What Makes a McMansion Bad Architecture? (2016)
mcmansionhell.com
mcmansionhell.com
Then I cracked up looking at the turret in [0].
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?
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.
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 ?