McMansion Hell
mcmansionhell.com
mcmansionhell.com
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...
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.
But I don't really disagree for a lot of situations, especially without kids. I've always tended to prefer moderately rural or urban and not so much in-between.
That's a failure of architecture, too; it's entirely possible to build houses near each other without that happening.
(Mind you, in general architects are unlikely to be involved in these, particularly where they're one-offs/customised).
* 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).
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...)
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.
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.
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?
They are the direct result of having more money than taste. If they like it, who am I to criticize?
But also, some people just want what they want, no matter how absurd it might look to, well, basically everyone.
> 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?
No architect was involved in most of these.
So many gems on this site.
Despite their issues, I would also bet that the McMansions are much nicer to live in and raise a family in.
American Farmhouse and Ranch House will never be out of style and are wonderfully practical to own and maintain.
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.
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.
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".
The more accurate observation isn’t that they’re the product of a Keynesian contest, but they’re the product of distorted real estate and home ownership incentives: homeowners conflate size and apparent luxury with investment safety, and our housing and development policies encourage that conflation.
With a more individualized layout a good chunk would live happier - the standard examples are the dramatic rooflines that just encourage leaks at the edges and the two-story foyer that wastes so much space. But as you say, it's not about comfort or practicality, it's about resale value.
Other things have to happen, apparently. The vaulted 20 foot ceilings above the living room. I now have the choice in the winter to heat the upstairs to 80 or keep the living room at 60. Of course, you'll need an ostentatious fireplace that will never be used here in Texas. It has helpfully been placed as the focal point of your living room, where most would want a tv.
I'm continually amazed at how bad designs are on half-million dollar purchases which require 30 years to pay off.
I mean, you don't, but people tend to.
Though, also, the "certain size" here is generally a minimum of about 6000sqft. This is too large to be a practical house, so you end up with either unreasonably large rooms (uncomfortable, undesirable), completely superfluous rooms (probably the least-worst option) or massive grand entrances and other not-quite-room features (most common approach).
Of course, the sensible thing would be to build a smaller house, but that doesn't appear to work for the people who like these.
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.
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
Same idea of quirky mish-mash of styles, but they had less styles to choose from back then
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/ (warning: paywall after a few articles)
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.
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.
They're generally very large and of low-quality construction, making them expensive to heat, cool, and maintain, for little upside. They're also generally kind of impractical; you end up with either way too many rooms, or impractically _big_ rooms.
There's an element of subjectivity to the aesthetics, obviously, but I don't think you'll find many people who'll see most of the examples on that site and go "that looks good actually".
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.