The McMansions featured here look like they’ve been generated by some deep learning algorithm - building features blobbed randomly together with no rhyme or reason.
ATL has grown a lot in the time frame when the technology & economics for these houses make sense. These houses would be unlivable without AC in Atlanta and cooling them would be prohibitively expensive any time but the last 30 years or so.
I think that's kinda the point of the style. The bizarre stacks of features create a hallucinatory, or "dream-like" vibe, which snares the Chads and Jessicas looking for their, and I quote, "dream home".
I am always amazed by Americans love of 'period' style architecture in preference to a more modernist style. Especially when I see friends in my age group (30s) pack there homes with dark wooden furniture that looks like it would be more at home in Versailles. To me it is just visually exhausting and I crave the relative calm of some minimalist sleek lines.
To a huge number of people, we're tired of minimalism because it's been around for quite a long time and feels quite dated, and isn't as sleek or comfortable as it should be.
This extends to the flat design movement. I hated it 10 years ago when it first started to appear and I don't hate it any less now. I'd take some mild skeuomorphism any day. I just wish it'd go away and fast. It felt positively ancient and overdone 5 years ago--these days it's feeling like a disease that I can't get rid of.
The Material Design idea was a step in that direction. It's based in flat design, but takes advantage of drop shadows to create depth where it makes sense for creating a hierarchy.
Apple has taken some baby steps in that direction too, with ios 11, and the focus on translucency and blur to create layers of depth.
I’m pretty sure the iOS 7/OS X Yosemite redesign was specifically intended to do what you say iOS 11 is taking “baby steps” in. This both predates Material Design and if anything the iterations after 7/Yosemite have toned down the translucency stuff. Source: any media released around the time iOS 7 was announced.
modern building styles are significantly more expensive per square foot in north america than more traditional styles since they use more steel and concrete.
In europe wood for stick frames is expensive enough it doesn't make a big difference, but here in north america stick frames are incredibly cheap.
Combine that with American's belief that size equals luxury and you get mcmansions.
I’m not a fan of the examples given simply because it feels like they are comparing bigger McMansion houses to smaller, simpler houses. I’d rather have the comparisons be of “proper” mansions to McMansions, because abiding by the stated principals is obviously going to be easier in smaller houses.
Like the primary / secondary mass bit is obviously going to be harder to deal with the bigger the house gets.
Well, when I hear "mansions" I tend to think along the lines of Biltmore [1], but that's a house with 178,926 square feet (16,622.8 m2) of floor space.
Being from this side of the Atlantic I would describe something like Biltmore – never heard of it before, thanks for the ref – as a very large European-type manor. Biltmore for me is bordering on palatial in size if not explicitly in feature. Honestly you'd need an architect or someone who properly knows the language of architecture to accurately relay Biltmore's style and type.
“The only manor house in the United States (or North America for that matter) that resembled the form and function of a European-style estate and manor is the Biltmore Estate in North Carolina (which is still owned by descendents of the original builder, a member of the Vanderbilt family).”
This feels like the architectural equivalent of linguistic prescriptivism. If "basic architectural concepts" declare buildings to be "especially hideous", but people are seemingly happy to buy and live in them, what grounds do we have to decide that the people are wrong and not the concepts?
I think the linguistic equivalent would be a verbose sentence with gratuitous use of adjectives, several inane parenthetical interjections, and punctuation misuse. It's okay if I'm reading a letter from a friend or family; otherwise, I want to read something that has good linguistic flow.
It's not a judgement against people who like McMansions. It's a guide for people like me: I see a house, find it offputting, but I can't figure out why and what to look for to get a house that isn't. She gives me, a layperson, the information I need to pick a house I'll like.
Her blog actually has articles that go into detail about different architectural periods and the elements of architecture.
There's nothing wrong with liking McMansions, but I want a cute house, not too big, that I love on the outside and the inside.
You're right that this is about judgements of value. But part of the problem is that architecture can't be reduced to bite-sized principles and quick-reference rules of thumb.
Architecture is so much more complex and nuanced than that. Even "A Pattern Language" falls into the trap of providing reductive prescriptions. Ask literally any architect what they think of Christopher Alexander's actual built work, and they will either dismiss it or (more likely) won't even have heard of it.
I wouldn't say Wagner is really reducing it so much as teaching the layperson to explore their own conception of a house and why a house design doesn't quite coalesce.
She didn't teach me to identify that a Frankfurt house must have a wingdar, a gongle, and a shivbopped roof. It just taught me to look closer at all the different elements that make my brain say "that's a house" vs "that's a weird house"
Even to think that it's a matter of a shopping list of elements is reductive. Architecture is holistic. While it's obviously great to be made aware of and be able to analyse various standard components and their relationships, components/patterns are not the story. It's not engineering.
We don't have any grounds to say that the people are wrong to buy and live in these houses (except maybe when it comes to the externalities that aren't priced into them).
But we can't dismiss subjective criticism on the basis that some people like the things the subjective criticism says is bad or that people uneducated in the subject don't understand. The criticism is of course not above evaluation but setting a subjective standard is not something that is impossible.
This is an important concept in software. The vast majority of decisions software developers make are subjective. Yet the vast majority of us do not have frameworks for doing subjective criticism. I think that contributes to the flame wars, cyclical fads and generally bad state of our software as code. We'd likely all be better off if we had more subjective concepts in software and not less.
To add, the same author also wrote "McMansions 101 Revisited: Aesthetics Aside, Why McMansions Are Bad Architecture" to provide "objective list of reasons why McMansions are bad architecture that ignores aesthetics." [1]
devils advocate: Take your profession, now look at people working in your field who you, with all your experience, can comfortably say "That person is doing it wrong". That is the perspective of this article.
This argument tends to come up with anything visual because people often (incorrectly) assume that visual things are subjective, when the whole point of this article is to try and give objective criticisms. Would you say the same of ux design? Or the visual design of an application? I think we can pretty definitely say when thise things are “bad”
I would add for the inside of the house, a poor or illogical use of space. I remember one house where the stairway to the upper floor bisected the main floor, causing there to be a hallway on one side, then a strange sort of "bumpout" under the stairway (once it had risen past 8 feet in height) on the other side. If you didn't use the hallway you had to walk through a sort of small sitting room before then entering the farthest part of the dining room.
If you ever see one under construction, another thing that makes a mcmansion what it is , the cheap wood. Chipboard, particleboard and medium density fiberboard all over the place. God help you if you ever have a roof leak. Or a siding leak. Or it sits out in the rain while under construction before completion.
Contractors save thousands per tract home using this shit instead of proper plywood.
Also, staple gun and nailed construction where there should be high quality wood screws.
There is definitely a lot of corner-cutting when it comes to new housing construction in the US for the low end of the market, but it's usually seen with poor insulation and energy efficiency, low-quality cladding and paints, and "builder-grade" fixtures. Very rarely have I seen chipboard or MDF used. OSB, on the other hand, is used even in high-end construction and, as an engineered alternative to plywood, has a number of benefits over plywood including increased strength, lower cost, and lower environmental impact.
As for staple gun and nail construction, I can't say that I've seen the former, but nails are a superior fastener to screws for many structural applications such as framing because they have a higher shear strength than screws. A nailed stick-frame house doesn't require specialized tools or skills to build, is relatively low-cost and uses renewable resources, and can easily last 100+ years. It's an excellent choice for many houses in the US.
Not MDF but a cheaper fiber board is often used in trim. The trim itself is often a colonial shape and doesn’t match with the vernacular design of the area or often with the house itself. It is usually 3/8” too thin and 2 1/4” to short.
You’ll often see press-formed cardboard doors in 6 panel colonial style on houses in cities that didn’t exist in colonial times.
Builder grade fixtures fail quickly, while the porcilin in the bathroom may last, a complete rebuild of the toilet is often necessary in as little as 3 years. Vanities are lower grade press board that melts as soon as water hits it. You’ll see mold and dry rot form are both the sink and bath because poor water proofing
Well, i'm referring more to building ordinary suburban tract houses that don't meet the definition of "mansion", and reasonably sized wood framed single family houses. If you can afford to build an actual mansion I'm sure there will be very little plywood anywhere.
It's been a very long time since brick or stone were commonly used as structural elements in US houses. For decades, houses have typically been stick-frame, perhaps with brick or stone used for the facade. In such cases, the brick or stone is serving merely as cladding for the house just as siding would. Brick or stone facades are typically more expensive than wood or fiber cement sidings but the choice of the former rather than the latter is based on aesthetics, not intrinsic quality. There are definitely high-quality and attractive houses that have no brick or stone. For example, this older house was re-clad with fiber cement siding and it's appropriate for the character of the house:
How come they afford it in Europe then? All four walls in every room in my house here are a foot of solid brick, and it's not an abnormally expensive house.
Because there is a local abundance of materials and skilled laborers.
In the US you’d have trouble sourcing bricks and even more trouble hiring brick layers.
If you visit the north east the oldest building (upto 400 odd years old) are stick+frame because thats what they had available when they got off the boat, the workforce and techniques grew from there.
I think it's more obvious if you've ever lived in or near the parts of the Pacific Northwest that produce a lot of the US and Canada's lumber supply for stick built houses. BC, WA, OR, ID. I personally know very little about the economics of bricks, but you can sit by the BNSF railway which runs from Seattle-Vancouver and watch entire southbound massive trainloads of BC lumber wrapped up in plastic, rolling south towards distribution and end users.
Any idea of the cost per sqft (or square meter) to build your block house? I build wood-frame homes in the US for ~ $95/sqft. These are nice homes with decent finishes, proper insulation, etc but we benefit from low labor costs in my area.
No I've no idea and maybe it's much more expensive.
But they're not blocks by the way if you're thinking of large cement or cinder blocks - all the houses round here are made structurally from proper red bricks.
My wood framed house in New Zealand cost $200/sqft and we’re not talking high end. Blame our cost of shipping, labour and local building supplies monopoly.
none of these were ever designed to last more than 15 years. I guarantee they are torn down and rebuilt every 15-20 years. Oldest I've ever seen an american home stand is 50 years. All in the name of space. There is no regard for architecture or practicality whatsoever.
The only* thing that matters in architecture is whether you feel happy and alive in it. Nobody can tell you how a place makes you feel. That being said, I think one of the greatest tricks the devil ever played was making modern architecture and (some) McMansions extremely photogenic. I think people gravitate toward imagery rather than their own true senses.
I remember this being posted years ago. Anyway, I think it's a great write-up. It's one of those things where I don't know why it looks so awful, but I can tell it does- nice to read about why.
I’m not sure I agree with these examples and I’m not big on architecture criticism like this. I think it’s important not to overvalue a building based on how it looks - 99.9% of your time will be spent inside the building, .1% or less will be spent outside looking at it. Modern houses can be much nicer inside: larger open areas, larger kitchens, larger bathrooms and (usually) less lead paint and asbestos.
The same goes for office buildings, where I think the conservation movement overvalues the small amount of time people spend looking at a building vs the huge amount of time people work inside it. I’ve been in old beautiful office buildings in NYC and modern ugly office buildings and the modern buildings usually have a much better working environment and layout.
Example 1 looks fine to me, I would be happy to live in this house. It’s not beautiful but it’s not ugly.
Example 2 is ugly, the windows on the front are weird and the side has too few windows. My main issues with McMansions is they look cheaper than older houses because of the materials and sometimes facades have no windows or few windows, while old houses tend to have more windows and they are evenly balanced.
Example 3 looks fine, it’s almost pretty.
Example 4 would be better if the dark brick part on the house’s left had a window, and the white brick with random dark bricks is kind of ugly. Not terrible though.
Example 5 looks fine and I like red brick houses.
Example 6 is okay too.
I’d be happy with most of these houses if they had a nice interior and nice yard.
One thing that is not pointed out in the article as it is mostly about aesthetics is that most of the traditional houses that McMansions are based on, have regional variants that were developed for the climates and conditions they were built in.
For instance, the top windows in example 2 provide important airflow to a part of the house that will normally get very hot.
McMansions are rarely (if ever) designed with their climate and locality in mind and are therefore very inefficient. They would not be at all livable without AC and are frequently monstrous to heat and cool.
Contrast that with the houses they are modeled on, even in places where AC is a huge boon.
> I’ve been in old beautiful office buildings in NYC and modern ugly office buildings and the modern buildings usually have a much better working environment and layout.
I'm not literate in architecture, but there is one dimension that seems prominently easy to identify to me: with the singular "brutalism" at one end; and an open ended array of ornate at the other.
I think the "modern" functional office building architecture you refer to are close to the brutalism end (but not at it), and therefor not a fair comparison. These mansions are quite far form it, whoever is designing them cares about the aesthetic, but regardless of your taste they seem to lack something... cohesion and thoughtfulness perhaps, they want to be something but they don't seem to know what - it makes them feel fake.
The problem with these houses is mostly aesthetic. Most of them are otherwise fairly functional. McMansions are a consequence of modernism, where people got sick of the minimalistic architecture and returned to traditional styles.
However, new construction in these architectural styles ends up often looking like a cheap knockoff because of the mishmash of different styles from totally different time periods.
McMansions are nothing but large track houses. The small house examples here are the track house. There are way bigger problems than articulated, like ecology, economics, egonomics, and more, but calling these houses architectural is pretending like architecture is actually a factor, when in reality, for McMansions and track houses alike, that's just not the case: it's all toothpicks and gypsum, stamped out of a design factory. There is no "architecture", because the buyers don't know shit, can't afford real design, and probably care less about the style than they do the suburb, neighborhood, policing, schools, etc.
One thing this article does give away tho, is how much these houses are showcased exactly like hamburgers in commercials vis a vis what you get at the fast food chain:
everything in the commercial is pushed forward and jutting out the front: windows, awnings, decks, etc. That's why they call them McMansions.
I'd agree part of the problem is the widespread "buy the most house for the lowest price" phenomenon, which infects many other aspects of our society beyond shopping for homes, but far and away the primary problem here has little to do with architectural issues. The problem is with builders who are trying to maximize their profit - the key being build the biggest house possible on a lot of a given size (or per FAR restrictions). And the same group of builders who go this route tend to have little awareness or real concern for aesthetics - to them architecture is better when you have many rooms, higher foyers, more complicated floor plans and roof planes, and a larger number of different types of building/cladding materials. The appeal of these things has slowly creeped into the general public because tract house builders have adopted lesser versions of this crap for decades.
Now go look at Edinburgh Castle, Scotland's iconic castle. No symmetry. Multiple competing masses.
Fallingwater - no symmetry, no main mass, way too many voids.
English Tudor houses have many of the features the author complains about. They're usually asymmetrical and have multiple competing masses.
What this guy likes is a big square house with a centered entrance and two wings. Like the White House, antebellum plantation mansions, and most US governors mansions.
The Middlebrow Dismissal is my least favorite pattern on HN, especially when the comment author has not read the article.
The article disclaims, right after the first paragraph, that it's describing classic architectural principles that don't always apply to modernist / postmodernist architecture.
Of your two counterexamples,
- One is a canonical example of modernism
- One is a medieval castle...
Btw Fallingwater does have balance and doesn't have excessive voids. Balanced does not mean mirror symmetrical. The article covers that as well.
Fallingwater also fits beautifully into its plot and environment in both aesthetic and scale. Very much unlike McMansions and most current house building.
It is one of very few examples of modern architecture that I really like.
1. You chose a castle and the work of "the greatest American architect of all time" for your comparisons when the author clearly states in the disclaimer: "These principles are for the classical or traditional architecture most residential homes are modeled after."
2. "What this guy likes..." The author is a woman.
I would like to formally declare my support for the acceptance of the non-gender-specific usage of 'guy'. We can do it, folks. With just a little bit of effort, we can finally have a serious option for reducing the effort required to write socially-appropriate Internet commentary.
We need your help to save us from the hell of verbose non-gender specificity.
Firstly, Edinburgh Castle was built in the 12th Century and change over the period of a thousand years. I suspect what is considered good architecture has changed over that time, and at no point influenced the design.
Secondly, Edinburgh Castle is a Castle. It's not designed to be attractive, it's designed to have strong defences against an attacking army. Your criticism is like complaining that the McMansion can't be used to put down the Jacobite Rising.
Thirdly, Edinburgh Castle is built on a volcanic plug, making it quite difficult to build a traditional building.
What is considered good architecture for a family home is not going to be considered good architecture for a tower block. That doesn't mean it's not right, it means it's complicated. It's also fair to say that good architects often break commonly used rules of thumb - as with many things it's the difference between Jazz and Noise.
Noise is where someone plays musical notes with no knowledge of how they relate to each other. Jazz is where someone plays the same notes, but knows exactly how they relate to each other.
As an experienced dev you certainly look at any codebase and you'll easily know if it's well done or not. Somebody that can't code or is unexperienced can't see the difference despite being provided with a bunch of rules, rules that they might even frivolously question.
Here is the same or even more difficult because these rules are subjective and not easy to verbalize - that's why you can't find them written anywhere - and I, with a background as an architect, welcome the author for that. Don't underestimate people that spend all their life thinking about any subject.
I recently visited Tyntesfield (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tyntesfield), a Victorian Gothic Revival house in the south west of the UK. I was actually struck by how ugly it is, I think chiefly for all the reasons that the author of the piece dislikes McMansions - there's a vastness and grandeur to it, certainly, but the complete lack of symmetry and conflicting styles and features was very off-putting to me. If you flick through a few of the pictures on Google Images, you'll perhaps see what I mean about the vast randomness of it - of note in particular is the one conical turret it seems to have for no very good reason!
In the 1860s Gibbs had the house significantly expanded and remodelled; a chapel was added in the 1870s
Rebuilding work did not begin in earnest until 1863, when William Gibbs had the property substantially remodelled in a Gothic Revival style. [...] Norton's design enveloped the original house. He added an extra floor, two new wings and towers. [...] As a result, while some walls remained plain, others were adorned with Gothic and naturalistic carvings to fit in with the previous architectural styles
In a ~200 year old building you can expect such redevelopment to bring it more up to date with "current" architecture trends. But they tend to add up over centuries and you end up with a mix that might as well be unsightly but documents its history. Things are allowed to look less... fresh as they get old.
When you start up and build as a mix it's just unsightly for no good reason. Other than a complete lack of taste (by many standards).
Well, like so many large Victorian piles the occupants didn't necessarily keep to the architectural vision. It was hugely redeveloped by successive generations. Most houses would suffer if you "added an extra floor, two new wings and towers" in a different style and demolished the central clock tower.
The woodcut illustration, presumably of the original house, at least has some coherence to it though not to my taste.
Was under the impression a mcmansion was a giant suburban tract home on a very small lot. Apparently it means a unique poorly designed one with more space.
"Bad" implies an aesthetics system. A taste system implies a shared culture and an hierarchy of taste.
The US, especially the modern US, lacks that.
So, in the US nothing can be deemed "bad archicteure" with any objectivity - it's only so a few experts who are rooted in architectural history, and to a slightly larger number (but still small) of people who mimic their opinion.
> That's usually just something people say to dismiss art criticism.
Art criticism that is about good and bad art more than what effect art has (or what it communicates) and why/how it does so mostly should be dismissed. For exactly that reason.
So, while the fact that the subjectivity of aesthetic quality is frequently used to dismiss art criticism is frequently used to dismiss the dismissal of art criticism that it concerns, it's a legitimate reason for dismissing much art criticism, specifically, that criticism which is simply elaborate verbal camouflage for naked subjective preference.
That's a lot of words that don't really mean anything. Art being subjective means that you absolutely can critique "bad" art, not that you never should. I mean your word salad about "the effect art has on people" is literally saying that, just instead of talking about the art itself you're now talking about it's 'effect' (as if you would ever be talking about something else?)
McMansions are bad art because they have bad effects on the people who live in them and view them. People divide the things that cause good effects into rules and guidelines. This post then talks about those rules and guidelines.
im very sympathetic to this blog and the writer, especially because she's a socialist. there are many interesting and entertaining ideas presented that i'd never considered before. but i agree with you here. in the end, when it comes to aesthetics: beauty really is in the eye of the beholder
... and they always go for 2 sinks in the bathroom. What's up with that?
I mean, the last thing my wife would want is me in the bathroom with her in the morning, brushing my teeth at the exact same time-- as if it's totally normal for folks to use the bathroom together.
These places have so much wasted space, they feel the need to fill it up unnecessary stuff.
If there was actually a valid purpose for dual sinks in the bathroom other than filling space, there would also be two toilets, for competition?
Kids bathrooms with two sinks. Its called critical for bedtime. In my room we have one sink in the bathroom and a sink in a recessed area next to the bathroom but really in the master bedroom.
I live in a 80's era colonial which when built might have been called a fancy or big home, but now is quite average for the town.
Your point is well taken, though it's worth noting that the article you linked isn't criticising having plenty of space per se, but rather having lots of space just to show off instead of because you actually have a good use for it. We do entertain groups of friends often at home, and while we're not particularly interested in big formal rooms for much the same reasons as given in that article, we certainly would like more space and more furniture in a configuration that would work better when friends and family are over than the "normal" room we use today.
We all know what "makes it bad". It's a symbol of wealth that isn't nearly as expensive as it looks.
That's what offends people here. Everything else is the best excuse they can come up with.
The issue is that with things that are truly expensive are equally bullshit. Art, for instance, is first of all, mostly not even made by the artist that signed it, secondly, it doesn't have a deeper meaning, thirdly, the difference between absurdly celebrated art (say Gogh, or Michelangelo) and the (many) works of unknown masters is ... tenuous at best. Same with diamonds and gold, as pointed out many times in the economic discussions.
Symbols of wealth that don't prove wealth ... people feel this is how they "prove" their own value, how they get respect, and so on. And if a symbol of wealth gets reliably faked ... people are very upset. In reality we should celebrate that this is possible, of course, but in practice people who have paid a lot fear it will destroy their self-worth.
I think McMansions are bad because for the same money, a much better* house could have been made in the same location.
*better: more affordances for the way people actually live; easier to move around in; easier to clean; stronger construction; more suited to the local climate; more efficient to heat and/or cool; and on and on in that vein.
Most of the criticism in the article seems to be external, though. No mention of such practicalities as mobility within the house or ease of maintenance, just the aesthetics of the exterior.
This particular article is meant for people who have read some large fraction of the entire series, not as an introduction.
A typical McMansion Hell post covers either a single architectural topic (four-square houses, or columns, or windows) or a single house in more depth, with most of the attention being paid to the interior.
Then I cracked up looking at the turret in [0].
[0] http://mcmansionhell.com/post/149472892236/houston-tx
https://www.curbed.com/2013/12/12/10164870/indiana-house-492...
[0]: https://www.theverge.com/2017/6/29/15896146/zillow-will-not-...
I wonder what it is about the ATL metro area that proliferates them so?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neuschwanstein_Castle
This extends to the flat design movement. I hated it 10 years ago when it first started to appear and I don't hate it any less now. I'd take some mild skeuomorphism any day. I just wish it'd go away and fast. It felt positively ancient and overdone 5 years ago--these days it's feeling like a disease that I can't get rid of.
Apple has taken some baby steps in that direction too, with ios 11, and the focus on translucency and blur to create layers of depth.
In europe wood for stick frames is expensive enough it doesn't make a big difference, but here in north america stick frames are incredibly cheap.
Combine that with American's belief that size equals luxury and you get mcmansions.
Like the primary / secondary mass bit is obviously going to be harder to deal with the bigger the house gets.
[1] https://www.biltmore.com/visit/photo-gallery
Fwiw Wikipedia agrees with me: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manor_house#United_States
“The only manor house in the United States (or North America for that matter) that resembled the form and function of a European-style estate and manor is the Biltmore Estate in North Carolina (which is still owned by descendents of the original builder, a member of the Vanderbilt family).”
It's not a judgement against people who like McMansions. It's a guide for people like me: I see a house, find it offputting, but I can't figure out why and what to look for to get a house that isn't. She gives me, a layperson, the information I need to pick a house I'll like.
Her blog actually has articles that go into detail about different architectural periods and the elements of architecture.
There's nothing wrong with liking McMansions, but I want a cute house, not too big, that I love on the outside and the inside.
Architecture is so much more complex and nuanced than that. Even "A Pattern Language" falls into the trap of providing reductive prescriptions. Ask literally any architect what they think of Christopher Alexander's actual built work, and they will either dismiss it or (more likely) won't even have heard of it.
She didn't teach me to identify that a Frankfurt house must have a wingdar, a gongle, and a shivbopped roof. It just taught me to look closer at all the different elements that make my brain say "that's a house" vs "that's a weird house"
But we can't dismiss subjective criticism on the basis that some people like the things the subjective criticism says is bad or that people uneducated in the subject don't understand. The criticism is of course not above evaluation but setting a subjective standard is not something that is impossible.
This is an important concept in software. The vast majority of decisions software developers make are subjective. Yet the vast majority of us do not have frameworks for doing subjective criticism. I think that contributes to the flame wars, cyclical fads and generally bad state of our software as code. We'd likely all be better off if we had more subjective concepts in software and not less.
[1] http://mcmansionhell.com/post/150597521816/mcmansions-101-re...
Contractors save thousands per tract home using this shit instead of proper plywood.
Also, staple gun and nailed construction where there should be high quality wood screws.
As for staple gun and nail construction, I can't say that I've seen the former, but nails are a superior fastener to screws for many structural applications such as framing because they have a higher shear strength than screws. A nailed stick-frame house doesn't require specialized tools or skills to build, is relatively low-cost and uses renewable resources, and can easily last 100+ years. It's an excellent choice for many houses in the US.
You’ll often see press-formed cardboard doors in 6 panel colonial style on houses in cities that didn’t exist in colonial times.
Builder grade fixtures fail quickly, while the porcilin in the bathroom may last, a complete rebuild of the toilet is often necessary in as little as 3 years. Vanities are lower grade press board that melts as soon as water hits it. You’ll see mold and dry rot form are both the sink and bath because poor water proofing
Plywood in an actual mansion?! No, thanks.
http://www.fibercement-siding.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/09...
In the US you’d have trouble sourcing bricks and even more trouble hiring brick layers.
If you visit the north east the oldest building (upto 400 odd years old) are stick+frame because thats what they had available when they got off the boat, the workforce and techniques grew from there.
E.g. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fairbanks_House_(Dedham,_Mas...
Edit: corrected 450 -> 400
looks like this: http://vanderheide.ca/blog/wp-content/uploads/2015/11/IMG_62...
But they're not blocks by the way if you're thinking of large cement or cinder blocks - all the houses round here are made structurally from proper red bricks.
*not at all true, but true for this statement ;)
The same goes for office buildings, where I think the conservation movement overvalues the small amount of time people spend looking at a building vs the huge amount of time people work inside it. I’ve been in old beautiful office buildings in NYC and modern ugly office buildings and the modern buildings usually have a much better working environment and layout.
Example 1 looks fine to me, I would be happy to live in this house. It’s not beautiful but it’s not ugly.
Example 2 is ugly, the windows on the front are weird and the side has too few windows. My main issues with McMansions is they look cheaper than older houses because of the materials and sometimes facades have no windows or few windows, while old houses tend to have more windows and they are evenly balanced.
Example 3 looks fine, it’s almost pretty.
Example 4 would be better if the dark brick part on the house’s left had a window, and the white brick with random dark bricks is kind of ugly. Not terrible though.
Example 5 looks fine and I like red brick houses.
Example 6 is okay too.
I’d be happy with most of these houses if they had a nice interior and nice yard.
For instance, the top windows in example 2 provide important airflow to a part of the house that will normally get very hot.
McMansions are rarely (if ever) designed with their climate and locality in mind and are therefore very inefficient. They would not be at all livable without AC and are frequently monstrous to heat and cool.
Contrast that with the houses they are modeled on, even in places where AC is a huge boon.
That gets to the heart of why I hate McMansions.
I'm not literate in architecture, but there is one dimension that seems prominently easy to identify to me: with the singular "brutalism" at one end; and an open ended array of ornate at the other.
I think the "modern" functional office building architecture you refer to are close to the brutalism end (but not at it), and therefor not a fair comparison. These mansions are quite far form it, whoever is designing them cares about the aesthetic, but regardless of your taste they seem to lack something... cohesion and thoughtfulness perhaps, they want to be something but they don't seem to know what - it makes them feel fake.
However, new construction in these architectural styles ends up often looking like a cheap knockoff because of the mishmash of different styles from totally different time periods.
One thing this article does give away tho, is how much these houses are showcased exactly like hamburgers in commercials vis a vis what you get at the fast food chain: everything in the commercial is pushed forward and jutting out the front: windows, awnings, decks, etc. That's why they call them McMansions.
“tract houses” is the phrase you are looking for.
Fallingwater - no symmetry, no main mass, way too many voids.
English Tudor houses have many of the features the author complains about. They're usually asymmetrical and have multiple competing masses.
What this guy likes is a big square house with a centered entrance and two wings. Like the White House, antebellum plantation mansions, and most US governors mansions.
The article disclaims, right after the first paragraph, that it's describing classic architectural principles that don't always apply to modernist / postmodernist architecture.
Of your two counterexamples,
- One is a canonical example of modernism
- One is a medieval castle...
Btw Fallingwater does have balance and doesn't have excessive voids. Balanced does not mean mirror symmetrical. The article covers that as well.
It is one of very few examples of modern architecture that I really like.
2. "What this guy likes..." The author is a woman.
We need your help to save us from the hell of verbose non-gender specificity.
It's almost there though. Guys plural is gender nonspecific.
Secondly, Edinburgh Castle is a Castle. It's not designed to be attractive, it's designed to have strong defences against an attacking army. Your criticism is like complaining that the McMansion can't be used to put down the Jacobite Rising.
Thirdly, Edinburgh Castle is built on a volcanic plug, making it quite difficult to build a traditional building.
What is considered good architecture for a family home is not going to be considered good architecture for a tower block. That doesn't mean it's not right, it means it's complicated. It's also fair to say that good architects often break commonly used rules of thumb - as with many things it's the difference between Jazz and Noise.
Noise is where someone plays musical notes with no knowledge of how they relate to each other. Jazz is where someone plays the same notes, but knows exactly how they relate to each other.
Here is the same or even more difficult because these rules are subjective and not easy to verbalize - that's why you can't find them written anywhere - and I, with a background as an architect, welcome the author for that. Don't underestimate people that spend all their life thinking about any subject.
Rebuilding work did not begin in earnest until 1863, when William Gibbs had the property substantially remodelled in a Gothic Revival style. [...] Norton's design enveloped the original house. He added an extra floor, two new wings and towers. [...] As a result, while some walls remained plain, others were adorned with Gothic and naturalistic carvings to fit in with the previous architectural styles
In a ~200 year old building you can expect such redevelopment to bring it more up to date with "current" architecture trends. But they tend to add up over centuries and you end up with a mix that might as well be unsightly but documents its history. Things are allowed to look less... fresh as they get old.
When you start up and build as a mix it's just unsightly for no good reason. Other than a complete lack of taste (by many standards).
The woodcut illustration, presumably of the original house, at least has some coherence to it though not to my taste.
You will notice that, when love and attention are put in, most of the people will say that the result is beautifull.
All things like balance, form and color will follow.
I believe the above can be seen in everything people make (even software).
A "I want 10 rooms and 5 bathrooms house" is just that. A big house with a lot of rooms.
The US, especially the modern US, lacks that.
So, in the US nothing can be deemed "bad archicteure" with any objectivity - it's only so a few experts who are rooted in architectural history, and to a slightly larger number (but still small) of people who mimic their opinion.
If they have the money, and if that's what they want, more power to them. I wish I could afford to build whatever I wanted.
See also previous discussion from 2 years ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12286724 (519 comments)
> That's usually just something people say to dismiss art criticism.
Art criticism that is about good and bad art more than what effect art has (or what it communicates) and why/how it does so mostly should be dismissed. For exactly that reason.
So, while the fact that the subjectivity of aesthetic quality is frequently used to dismiss art criticism is frequently used to dismiss the dismissal of art criticism that it concerns, it's a legitimate reason for dismissing much art criticism, specifically, that criticism which is simply elaborate verbal camouflage for naked subjective preference.
McMansions are bad art because they have bad effects on the people who live in them and view them. People divide the things that cause good effects into rules and guidelines. This post then talks about those rules and guidelines.
I mean, the last thing my wife would want is me in the bathroom with her in the morning, brushing my teeth at the exact same time-- as if it's totally normal for folks to use the bathroom together.
These places have so much wasted space, they feel the need to fill it up unnecessary stuff.
If there was actually a valid purpose for dual sinks in the bathroom other than filling space, there would also be two toilets, for competition?
I live in a 80's era colonial which when built might have been called a fancy or big home, but now is quite average for the town.
That's what offends people here. Everything else is the best excuse they can come up with.
The issue is that with things that are truly expensive are equally bullshit. Art, for instance, is first of all, mostly not even made by the artist that signed it, secondly, it doesn't have a deeper meaning, thirdly, the difference between absurdly celebrated art (say Gogh, or Michelangelo) and the (many) works of unknown masters is ... tenuous at best. Same with diamonds and gold, as pointed out many times in the economic discussions.
Symbols of wealth that don't prove wealth ... people feel this is how they "prove" their own value, how they get respect, and so on. And if a symbol of wealth gets reliably faked ... people are very upset. In reality we should celebrate that this is possible, of course, but in practice people who have paid a lot fear it will destroy their self-worth.
*better: more affordances for the way people actually live; easier to move around in; easier to clean; stronger construction; more suited to the local climate; more efficient to heat and/or cool; and on and on in that vein.
A typical McMansion Hell post covers either a single architectural topic (four-square houses, or columns, or windows) or a single house in more depth, with most of the attention being paid to the interior.
Yes, I'm a fan.
Doesn't that matter ?