
The McMansion Scale, Explained - OrwellianChild
http://www.mcmansionhell.com/post/151896249151/the-mcmansion-scale-explained
======
dietrichepp
This article is best juxtaposed with articles about image synthesis:

* Wave Function Collapse image generator [https://github.com/mxgmn/WaveFunctionCollapse](https://github.com/mxgmn/WaveFunctionCollapse)

* Image Synthesis from Yahoo's open_nsfw: [https://open_nsfw.gitlab.io](https://open_nsfw.gitlab.io)

* Generative Adversarial Text to Image Synthesis: [https://arxiv.org/abs/1605.05396](https://arxiv.org/abs/1605.05396)

Put another way, when I look at the McMansions at 10 on the scale, it looks to
me like the kind of output you get when you just feed a bunch of pictures of
houses into a neural network without feeding in any of the cultural or
aesthetic context. Things like the large garages and roofs look like the
efforts of constraint solvers working with inputs that are out of bounds.

In a sense, that is exactly what happened.

~~~
beat
Coming from an art background, I tend to think of those as Cubist in nature,
like a Picasso painting. You see just one roof, but from many different
perspectives, making it look like many roofs.

~~~
acveilleux
I like the Picasso reference. The line between art and "a bunch of crap put
together" is sometime difficult to pin down. And it takes a Picasso to
navigate that boundary without stepping over.

~~~
beat
Cascading gables are _totally_ Cubist in nature. It's a gable partly obscured
by a smaller version of itself! And a gable is itself sort of a simplified
outline of a house plastered onto an actual house.

------
carsongross
I was recently struck by this house, offered by Sears in 1921:

[https://oklahomahousesbymail.files.wordpress.com/2012/10/sea...](https://oklahomahousesbymail.files.wordpress.com/2012/10/sears-
saratoga-1921.jpg)

What's crazy is the price: $47,085.20 in todays dollars. This is with all
finishing materials (including stained glass) & delivered (no cement or
bricks).

It's an amazing house, and any old schlub could order it from good ol' Sears.

Something very bad happened in architecture around world war 2.

~~~
internaut
> What's crazy is the price: $47,085.20 in todays dollars.

You're not crazy. Houses really were more affordable for your grandparents.
The same with mine.

Today for I or you to purchase the same thing would cost many multiples. At
lowest I'd say 150k, but most likely 350 and in what the middle class today
euphemistically call a "good school distinct" it would be about over a million
dollars.

So many educated people in 'modern days' have beliefs about the present and
past which are in complete opposition to the facts.

> Something very bad happened in architecture around world war 2.

Thank you for noticing. The answer is literally a conspiracy against
traditional building. I won't 'go on'. I'll demonstrate with images.

Here I'll insert a former comment I made related to this subject.

[http://farm4.staticflickr.com/3641/3546348607_d60d612554_z.j...](http://farm4.staticflickr.com/3641/3546348607_d60d612554_z.jpg)

The first thought that struck me when I saw it was "that is a visual
expression of Orwellian thought".

Deep down a majority of people prefer to live in houses that look like this:

[http://media-cache-
ec0.pinimg.com/736x/2e/40/a4/2e40a4bf4e33...](http://media-cache-
ec0.pinimg.com/736x/2e/40/a4/2e40a4bf4e335a68f7c721cf622f7601.jpg)

[http://s0.geograph.org.uk/geophotos/02/74/71/2747107_896ab24...](http://s0.geograph.org.uk/geophotos/02/74/71/2747107_896ab244.jpg)

Do you remember the Shire in the Lord of the Rings? That is a synopsis of what
people feel when they think of 'home'. Honest, humble but well crafted
dwellings affordable by the average hobbit. As master Bilbo is keen to tell
us:

"In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit. Not a nasty, dirty, wet hole,
filled with the ends of worms and an oozy smell, nor yet a dry, bare, sandy
hole with nothing in it to sit down on or to eat: it was a hobbit-hole, and
that means comfort."

Brutalism is quite obviously something that came out of Minas Morghul.

[https://i.ytimg.com/vi/enbLZaUyr3s/maxresdefault.jpg](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/enbLZaUyr3s/maxresdefault.jpg)

It is an architectural anti-thesis.

Mr Wtbob on HN made the most apropos remark that:

There is little more care for the inhabitants inside than there is for the
ants, the ivy, the birds, the earthworms which could live on & around a homier
structure. A Brutalist building spares no more thought for its inhabitants
than does an abbatoir for those who enter its confines: they are a necessary
nuisance, but mustn't be permitted to intrude upon the happiness of the
architect anymore than absolutely required.

Brutalism is a kind of totalitarianism of architecture, a demand that those
who build, those who inhabit and those who maintain must constantly bend their
wills to the will of the Great Man (the architect), bend without love, without
understanding, without hope, without fear, without joy, just mute, abject
obedience to a cold and uncaring plan.

No thanks. Give me ivy, give me bricks, give me marble, give me dirt and grass
and trees; give me men and women and children; give me sheep and dogs and
horses; give me colours and light and ornament; give me emotion and delight;
give me, in short, life.

It's clear to internaut and probably wtbob, that so called modern architecture
is actually an attempt to erase the past, which is all the more amazing
because all the users _want_ traditional architecture to be built.

When all the end users want one thing, and most of the designers are wanting
another thing we have to seriously ask what is doing on.

Of course it's not just architecture, it's in the art world too and the music
world.

Nothing remarkable has come out of those for many decades now. The public is
unable to name a 'masterwork' from those fields of endeavor.

~~~
carsongross
I'm sorry to see you get down voted, but I share your sentiments and agree
that it was something that could be reasonably called a conspiracy.
Unfortunately it has become part of the intellectual furniture of left-wing
ideology, which makes a lot of otherwise perfectly nice people support
extremely inhumane building patterns.

Some books on the topic that I have read, if you haven't are:

[https://www.amazon.com/Bauhaus-Our-House-Tom-
Wolfe/dp/031242...](https://www.amazon.com/Bauhaus-Our-House-Tom-
Wolfe/dp/0312429142)

[https://www.amazon.com/Old-Way-Seeing-Architecture-
Magic/dp/...](https://www.amazon.com/Old-Way-Seeing-Architecture-
Magic/dp/0395605733/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1477025600&sr=1-1&keywords=the+old+way+of+seeing)

[https://www.amazon.com/Geography-Nowhere-Americas-Man-
Made-L...](https://www.amazon.com/Geography-Nowhere-Americas-Man-Made-
Landscape/dp/0671888250/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1477025615&sr=1-1&keywords=the+geography+of+nowhere)

A funny side story: I realized I was some sort of reactionary my freshman year
at Berkeley, when I was standing in the memorial glade, swinging my gaze back
and forth between Doe Memorial Library and Evans Hall.

~~~
sotojuan
It always makes me feel like one of those "I wish I lived in the past!! The
present sucks!" people but IMO arts, architecture, city planning, and
aesthetics went downhill after WWII. I'm not sure why or how but that's how I
feel.

------
bertiewhykovich
I'm not sold on this. Some of the criticisms levied seem valid, and there's
/some/ sensibility to the scale -- but the whole thing smacks of a post-hoc
attempt to define why McMansions are in poor taste in non-socioeconomic terms.
It's sufficient to just say "McMansions are tremendously wasteful symptoms of
American decadence" \-- but that might be psychologically hard if you've spent
years in architecture school learning how to design status symbols for the
upper classes.

~~~
danharaj
Architecture has rules of composition like any other craft. McMansions shit
all over them. There's nothing post-hoc about calling them shit. A McMansion
only look sensible and aesthetically pleasing if you try to imagine one as a
well designed house covered in tumors.

The fact that they are an example of American decadence stems from the fact
that they are cargo culting opulence.

~~~
Turing_Machine
"McMansions shit all over them."

How is it any of your business?

The people who buy them like them. _Their tastes are not yours_ , and they're
the ones paying the bills.

~~~
danharaj
It's my business in the sense that I can have an opinion about how ugly their
house is and I do. There's nothing more to it. It's not like I think
McMansions should be illegal because they are ugly, although I don't see
what's fundamentally unjust about a community not wanting eyesores in their
neighborhoods if enough McMansion haters congregated in one place. There are
other reasons why they suck that a sibling comment mentioned.

I don't believe just because aesthetics involve personal preferences that we
can't discuss them and come to common conclusions regarding the good and the
bad. Aesthetics are very important to me as a programmer, for example, and I
am an unhappy programmer if I cannot write pretty code for whatever reason. I
certainly wouldn't want to be a programmer if I couldn't write pretty code as
often as I do. Crunch time hurts me twice: the extra work, but also the
resource constraints that mean I have to satisfy beauty in code. If I didn't
care about what is beautiful and what is not, I would feel like a very flat
person. If that makes me an asshole then, well, I mean I wouldn't disagree.

------
fuqted
Thanks for sharing this blog.

She is funny, and this is putting words to feelings I've had. That said, what
she constitutes as negative, 'McMansion' traits largely seem to be based on
how she feels about the house as a whole.

[http://www.mcmansionhell.com/post/149284377161/mansionvsmcma...](http://www.mcmansionhell.com/post/149284377161/mansionvsmcmansion?is_related_post=1)

>Mansion vs McMansion

Immediately you'll notice the 'mansion' has a faux balcony, useless pillars
and void throwup; all traits she claims to despise.

Scroll down to the example of a New Traditional house (which is a beautiful
house) and it's clearly a house that, in her terms, has no concept of mass;
it's all roof!

I get what she's saying, but still. She should at least be consistent with the
individual traits she dislikes.

~~~
Rumudiez
Design and architecture aren't matters of opinion – "disliking roofs" isn't a
thing and is not her point. Combinations of various features lead to different
dynamics, which can be beneficial or harmful to the overall appearance or
impression given by the object.

So when she says the house is "all roof," it's not that she dislikes roofs in
general; it's that the roof dwarfs the rest of the house, making it look small
and insignificant. Imagine wearing too large of a suit, or putting your TV in
front a movie theater screen.

~~~
dlubarov
The thing with roofs is that if you get substantial snowfall in winter,
practicality demands a steep roof pitch, otherwise melted snow will drip
through the shingles. A high roof pitch necessary makes the roof more
prominent.

From a reverse image search, the two "more roof than house" photos (both in
the 8 section) seem to be from Sandy Spring, Maryland and Gaithersburg,
Maryland.

In general, the author seems to think that builders should place more value on
architectural merit rather than practicality, maintainability and cost.
Obviously most homebuyers don't share her priorities.

~~~
Broken_Hippo
I moved to Norway a few years ago. The average roof pitch is more than when I
lived in Indiana. However, the roofs generally don't seem that much more
prominent than in Indiana. Many are simply proportional - even in the more
mass produced housing of the 50's.

Examples:
[https://www.google.no/search?q=typical+norwegian+house&safe=...](https://www.google.no/search?q=typical+norwegian+house&safe=off&tbm=isch&tbo=u&source=univ&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiY29mthezPAhXya5oKHWaLANIQsAQIJQ&biw=1382&bih=771)

~~~
dlubarov
I notice that they're all gable roofs, compared to the hip roofs which the
author criticizes. Gable roofs usually look less prominent, since there's less
surface area, and it's usually on the sides which you don't see as much as the
front of the house. But I think hip roofs are better in harsh environments,
partly because they're more stable, and partly because the maximum wall height
is shorter, so it takes stronger winds to blow water onto the siding.

Are snowstorms and rainstorms not a big concern in Norway? I looked at some
weather data and it sounds like certain parts are quite rainy, but less so in
the major cities like Oslo, and with less storms than Maryland. Is that
accurate?

~~~
Broken_Hippo
I'll give the best account this immigrant can give: The weather does vary
depending on where you are at. Norway is long - Nearly like the east coast if
you take off Florida and Maine. The span and geography makes for somewhat
varied whether. A decent swath is above the arctic circle: Much of Norway is
thin save for the southern 1/3, which has a wider land mass and therefore, a
chunk that is more inland. Oslo shares similar whether with such places,
though it isn't as inland (the fjords can make 'inland' a weird thing). Much
of the country is mountainous as well. Due to the large coastline, the country
gets rainy along the coast, much like the west coast in the US and Canada.

Storms are a weird thing for me here. I don't consider much here a "storm",
but I'm from Indiana where a storm meant possible tornado weather. Storms
where I am - Trondheim - have heavy rain or snow and a fair amount of wind. As
in, as an adult, wind has pushed me along on ice. Many are remnants of
hurricanes, and the truth is they seem fairly mild. Even lightning and thunder
are somewhat rare - I kinda get excited because I miss a good thunderstorm.

------
Animats
There's a long history of this problem. Bletchley Park Manor House[1] meets
most of the criteria listed for a 9th or 10th level McMansion. Three or more
window styles. Turrets. Bad columns. Faux balcony. Patchwork masonry. Roofline
soup. Oversized pediments. Oversized transoms. House is out of scale.

They avoided the two-story entrance. It's not big enough for one.

(I visited before it became a big-time museum, and had a guide who was more
into the architecture than the cryptanalysis.)

[1]
[https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/82/Bletchle...](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/82/Bletchley_Park_-
_Draco2008.jpg)

~~~
Maarten88
An even older example: Palacio da Pena, Sintra, Portugal

[http://www.neverendingvoyage.com/the-fairytale-palaces-of-
si...](http://www.neverendingvoyage.com/the-fairytale-palaces-of-sintra-a-
photo-essay/)

~~~
mattkrause
But...that's old.

It's almost inevitable that old buildings evolve in strange ways. According to
the wikipedia article, it was a monastery, cathedral, and palace. Parts were
hit by lightning and rebuilt; I'm sure others also needed repairs from other
disasters, wear-and-tear, and changing usage.

The fact that an old building ends up like that doesn't mean that new
buildings should _start_ looking like that. Imagine if someone said "this
legacy code is an absolute mess, so this new project can be a spaghetti-coded
disaster too!".

------
rayiner
I love this article as social commentary. I grew up in McMansion hell--the DC
suburbs. My parents live in a McMansion. The architectural critiques capture
not only what I hate about these houses, but about the attitudes of many
people here. They have a general air of being better than the rest of the
country by virtue of education and an upper middle class income. They're
intensely image conscious but don't have exposure to real wealth, so they buy
and build houses with features like fake windows. They're bad with money:
Median household income in Great Fall VA is about $200k, while the median
house price is about $1 million. The owners of most of these McMansions are
extremely leveraged.

~~~
ssharp
Did you grow up in the McMansion? Were the schools mostly kids that came from
these upper-middle class families? I'm curious because I flip back and forth
between wanting a good school district for my kids and wanting to expose them
to a little more socioeconomic diversity. Just curious your thoughts on
growing up in that type of area, particularly around education and socializing
with other kids.

~~~
rayiner
I moved from Vienna (at the time probably middle class rather than upper
middle class) to Mclean (solidly upper middle class, with some rich people).
Mclean schools were full of upper middle class kids. The high school parking
lot had Lexus/BMW. Lot of smart kids and many who went on to be pretty
successful, but also a lot of arrogance and disdain for "the south," "the rest
of Virginia," and "flyover country." The attitude was such that I didn't even
realize Chicago (a huge city not on the coasts) existed until I was in
college.

I can't say I noticed any difference in the schools. Mclean had great test
scores, but that's because it has managed to zone out almost all the middle
and lower-income people and the working class immigrants. My wife and I have
been struggling with where to send our daughter to school. I don't think it's
worth it pay a big premium to buy in the higher-ranked school districts.
Unless the district has an actual gang problem, it's generic "McEducation"
almost everywhere. If our daughter shows tendencies of being a creative
thinker we'll likely do private for at least high school. If she shows a high
tolerance for petty tyranny we'll likely do public somewhere in Anne Arundel
(which is close to DC but far enough away where she might meet some blue
collar people).

~~~
BigJeffeRonaldo
Kids didn't know that Chicago existed? I don't know how to respond

~~~
HeyLaughingBoy
I went to a pretty lower-class high school in Brooklyn, NY (lots of kids from
Bed-Stuy, Bushwick, etc. before gentrification). There's a prevailing attitude
that if it's not in NYC, it's not worth knowing about. I'm not surprised to
hear of a well-off kid in a DC school not knowing about Chicago existing.

------
bbarn
The hate for attached garages.. Doesn't the author realize how incredibly
useful, and unsightly, they are at the same time? I have a rented garage a
half block away in the city, and a basement full of all my random projects,
that I would only dream of being able to stick in a garage next to my house.

~~~
jordanb
I have a detached garage facing the alley behind my house. It's about the best
possible arrangement for a garage, imho.

~~~
wott
No necessarily better: if I picture your example correctly, there is a lot of
space wasted as road (alley).

~~~
jessaustin
Alleys "waste" about five feet at the back of everyone's lot, and they are
very useful. In a sense, alleys and sidewalks are what differentiate
civilization from everywhere else people choose to live.

------
zuminator
Fun, but I'd find this information more useful if juxtaposed with an analysis
of the livability and practicality of the various McMansion species. After
all, a person spends a lot more time inhabiting the home as opposed to looking
at it, so ultimately the inside is a lot more important than the outside. As a
few people already noted, attached garages may be generally ugly but they're
useful. Can one say the same about multistorey windows and entryways, lots of
dormers, large columns, random multiple window styles, etc.? Do these things
add aesthetic or practical value to the house for the people actually residing
in them? Or are they mere eyecandy for tasteless consumers but in the end add
nothing to the enjoyment of daily living.

~~~
usrusr
Individual house dissection do go into detail about how the outside is
reflected on the inside, to bad effects.

See this one for example:
[http://www.mcmansionhell.com/post/149128564511/mclean-
virgin...](http://www.mcmansionhell.com/post/149128564511/mclean-virginia)

It's even more chaotic on the inside than on the outside. The Homer Simpson
car without wheels.

------
pjc50
As a Brit, I'm struck by the size of almost all of those houses; so much money
deployed in the service of so little taste. Of course, we're not safe from it
either in the UK, but usually on a smaller scale of cheap apartments and faux-
Tudor suburbs.

~~~
te_chris
I was thinking the same as someone living in London. What do people do with
all this space?

~~~
Broken_Hippo
I both understand your sentiment - as I think there is a spot of "This house
is too big for my spouse and I" (we live in a fairly small attic apartment
even by Norwegian standards), but I also understand what we'd do with space.

We would have an extra room: We might have seperate sleeping quarters because
my snoring wakes him. We (well, more he) would have a room for music - We have
a couple of electric guitars, a bass, and an electric cello. We (me!) would
have an art space. A guest room would be wonderful if family flies from
overseas. We'd have a library. That's 5 bedrooms, or alternate uses of a
basement or attic in a smaller 2-3 bedroom house.

I think a lot of folks simply have unused space in these, however. My parents
lived in a 3600 sq ft, 6 bedroom, multiple bathroom house (build in the 1860's
and renovated later on to include a garage and basement finishing) - and if it
wasn't for opening their house to family or friends down on luck, it would
have gone mostly unused.

------
pkamb
I'd like to see a similar blog for the terrible "modern" homes currently being
built.

Count the exterior materials! Cinder blocks, fake artisanal barnwood, neon-
green door, neon-orange corrugated metal, exposed concrete, yellow windows,
reclaimed shipping container...

~~~
internaut
In particular anybody who reclaims a shipping container has not done the math.
It's an idea that sounds good or affordable but it takes a lot of money and
expertise to make that work properly even if the container was free. It would
make considerably more sense to acquire a large cardboard box.

~~~
TheSpiceIsLife
Never mind making it work properly, just slap them together as per
[http://www.examiner.com.au/story/380795/one-mans-
container-i...](http://www.examiner.com.au/story/380795/one-mans-container-is-
another-mans-home/)

~~~
internaut
If you are not concerned with the difficulty of running plumbing/electric, you
still have thermal bridging through steel at 400 times the conductivity of
wood. The people who use steel framing often thermally isolate thin strips of
metal, not the entire wall. The insulation job the guy says he hasn't done
yet, he's going to find out he'll need to insert a cavity air gap. If he
chooses to stick it with a gap as external sheathing to save space he'll still
need to contend with condensation on this very conductive surface. If he goes
for passive house level air tightness and internal smart vapour barrier he
could be fine but somehow I think he's just winging it which means water
vapour will condense inside his house and not be able to dry out. Hello mildew
and everything he owns will rot. You can build with shipping containers, but
you've got to really know what you're doing.

tldr; A guy spent 50k+ to put his house inside a heatsink. This looks
environmentally friendly but with the probable dehumidifier requirements it is
probably much worse than regular building.

~~~
TheSpiceIsLife
Indeed! I kinda meant "just slap them together and to hell with the
consequences", probably should have written that.

I recently bought a house, built in 1964 needs some maintenance but generally
okay. Has a heat pump. The idea of buying land a little way out of town and
constructing my own dwelling using reclaimed materials crossed my mind a lot.
Fortunately I work in the structural steel fabrication industry, so I've got
enough building experience to be dangerous, but the wisdom to know better.

We're at 41 degrees south, old mate in the article I linked is a bit closer to
the bottom of the mountains, so probably cops a bit more of the cold air
drifting down the snow caps. When it's been -4 degrees every morning for a
week in the middle of winter going to work with cold steel is finger-snapping.
I wonder how they make it through the winters. Probably crawl up inside their
refrigerator where it's warmer.

~~~
internaut
> Indeed! I kinda meant "just slap them together and to hell with the
> consequences"

I think he proceeded with that plan, I looked up some other photos of that
build. He nailed some tarp with the containers into a kind of gable roof. I
try to be as positive and constructive as possible with people's projects but
sometimes it is very clear there exists a species of person who never had the
thought "huh, maybe I should google that" or "this must have been done before,
I wonder what best practice is". I suppose there's something to be said for
being fearless.

> The idea of buying land a little way out of town and constructing my own
> dwelling using reclaimed materials crossed my mind a lot.

I've said before that you can theoretically reclaim an entire house if you
have enough time and employ your own labour. That is commendable, especially
if you're stuck with few opportunities to work for money, but it is not the
easiest path. You'll need a place to store large items secure from thieves and
rain/sun.

> When it's been -4 degrees every morning for a week in the middle of winter
> going to work with cold steel is finger-snapping. I wonder how they make it
> through the winters. Probably crawl up inside their refrigerator where it's
> warmer.

I've been soaked to the skin with water in winter so I know how that feels.
They'll just spend a fortune on electricity. In their place I might have
buried the containers to alleviate the temperature change. There is also a
nice new/old technology called PCM - phase change material which would allow
you to average out the temperature shifts from night to day by storing thermal
energy like a battery. It releases heat from the walls when the temp drops and
basically acts as artificial thin thermal mass. I think it's an Ozzie company
too that does it.

------
ssharp
A lot of this McMansion stuff has trickled down into smaller homes, in the
2000-3000 square foot range. I think the term is neo-eclectic. Multiple roof
lines, no two windows looking the same, lacking symmetry, front-facing three
car garages, three or four different types of materials on the outside
(siding, shake shingle, brick, etc.). These houses also suffer the same fate
as many McMansions, where the house takes up a massive amount of the lot and
you get houses stacked on top of each other with very small backyards[1].

Almost all of the new houses I see being built are using this style. I'm
looking into building a house and in my area and it's impossible to find a
builder advertising their plans online who don't use this style. So if you
want to deviate from this style of house, you have to start working with an
architect to draw something up or try and find your own house plans. I'm not
saying this is a terrible burden, just that it's hard to get something more
traditional "off the shelf", so to speak, and many people building a house
don't want to go through that much of a process.

I'm looking to build my house a rural lot in the 5-10 acre range, so fitting
into neighborhood aesthetics isn't that crucial to me, but many places people
build, it's going to look ridiculous to place a traditional cape cod amongst
all the neo-eclectic stuff.

[1] Small backyards and closely built houses work well in city neighborhoods
but seem to be in conflict with why many people move to the suburbs -- to have
more space. I'm not sure the desire to live in such compact lots. Certainly
the developers like the small lots because they can squeeze more houses onto
the acres their developing on. However, I'm probably an exception because
people build these types houses on these types of lots in troves.

~~~
nommm-nommm
>A lot of this McMansion stuff has trickled down into smaller homes, in the
2000-3000 square foot range.

Oh, god, yes. My well off but not rich (high 5 figures, low six figures)
friends are buying these. They are pouring a ton of their wealth/income into
these pseudo-prestigious things. It's strange to watch.

~~~
ssharp
I wonder what the resale value on these houses will be. In the areas these are
built around me, housing prices aren't skyrocketing, so if you built and had
to sell within a few years, you're probably going to take a loss unless the
market changes substantially. However, these places likely have a 20-25 year
lifespan for the original owners as kids are born, raised, go off to college,
and then start their own lives.

There's going to be a glut of these things out there that someone needs to
buy. Everyone wants new things, so why would people in 20-30 years have
demands for a house that was "stylish" 20-30 years ago? I'm only in my 30's,
so maybe I'm just ignorant of housing construction cycles, but it my social
group, I see a lot of these things being built.

That's another reason why I want to build something more traditional -- to
hopefully stand out from the pack when I eventually go to sell.

------
Dowwie
This is architectural trollery unleashed on the innocent masses, the kind of
information that just makes homeowners feel bad about their property but does
little to change things. The mcmansionshell crusade is analogous to developers
publically complaining (trolling) about perfectly functional, stable source
code that isn't as idiomatic as it could be. Unlike real property, source code
is a hell of a lot easier and more likely to be improved when the criticism is
compelling. Homeowners, on the other hand, won't upgrade. They literally have
to just "live with it".

~~~
Jean-Philipe
I think you missed where she points out non-aestetical flaws of those
McMansions, like cheap materials, water damage, covered-up measuring mistakes,
wasted space.

~~~
Dowwie
yes I did

------
martythemaniak
Perhaps this is a good thread to ask: Does anyone have book recommendations
about how and why houses are built? For example, this blog talks about siding
(EIFS, vinyl, stucco), but I'd like to learn how these are made, relative
costs, how they respond to different climates, how they're actually
constructed etc. I'd like to learn about all different aspects of houses, for
example, why are foundations just poured concrete, vs using stone? What are
the advantages of brick vs stone, etc.

~~~
pjc50
[http://diy.stackexchange.com/](http://diy.stackexchange.com/) might be a good
place for those questions.

Stone is expensive, hard to transport, and difficult to shape. Concrete is
stone you can pour, although you need to keep water away from the embedded
steel reinforcement.

UK houses tend to be brick and US wood due to relative costs in those
countries.

~~~
bkjelden
/r/homeimprovement on reddit can have some bright spots too.

As a general note, house construction varies a _lot_ throughout the US due to
the climate variances.

E.g. someone moving to the bay area from the midwest is going to find the
insulation in houses there comical. Here in Colorado we have almost no vinyl
siding (because of the increased UV exposure, I presume), and mold is less of
a concern than elsewhere. Full basements are the norm in the midwest, but rare
in Texas and nearly impossible in Florida.

------
bkjelden
Any valid critiques the author may have are completely lost in the contempt
and pretentiousness of her writing style.

Additionally, I am incredibly skeptical of her ability to judge the quality of
a house's construction based on a single exterior photo.

~~~
ryandrake
Come on. It's entertainment. Like
[http://www.peopleofwalmart.com](http://www.peopleofwalmart.com) it's a
lighthearted laugh at people with zero taste.

Or, to put it in terms HN will get: Do a code review of really bad
unnecessarily-complicated code. It's hard to NOT think things like: "Jeez,
this person doesn't know what they're doing." and "This code is confusing and
ugly, but the writer probably thinks it's elegant." McMansion design is like
someone throwing every design pattern that exists into their code because
someone told them once that design patterns are good.

~~~
pluma
Wow, never heard of POWM before but that's one hateful piece of
"entertainment" if I've ever seen one.

The entire entertainment value seems to be based on publicly shaming people. I
have no idea how you can consider this "lighthearted". That's 4chan level
misanthropy right there.

~~~
cylinder
There's been a shift in American humor, and others have noted, due to the
class division probably; we used to laugh with each other, or maybe laugh
together _at_ the authorities, but now we are laughing _at each other_ , or
better put, we are laughing at _them._

Here's a recent illustrative Saturday Night Live sketch:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8WytdYtzyZg](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8WytdYtzyZg)

------
ars
Interestingly the higher the number the more I like the house.

The low number ones are boring and plain. The high number ones are interesting
to live in.

~~~
pavel_lishin
I hear there's an ancient Chinese curse about living in interesting-something-
or-other. I don't _think_ it was houses, but I bet they'd have adjusted it if
they'd seen these.

~~~
joncrocks
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/May_you_live_in_interesting_ti...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/May_you_live_in_interesting_times)

------
omegote
As an european who has never visited the US, I'm totally unfamiliar with this
kind of buildings, other than seeing them in TV Shows like Family Matters or
Full House. Also, almost every single american woodworking YouTube channel is
recorded in a garage of one this kind of houses. I find them huge, yet their
popularity makes me think they're pretty common, maybe even affordable?

~~~
swah
I wonder how are the houses in some places in Germany, for example? They also
love their cars and have real winters...

~~~
pluma
The average German lives in an apartment or multi-family house.

On the country side there are still a lot of fully detached houses but they're
either mostly "old" (i.e. built or fully renovated after the war) or built to
a different standard (Germans generally consider drywall a cheap substitute).
But of course that is also changing.

Also, building your own house is not as affordable as it seems to be in the
US. Germans have a stronger aversion to taking out loans and banks often want
a significant down payment.

From what I've seen few home owners actually park their cars in garages
though. Recently carports (basically sunroofs) have become pretty popular but
most people seem to park their cars in the driveway as far as I can tell. We
just clean them more often, I guess.

~~~
MK999
what kind of multi-family house? Side by Side duplex? Up down duplex?
Quadplex? Something else?

~~~
taejo
I don't know what the averages are, but I'd say in towns the most typical are
terraced houses with four or five floors - sometimes that's one apartment on
each floor, sometimes two.

------
kzahel
There is a great podcast released a few days ago by 99% invisible interviewing
the creator of the site: [http://99percentinvisible.org/episode/mcmansion-
hell-devil-d...](http://99percentinvisible.org/episode/mcmansion-hell-devil-
details)

------
jessaustin
Incidentally, I find TFA to exemplify a "McWebsite". The interesting primary
content is totally dominated by the massive "More You Might Like" footer with
four more _entire_ McMansion articles sandwiched in together, including all
original images and graphics. Meanwhile Chrome is pegging at 500k for this one
page. Lose the four-car garage please!

------
owenversteeg
The author rightfully hates on pre-lawsuit EIFS, but I know it's improved
quite a bit.

Does anyone know how good EIFS is these days? As far as a quick Google tells
me, post-lawsuit EIFS is a magical building material from the gods that can
quite literally withstand hurricanes and missiles [0] but I imagine reality is
a bit more nuanced than that.

[0]
[http://www.architectmagazine.com/technology/products/revisit...](http://www.architectmagazine.com/technology/products/revisiting-
eifs-the-once-maligned-cladding-system-that-may-help-architects-meet-new-
energy-codes_o)

------
jessaustin
I'm not surprised to see the higher end of the scale feature lots of oversized
eave returns. I am surprised TFA doesn't mention this everyday horror of
ostentatious suburban living. A classical eave return is _only_ appropriate
when of classical dimensions.

------
harryh
dupe of a dupe:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12754592](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12754592)

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pRtVMLwh6mY](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pRtVMLwh6mY)

------
mschaef
Every time this site come up on yc, I I always have the same impression... I
like what the guy is trying to do to improve architecture, but it just seems
so mean spirited in execution.

~~~
oe
*girl ([http://99percentinvisible.org/episode/mcmansion-hell-devil-d...](http://99percentinvisible.org/episode/mcmansion-hell-devil-details/))

It's mean but well deserved.

------
hueving
Reminds me of Yelp reviews that slam a restaurant for its decor and don't
mention the quality of the food.

~~~
rabboRubble
She does talk about quality of materials in other posts in addition to the
failure to use / design / construct with those cheaper materials.

She's a hysterical writer. Highly recommend poking around her site for a bit.
She's changed the way I look at real estate.

------
flukus
So tiny houses and large mansions are the same on this scale? What does the
author think mansion means?

~~~
stephen_g
The scale is supposed to be a scale of the quality of the design.

Neither tiny houses or well-designed mansions qualify as 'McMansions'.

~~~
flukus
The quality is only the "Mc" part of "McMansion" though. and Mansion implies
large house.

Edit:

> Neither tiny houses or well-designed mansions qualify as 'McMansions'.

Yet they're on the McMansion scale.

~~~
eyelidlessness
It establishes a baseline as a frame of reference.

------
tomcam
It's really bad when people idiotically think they should be able to put the
house they want on their own property. What a bunch of tools.

~~~
stephen_g
Where does the author advocate banning terrible houses?

She's just explaining the features and design ideas that make this kind of
architecture so distasteful - not telling anyone what to do...

~~~
duskwuff
She also frequently points out that "McMansion" homes often have design
problems that make them unpleasant to live in, like:

\- Use of cheap materials, like vinyl siding and EIFS, which are likely to
fail early and require expensive repairs.

\- Poorly conceived interior spaces. Rooms that are awkwardly shaped or
placed, which are impossible to furnish sensibly, or which simply have no
purpose but to fill space. "Grand entrances" are a frequent offender here.
These aren't just ugly; they make the house uncomfortable to live in.

~~~
dpark
> _Use of cheap materials, like vinyl siding and EIFS, which are likely to
> fail early and require expensive repairs._

I was under the impression that EIFS was a good system. Is that not true?

~~~
duskwuff
EIFS is great _if_ it's done properly. It can be leaky if designed/installed
improperly, though, and it's difficult to repair.

~~~
jessaustin
I've had good results with EIFS on commercial buildings. In fact if you look
around you'll find most new commercial buildings in USA are EIFS, usually with
one or two accent materials like CMUs or steel. I don't really like the look
of EIFS on most houses, although it probably works for "southwestern"-style
houses that mimic adobe construction, and I'd love to see a medieval half-
timbered house using EIFS.

I don't agree with TFA's complaint about what it's calling EIFS "seams". First
of all properly-installed EIFS doesn't have seams; in the picture those are
simply decorative details. It would have been less work not to include them.
If they hadn't been included, the tiny windows would have really menaced the
neighborhood with their empty soulless stares. If TFA's favored flavors of
"modernism" reject simple details like these, it has to come up with
_something_ to replace them, because giant blank walls just doesn't work.

EIFS is not alone in not dealing well with moisture when installed
incorrectly. I have seen improperly installed vinyl siding, for instance,
result in _horrific_ water damage in a _short_ period of time. If you're going
to own the results for any amount of time, you must watch your contractors
like a hawk. Reasonably-priced contractors will fuck you every time; the goal
is to get fucked in relatively painless fashion. Having to replace entire
walls is painful, even if insurance covers it.

