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Comment by Swizec | Hacker News Reader

> 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.

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It reminds me of living in a hotel lobby. So much room for activities, but not really a home.

How many rooms can a person possibly use? At a certain point, the only purpose of the rooms is to project wealth and abundance.

I felt the same way when I took a tour of Allerton House [0]. From the outside, it's quite imposing, yet the interior didn't seem spacious at all.

[0] https://allerton.illinois.edu/

Yeah, 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.

For when you have money but no taste. Or modesty perhaps

It'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".

McMansions don’t appeal badly to everyone: millions of Americans happily live in them.

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.

millions of Americans happily live in them

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.

Even if, for purposes of argument, you stipulate that there are families that would make effective use of a very large house, the design for a family with a lot of kids and/or an older parent living with them is going to look very different from that for a couple or small family that throws large parties on a regular basis.

What I hate is that it seems to be a dichotomy. Small house, simple style. But as soon as it gets to a certain size, you have to put in stupid things like the grand entrance with a showpiece staircase.

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.

There certainly are large house designs that are, to me, aesthetically pleasing. They tend to be simpler and more classic. I see quite a few up in coastal Maine. It probably helps when you have a view from the house which tends to focus the design on features that take advantage of that.

> But as soon as it gets to a certain size, you have to put in stupid things like the grand entrance with a showpiece staircase.

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.

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