Who’s got time to rake them though?
“The windows are all different!” or “The windows are all the same!” Most of these don’t even look bad to me. I guess I’m uncultured.
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The popularity of the McMansion archetype in american housing is one of the reasons I feared Candidate trump so greatly - because people really can be that stupid.
Its not because of a condescending outlook on design, or that they have mismatched windows, or awkward proportion, or any other hallmark of bad or incompetent design work. Design in general is at once governed by an established cannon of good design work and good design principles - a consensus of what is good and what is not, AND a free form what I like is what I want so fuck you. Both of these sensibilities co-exist, and for the most part do nobody any harm.
But McMansions are not bad because they are incompetent bad design that flys in the face of the design establishment. They are bad because they are not the kind of personal, rule breaking, free from design expression that would do just that. They are both incompetent bad design that flys in the face of the design establishment AND impersonal, conforming, superficial design, that aims solely to pile on architectural elements that SIGNIFY aspirations that the house so clearly does not meet.
“I am a Mansion for a rich person”
“I was built long ago in a mystical place”
“Hundreds of skilled craftsman slaved for hours to create me”
“I have fancy columns and fancy windows because I’m FANCY”
“I have stone made stucco of woodwork make of foam”
I mean, really you should be able to see the relationship to a candidate trump. Clearly, once you are conditioned to making yourself believe these houses are beautiful, or desirable, or that they do in fact convey to you the status you wish they did – I mean once you are kidding yourself at that level with your house, its no great leap to believe every bit of bullshit that drips from trumps mouth. That stupid.
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During the tech boom in the late 90’s, this was happening all over Silicon Valley cities and finally most of the municipalities stepped in and basically said “you can’t do that anymore”.
I think a lot of people who read this article haven’t read much other work on her blog that goes into detail about why these monstrosities are so bad.
From my perspective, what makes me crazy is not so much the outsides - which often are terrible - but the insides. And not just the over the top attempt at trying to create a look that screams “look at me” but also the fact that they are just designed terribly. And it’s not like a literal blueprint for a well-designed large home doesn’t exist.
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Here’s an example that I drive by every day.
This is Google street view from 2012, and here’s the Zillow page after the house was replaced.
The builder bought the property for $650k and apparently sold it for $1.42 million. It’s got a killer view, though, overlooking the softball field of Fort Hunt Park.
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I’d be interested to see her take on an actual mansion.
After all, just because it was built by old money over the course of several centuries, doesn’t mean it’ll look nice. I’d have thought the there would be even more inconsistency in styles when a building has been lived in, expanded and altered by several generations.
EG: So lopsided!
(Snowshill manor fyi)
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Loudoun County is ground zero for people with more money than sense.
Overheard: “I guess I can just got to Princeton. I will have to keep my horses in New York because I refuse register them in New Jersey.”
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For a while on her Patreon she did post examples of well designed mansions of varying vintages. I’m uncertain if she still does.
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I would argue though that the variation in houses and our option to “choose” is at its core…a perfect example of the good kind of freedom the US has.
I have friends who have mcmansions.
I have friends who have modest (in size), but completely remodeled with the top of the line everything homes.
I have friends that live in small semi run down, just needs some TLC homes.
I have friends who prefer their condo or to rent.
We all have the means to live in whatever dwelling we find suitable for our families. And I may not like Janice’s 3400 sqft behemoth, and Don’s $60k kitchen remodel is nice but pointless since they order out all the damn time, and they think it’s just unsightly I have yet to fix that one broken piece of siding on the right side of my front door…but it’s ok. To each their own. It’s your house…do what you want.
This has its limits and all…but in the realm of the reasonable…Mcmansions have to be the lowest and least objectionable thing in our capitalist society.
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That seems even weirder to me. If the owner isn’t pushing for all different kinds of windows who is? Did the architect run out of stickers for one type and had to switch to a different pad? Are they buying leftovers from other mansion jobs and have to make do with what they get?
How/Why is this happening? At some point someone has to select the windows and they’re making a conscious choice to select one from this page in the catalog, another from a different page, and so on for the whole house. Wouldn’t it be easier to just use one type?
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Part of buying whatever windows are cheap. The other part comes from “designing” the building one room at a time with no regard to the overall scheme once it is frankensteined together.
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I wish this was true for everybody. Unfortunately it’s not a true statement for too many.
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So yes, we have the freedom to choose the kind of house that screams “I want to emulate people who have refinement, but not only am I completely unrefined, I have no desire at all to refine myself. I am as classless as a Marxist utopia!” You and @lava are in agreement there.
I find an authentic medieval castle to be suitable for my family, but do not have the means to live in it.
It’s that, or names like McKayleigh.
More like a tie, because they come out of the same phenomenon.
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As much as I love Kate’s snark and find a lot of the observations very amusing, I ultimately walk away feeling like her criticism is often shallow or at least not partnered with a more holistic consideration of the condition she’s lampooning. As others have pointed out, the vast majority of these houses are built speculatively, and if the owner is involved before construction it is often in a very limited kit-parts pick-and-choose capacity, so to read as much direct agency into the design decisions made in these projects is not entirely justified. Not to mention the real lack of historical awareness that would tell you that “consistency” as an architectural value is an outlier, often only described for historical convenience, and that even most of the best buildings have very strange contingent conditions that often wind up being some of the most beloved elements of those projects.
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But did it cost you a dime? Unlike the monsters highlighted in TFA?
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I’ve heard the same, that the workmanship isn’t there, and moreover, using “luxury” materials and fixtures does not appreciably increase what it costs to build it, especially when there’s particle board underneath that Spanish tile roof.
What confuses me about these monstrosities is, were the designs of all of them personally dictated by the original occupants? In that case I can understand how the “money can’t buy taste” angle comes in. Or is it super cynical developers thinking, here’s another sucker with deep pockets who won’t know the difference? Or perhaps is there a whole generation of architects who realized designing giant houses for assholes was the only way to pay back their student loans for what they must have once seen as a glamorous, creative profession, and they all just sighed heavily and, as one, gave up?
Because although I can see where the “old money mocking new money” icky sentiment comes from here, I also can see the horrible inattention to basic aesthetic competence in these houses. They consistently look more like what you’d get by training a deep learning system on houses than what I’d expect from a human designer, like when you train them on baby names and it suggests you should name your kid “Mumquip Sprack” or something. And I’m really curious exactly how that comes about.
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Kymberly.
I admittedly am pissed when someone scoffs at some feature of my house they find undesirable…that one broken piece of siding, the front bay window that has needed replacing since we bought the house 15 years ago, the bathroom that has needed remodeling because tiles have fallen apart or broken…man, its my house, not yours eff off with that.
I really don’t care of someone has 3 garages, all of which are filled with stuff, or mismatched gables and window styles, or have windows in places where no window is even needed. I get it…its fun to laugh at something someone spent money on and call it ugly or dumb and them stupid for not noticing/knowing or knowing and buying said thing anyway.
My personal preference is a small shack/cottage near the ocean. Its not practical. Its not fancy. Its got the basics. But its enough for me and wifey.
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It’s got two bathrooms!
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In new developments, the builders mostly dictate them, sometimes offering limited customisation options on standard models. On lots where there was an existing house that was torn down, the owner has a lot more say. Either way, though, it’s a rotten late-stage capitalist ecosystem of people with crappy taste thinking they can make up for it with money, and people willing to take that money.
Old money or new money doesn’t make much of a difference in these situations. Old money homes are usually not visible to the general public (or are modest enough that they look middle-class), and pre-date the McMansion industry by decades.
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No thanks. McMansions with mismatched windows and gables of different sizes and pitches and all those other aesthetic atrocities are still better than “houses” that look like they repurposed flak towers from the Siegfried Line.
Late-stage capitalism hogwash. You read literature from the Roman Empire and you’ll see stuff about people from established families with education mocking the parvenues who thought loud/flashy = good taste. T’was ever thus.
