000 sq. ft.
- ompogUe 3y agoWe live in a Queen Anne era house, 120 yrs old. Same idea of quirky mish-mash of styles, but they had less styles to choose from back then
- m3kw9 3y agoMoney aside, coming from a card board box this would be nice, but coming from a normal house and going into this would be nice but every morning/entry back you would greet yourself first thing with “WTF”, or “need to find a different home and sell this”
- mattpallissard 3y agoThe author frequently references "the field guide to American houses". I highly recommend it. It's a great coffee table book.