McMansion Hell: The Devil Is in the Details | Hacker News Reader

McMansion Hell: The Devil Is in the Details

99percentinvisible.org

52 pointsmisnamed59 comments

Previous discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12286724

Origin blog post/series the 99% invisible post is on: http://www.mcmansionhell.com/post/148605513816/mcmansions-10...

On one hand I'm really sympathetic to the criticisms from this blog.

On the other hand people want big houses and they have a limited budget. They can't afford a real mansion, so this is what they get instead. Is it really so wrong for people to want a lot of space?

I wish there was more in this blog about how to do it right other than "have enough money for a proper mansion" or "you should have a smaller living space."

The criticism in the article wasn't about people on a limited budget owning big houses. It was about the lack of architectural cohesiveness in the big houses they do build.

Seems like the same thing - isn't that pretty tied up to "don't have the budget for a 'proper' architect"? Design is a get-what-you-pay-for field. Do it piecemeal vs a single grand unified vision from the start and you end up with something easier to pay for but less ideal.

Most mcmansions have zero budget for design. Fifteen thousand dollars on a $600,000 job is good sense.

Also note that many suburban neighborhoods have rules on what your house can look like. Usually you get to pick from a lot of designs (hence the crazy mismatch of styles) but very rarely do you get to "design it from scratch".

Indeed. Most of the 'McManshionish' stuff is more expensive.

I think the blog's issue is with people who want a house with features like fake columns that are designed to evoke wealth rather than serve a functional purpose.

What I find hilarious about this is there is no functional difference between the fake columns on mcmansions, and the fake columns on an architect designed neo classical building built on the properly proportioned 9 square palladian grid. Both are pastiche of someone else's stylistic ideas, painted onto a cheap timber and steel hybrid structure. Both are designed to evoke wealth. One is just more successful..

That's certainly part of the blog's issue, but I don't think it's all of it. There's a lot in there about clean rooflines and such which I totally get. But sometimes you get a wacky roof because you shoved in an extra playroom for the kids or whatever and that was more important to you than the aesthetics from the outside.

http://www.mcmansionhell.com/post/151896249151/the-mcmansion...

This actually demonstrates some of what I'm talking about. See the comments on some of the houses in the 6-7 range about garages or additions. Sure, they make things look unbalanced but the occupants wanted an enclosed space for their car or an extra guest bedroom or whatever. Is that really so bad?

I think the argument can be made that for the same money someone could build a mansion that also doesn't look awful.

Most people don't build houses. Most people buy houses that other people build. Therefore, most people don't care that the houses other people build are "McMansions".

Most people don't make clothes. Most people buy clothes that other people make. Therefore, most people don't care that the clothes other people make are (random style out of a hat...) "punk".

I don't think this logic adds up. People care what the house they buy looks like, and some people even care what their house's appearance projects as an expression of their own taste.

Have you visited a menswear blog or forum recently? It's the same sentiment. "How could you buy a dress shirt that's not 100% Egyptian cotton with perfect hand and pattern matching with fabric from a 200-year-old Italian mill and hand-stitched by this guy I know in rural Siam!?"

People don't close their eyes when the buy houses, but neither do they have an eye for architectural nuance.

Even though its not presented as such, this is really an indictment of the spec housing builders right?

They are the ones not applying design aesthetic and thats because its expensive and custom per lot and they do not have the inclination (or potentially profit motive) to make their "stock" designs more aesthetically correct.

Once you get into actual custom builder prices it is pretty trivial to get a house that doesn't fall into these categories, and only taste prevents it.

She does have that a bit, too, but the blog is new and its in bits here and there.

As someone who lived in upper middle class Texas suburbia, I'm pretty desensitized to "McMansions".

Aside from older houses (usually near the city center, small, and can be expensive) or custom-designed houses (very expensive), there's not much choice if you actually care about this stuff. Even the new apartment/townhome complexes could be considered "McApartments".

Even the new apartment/townhome complexes could be considered "McApartments".

That's a problem here in SF, too. Andrea Palladio would have wept.

I believe the commenters so far have failed to address the main point: the devil is in the details. And everyone knows why the details suck in this category of McMansion: they are spec houses designed by beancounters. They represent the aggregate current view of what would have maximum curb appeal. That is the only design criteria for such houses.

This is the equivalent of graphic designers presenting alternate proposals for boarding passes and Craigslist. They're not wrong, and for those with a specific sort of sensibility, the "imperfections" can be grating, but for 99% of the population, they don't even notice and it works just fine.

Yea, I'm clearly a heathen. I don't really see a problem with any of the problems the author points out. What's more, I liked my McMansion and all of the other McMansions in my neighborhood. I liked my neighbors too. I never had a reason to hate them or their houses. There must be some very tortured people in the world.

You've said this in two places on this submission, but I challenge you on the claim that "99% of the population" doesn't care what their house looks like.

I think a lot of people do care.

I agree: a lot of people care what their houses look like here. But 99% of the population doesn't care about this level of architectural nuance. And certainly not the population of people who are in the market for these sorts of homes in the first place (upper middle-class, suburban, etc.).

It's hard to prove a negative, but "despite all of this, the popularity of McMansions is picking up again". If McMansions are as "bad" as the author makes them out to be, and homebuyers "care" as much as you say they do, how do you account for the market?

If people actually didn't care, it would be of no consequence to hear their home called a "McMansion", and yet I suspect we both would agree that folks probably don't appreciate their home being critiqued such as how the blog writes about homes.

The reality is, most people would care if they knew, but don't know and therefore can't possibly care. It's not apathy, it's ignorance that drives the sale of McMansions, even though McMansions are "bad", in the sense that they break architectural principles and are considered poor reflections of art because of it.

Obviously art isn't required to prevent rain from falling on your head, but the folks who are buying these houses are spending this extra money for something other than the literal safety, aren't they? If someone buys a McMansion for any aesthetic reason, then they are making a sub-optimal choice.

I think the assumption the blog makes is that a McMansion is a failed attempt at creating art, not a rejection of the concept of home beauty.

This reads like old-$ "highbrow" East-coast hate for the nouveau riche. What is the alternative for someone who wants to build a house for a large family while spending 6 (or low 7) figures, as opposed someone with Larry Ellison money and Ivy League cultivated tastes?

"Cheap materials" - that's valid, but what is the cost difference for "real Louis XIV marble fireplace" as opposed to "imitation"? Why build something to last 500 years when your children may not even want it?

One thing that has always puzzled me is the cheap materials thing. My parent's house, though not a McMansion, is in a neighborhood full of them and made of the same materials.

It's held up perfectly for ~10 years and plenty of hurricanes (some that happened while it was in the middle of being built!). What's the problem with the current materials?

The problem may be that you think 10 years is a long time for a house.

The materials with a MTBF of 10 years and those with a MTBF of 50 years may look about the same to the untrained eye, but a subdivision builder can grab a bit more in profit by choosing to use the former.

The homeowner then has to pay elevated maintenance and repair costs after the builder sells their last lot and packs up to go subdivide the next parcel.

The houses don't suddenly collapse, per se, they just start to experience annoying problems. Screws pop out of the drywall. Door frames get skewed. AC units freeze over thanks to coolant leaks. Paint peels off of metal flashing. Mold grows on inferior siding, just on the north side of all the houses in the neighborhood. Garage door frames bend away from brick lintels as the electric openers open and close the doors. Cooling costs for the whole neighborhood are through the roof, literally, because the builder used the bare minimum of blow-in insulation. The flush levers on all the toilets break, because they're made of plastic. Buried drainage pipes in the backyard collapse, leaving a potentially leg-breaking hole in the ground. Weeds grow up through the patios that never had proper barriers under their foundations.

The materials aren't bad. They just don't last. People end up paying the same price for a house that won't last 25 years as they might for one which would last another 100, because you can't see the difference at the point of sale.

Your mention of hurricanes, and parents who might be safely assumed to be retired, makes me think Florida. With that big bag of assumptions (throw out what follows if those are wrong), I'll remind folks that anything built in the last ten years is going to be very much regulated on how it's built. It'll be made of reinforced concrete block and the roof will be firmly tied to the rest of the house. The builder has no say in this. I'm not saying that given the choice the builder would choose the cheaper route, but a Florida house that laughs at a hurricane is due to government regulation more than the builder's choice of materials.

That, and Florida hasn't really had a decent hurricane in the last ten years.

Not so close but an interesting answer. My parents live in South East Texas (south East of Houston!) and not retired. I'll admit that the last big hurricane we had was that I remember was in 2008~ish.

The point is that you could have a good but affordable fireplace that looks good in its own right, rather than a cheap imitation of something pricey that you can't afford.

Cheap imitations are old as time. You ever watch antiques roadshow? Every episode there's at least one knockoff. And even those can be 100+ years old and still worth money.a knockoff just means people like the design.

I do appreciate that perspective, but I'd like to see "here's a 3,000 sqft house built for the same price, that's tasteful and has a consistent style" as a counterexample.

> What is the alternative for someone who wants to build a house for a large family while spending 6 (or low 7) figures

Don't buy in a "prestigious" zip code, build with a simple design. My parents live in Great Falls, an area that's an hour commute into D.C. and full of McMansions that run $1.5 million for cheaply-built crap. If you buy some land an hour in the other direction from D.C. (toward rural Maryland), you can build a tasteful 5,000 square foot house for $1 million including land. People by and large don't do it, because they might meet a Trump voter and thereby have a stroke.

If you want to do that you had better hurry up, the Odenton-Annapolis corridor is starting to get discovered and is building out new track developments very quickly.

Look at Europe. Large families there too, but nothing like the McMansion jungle in the United States. I suppose it comes down to priorities.

That's true but Europe is full of large houses that are hundreds of years old, so there isn't as much need for new building. Plus if you look at neighborhoods in say, Belgium or the Netherlands, people value (ahem) architectural conformity quite a bit more, as opposed to individual taste.

There's a ton of space in the US between the coasts[1], so people have become accustomed to large houses that they can make "their own", so to speak. It's just a different culture.

[1] A lot of it is still unused! My hometown in Texas has actually "grown" in the past ten years towards unused land to build new neighborhoods and schools. I can't imagine that there's large amounts of land in Europe to build entire new communities, right?

Are you trying to claim that Europe doesn't have suburbs? Because, uh, they do: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2016/07/05/end-of-the-good-l...

Look at that picture. It's full of McMansions, and it's a photo of suburban London.

I would happily live in any of these houses.

Is it possible to buy good craftsmanship these days? I'm asking this in all earnest, not to make a rhetorical point; does anyone know of businesses in the US today that can build a house that will endure like a 1920s Craftsman?

If so, who are they, and where do they operate -- what businesses should I contact?

Absolutely. The key is in the general contractor (GC). One accustomed to doing better work will know the right subcontractors (subs). For instance, those that specialize in restoration, remodeling, and repair in historical districts.

Thank you!

> a house that will endure like a 1920s Craftsman

I haven't looked into how home age and how many of these are left, but could this be survivorship bias in the 1920's home left?

The issue is that craftmanship means time & experience (experience like tens of years). Think compagnons. This is fading away since the end of WWII, and especially since all manufacturing was moved to Asia. There are still a few artisans standing, but it's expensive work and they are hard to find.

Check This Old House (both the magazine and the PBS episodes). It's a pretty good starting point.

Thanks -- I'll look into this.

I have a 1928 craftsman bungalow. Not especially good quality. The architectural style has experienced a revival of sorts now. The build quality of 1920s bungalows varied a lot, just like it does for houses now.

Even if we grant all these points as correct, not everyone shares the same aesthetic sense as professional architects. As long as you like your own home, it really doesn't matter what other people think of it.

And I find the last bit of the article truly scary -- bragging over fan mail sent to the site about how this type of critique is letting people verbalize and validate their own instinctive hate for their neighbor's design choices. Is that really a net positive to our society? To use critique as a mechanism to feed negativity between neighbors?

There are a LOT of people who think they should be able to substitute their own judgment for other people's when it comes to the home they live in.

This is a little off topic but does anyone know of any resources for architecting/designing your own house. Specifically, I think it'd be worthwhile to learn from the layouts of other houses. I'd also love to hear about how people are wiring up their houses (fiber, audio, etc).

Not really what you're looking for but the UK tv series "Grand Designs" follows people who self-build.

You get to see some of the mistakes they make, and they talk about the decisions they make.

There's a wide variety of different building styles, from traditional brick and morter, through to high end kit homes, to hay-bale and plaster or car tyres and rammed earth.

http://www.channel4.com/programmes/grand-designs/

It's probably not great to binge watch. It has a reasonably similar format each week and sometimes the format is a bit annoying.

How to Design Your Own House: Step 1) Pay an Architect to design your house.

I'll definitely do that! I guess I'm just looking for places to get inspiration from.

European here. Are there really people who live in those er... things, or are they only used to shoot porn flicks?

On a more serious note, if they want to display different styles, instead of packing them together, why don't they build 2 or 3 smaller buildings?

It's a little harsh. Not everyone can afford a top-quality architect.

And mixing styles (the main criticism of this article) is not always a bad thing: Chartres Cathedral is considered a masterpiece, despite it's weird mixed spires.

She discusses that in Eclecticism. She uses pictures throughout to demonstrate the difference between mixing well and badly.

Don't like it? Then don't buy one.

For those lacking the visual aids to understand what a grandiose home vs. a McMansion looks like, the blog this is based on has a good visual explainer here: http://www.mcmansionhell.com/post/151896249151/the-mcmansion...

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