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Kate Wagner goes from McMansion Hell to critic at The Nation

2023-07-03T12:41:00-04:00

The Nation, America’s leading source of progressive politics and culture, today named Kate Wagner (@mcmansionhell) to its masthead as architecture correspondent. Best known as the brains behind the brilliant and satirical architecture blog, “”McMansion Hell,” and following a wildly successful stint as a Nation guest columnist earlier this year, Wagner will contribute monthly commentary on architecture and the built environment—but not as always conventionally understood.

Wagner succeeds Michael Sorkin, who died in 2020. The new correspondent said the post is “an ideal perch for me to explain how everything we see and everything we build is political.” She is now one of a select coterie of dedicated critics writing for American publications, including Michael Kimmelman, Lee Bey, Carolina A. Miranda, Ingra Safron, and Robert Campbell. Wagner's personal account of her ascent from the widely-acclaimed blog, which she founded in 2016, can also be found here via The Baffler.

Previously on Archinect: Bro, Do You Even Quoin? A conversation with McMansion Hell's Kate Wagner

Kate Wagner says McMansions have become a permanent staple of the American scene

2023-05-17T19:50:00-04:00

I started the blog McMansion Hell to document—and deride—the endless cosmetic variations of this uniquely American form of architectural blight. [...] I worry that I’ve actually reinforced the idea that McMansions are a relic of the recent past. In fact, there remains a certain allure to these seemingly soulless suburban developments [...] the McMansion is alive and well. Far from being a boom time fad, it has become a durable emblem of our American way of life.

Wagner says that, without noticing, the media’s focus on gentrification and the affordability of cities has meant that the rise of “modern farmhouses” and other forms of McMansions following the end of the great recession has gone largely unscrutinized. She claims these and other designs occupy a place between high design and vernacular architecture before finally predicting their continued dominance over the residential market owing to our penchant for consumerist displays.

"One day the McMansion, once a token of financial tomfoolery, will instead epitomize our nihilistic, environmental death drive," she writes in The Baffler. "More than half a century of urban planning prioritizing sprawl has gotten us to where we are now: choked by endless freeways, benumbed by carbon-copy strip malls, secluded in catchpenny houses with no sense of human scale."

Kate Wagner on AI's questionable 'disrupting' impact

2023-03-24T13:59:00-04:00

It is misrepresented as some inherently revolutionary technology, when in fact it is rather conservative aesthetically [...] Not only is this a gray area in terms of intellectual property; it also is, well, boring. An architecture dependent on AI will produce content of the lowest common denominator.

While AI applications like Midjourney may have their advantages, Kate Wagner sees their implementation into the architectural design process as deeply flawed and the product of too many industry hype mongers.

Despite their potential to make certain office tasks redundant, Wagner says there’s going to be an endpoint at which human designers are once again made inevitable, writing: "I believe that while design and construction documentation is the most boring part of making a building, it is also most likely to be the last to be automated, for the simple reason that architects and firms are extremely risk-averse [...] Architects would generally rather leave such features such as retaining walls to contractors rather than elaborate on specifics that would make the architect themselves legally responsible. This is, simply, not a practice open to 'disruption.'"

The points she raises about ...

McMansion Hell's Kate Wagner dissects issues with big tech and the 'blurred line' between private and public space

2021-03-11T19:35:00-05:00

In February, Amazon announced its latest design for a $2.5 billion headquarters in Arlington, "the Helix." Once visual renderings for the campus were released, the architecture community was quick to respond. Besides heavy criticism of its overall design, discussion regarding its surrounding public space was soon questioned. Architecture critic Kate Wagner addresses the long-rivaled issues between big tech corporate campuses and their intentionality behind fostering a so-called "engaged environment" with public space.

Her article in The New Republic, "How Big Tech Devours Public Space, " assesses large tech companies like Amazon and their double-sided plans to create spaces available for public use. She explains, "Amazon is presenting the Helix as a companion structure to 'the Spheres,' the indoor gardens at its Seattle headquarters. But as a space of consumption and leisure, the Helix actually resembles a lot of classic starchitecture. It is a towering, glass-clad, tree-dotted baub...

How to hack McMansions

2020-03-13T14:25:00-04:00

Members of the architecture community know too well the infamously gaudy and ugly reputation of the "McMansion" housing type.

Despite the fact that esteemed architecture critics like Kate Wagner have been roasting these buildings (and their owners) for years, more and more of these gargantuan homes continue to be built each year.

However, with the growing push to draw down carbon emissions and promote sustainable design initiatives, efforts have sprung up to shrink the McMansion's super-sized carbon footprint.

Previously on Archinect: "California eliminates single-family zoning." Image courtesy of Archinect.

A piece by Adele Peters from Fast Company illustrates the possibilities of how society can shift the McMansion housing paradigm into a system that doesn't focus on the "bigger is better" ideology. Peters writes, "Over the last seven decades, the average American house has nearly tripled in size at the same time as the number of people living in each household has dropped."

C...

"LA's Museum for Nobody": Kate Wagner's astute response to Zumthor's LACMA design

2019-05-31T12:44:00-04:00

The clunky, amoebalike building cannot seem to decide between the digitally derived expressionism of such architects as Frank Gehry or Zaha Hadid, and Zumthor’s own brand of minimalist modernism. We’re left with a museum that benefits nobody and satisfies none of the needs of the art in its collection, nor of the public that will view it. And yet in April, it was approved...

With the recent approval of LACMA's redesign back in April, Peter Zumthor's design for Los Angeles' iconic art museum has received an alarming reaction from the public, specifically those in the architecture community. In Archinect's most recent coverage of the museum, many of our readers shared their concerns and criticisms of the new design. Questioning Zumthor's overall decision many worry the design fails to highlight the most important aspect of the museum itself, the art, and its connectivity to the community.

Museums and museum curators are always searching for new and innovative ways to increase the number of visitors and increase overall interest and engagement. In her recent op-ed piece in The New Republic, architecture critic Kate Wagner shares her thoughts on the new LACMA redesign and highlights why Zumthor fails to create a building that satisfies the art it will house and the public viewing it.

Peter Zumthor. Image courtesy of cladglobal

Wagner notes on Zumthor's pas...

Upcoming Frank Lloyd Wright Quarterly is guest-edited by McMansion Hell’s Kate Wagner

2019-05-23T09:14:00-04:00

In an effort to highlight the enduring influence and mystique of Frank Lloyd Wright’s groundbreaking designs on contemporary visual and popular culture, the upcoming edition of The Frank Lloyd Wright Quarterly delves into the connections between this legacy and some of the biggest popular culture phenomena of today.

Titled Timeless: Frank Lloyd Wright + Contemporary Pop Culture and guest edited by McMansion Hell’s Kate Wagner, the forthcoming issue, produced by the Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation, toggles between television, film, science fiction, and performance to uncover the lasting effects of Wright’s omnipresent legacy.

Art by Steve Thomas

The volume features cover and other illustrations by artist Ellen Surrey, interviews with set designers Deborah Riley of Game of Thrones, Howard Cummings of Westworld, and Paul Harrod and of Isle of Dogs about how Wright inspired their designs, an exploration of Wright’s influence in film by author Darran Anderson, and ruminations on FLW’s conn...

Has open concept design finally run its course? Here's what we've learned

2019-03-29T12:22:00-04:00

For decades, Open Concept, and the togetherness-loving, friend-filled lifestyle it was supposed to bring, has been a home buyers’ religion, the one true way to live. Go to Houzz, the home remodeling site, type in “open concept,” and up come 221,569 photos. Over on HGTV, DeRon Jenkins, costar of the popular “Flip or Flop Nashville,” will tell you, as he recently told the Globe, that an open floor plan “allows the love to flow.” But now, experts say, people are starting to openly yearn for walls.

Uninterrupted space. This is what real estate agents, interior designers, and almost every host on HGTV have promoted for the past decade. However, design experts are saying that people are beginning to miss walls. Homeowners realize they don't want to live in this "fantasy of uninterrupted views." Perhaps having walls throughout a house can allow for the return of, dare I say, privacy. Like most design trends, open concept design grew rampant and quickly adopted by designers, architects, and anyone looking to make an impression on spatial design.

Open Concept Interior Design Contemporary House. Image © Hall Inter

In 2018, architecture and design critic Kate Wagner shared an insightful stance on open-concept interior designs. Her article in CityLab expressed reflection and opposition to this design trend that seemed to "seduce" the globe. Wagner shared, "overall, the open concept was a reaction against years of small, low-ceilinged living, which felt restricting and stuffy to a new ...

Kate Wagner challenges the myth: "We don’t build houses like we used to"

2019-01-21T17:17:00-05:00

“We just don’t build houses like we used to.” Whether we’re criticizing an individual home or a wave of boxy buildings, it’s a common lament... It’s a statement that contains some truth, but it also misses crucial context about the material conditions, functionality, and style trends of the past.

Kate Wagner, the writer and critic behind McMansion Hell, has turned their sights towards an often-uttered statement about the current state of architectural craftsmanship: "We just don't build houses like we used to."

Listen to our conversation with Kate on Archinect Sessions:

Wagner methodically debunks this myth, starting with the false belief that there was once a great and more well-treated supply of craftsman in the past. "Many of the beloved houses of the 19th century and early 20th century, such as pattern book houses, kit houses, foursquares, and bungalows," Wagner reminds us, "were built by local carpenters, contractors, and builders who had small teams of employees or hired local day laborers. Often these houses were even built by the completely unskilled person who bought the house."

A typical California Bungalow.

Second, Wager points to the myth that older buildings are 'better' because they were built using fewer codes, claiming that those same codes make more recen...

Hawthorne and Wagner on Robert Venturi's theory impact

2018-10-01T14:01:00-04:00

The idea of the “both-and” suggested a new pluralism, and maybe a new tolerance, in architecture. But the phrase turned out to have its limits. To the extent that Venturi was making an argument in favor of a kind of big-tent populism in architecture, it was a space for new styles instead of new voices, new forms rather than new people. In fact, tucked inside Complexity and Contradiction is an argument for a renewed insularity in the profession [...].

Christoper Hawthorne, former LA Times architecture critic and now Design Officer for the City of Los Angeles, dissects Robert Venturi's 1966 book, Complexity and Contradiction in Architecture (which famously scoffs at the Miessian classical Modernism with the "less is a bore" tagline), and argues in his piece in The Atlantic that the array of new choices the book offered also limited architecture's broader access to the public and diversity in the profession.

Meanwhile in another publication of the Atlantic network, McMansion Hell blogger Kate Wagner is out with a CityLab article on how Robert Venturi, Denise Scott Brown, and Steven Izenour's 1972 Learning from Las Vegas influenced an entire generation of architects, and her personally: "I came from Anywhere, U.S.A., far, far away from any great works of architecture," she writes. "Venturi’s elevation of everyday buildings made me feel seen, made me feel like the places I had observed, and my appreciation for them, were valid and me...

Betsy DeVos’s summer home resides in McMansion Hell

2018-08-09T14:16:00-04:00

Two weeks ago, somebody untied Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos’s $40 million yacht from its mooring. It got me thinking about another opulent display of wealth owned by DeVos: her 22,000-square-foot nautical-themed summer mansion, located in Holland, Michigan. Just a few more years of climate change and it’ll be floating too.

Kate Wagner critiques Betsy DeVos’s Michigan summer mansion on her humor blog McMansion Hell. Wagner unpacks not only the architectural design but also the greater social implications of why the education secretary's McMansion is so horrendous. The essay is dedicated to "all of the public school teachers who taught [Wagner] how to write".

Betsy DeVos's summer home on McMansion Hell. Image: Kate Wagner/Advance Media/Barcroft Images.

Betsy DeVos's summer home on McMansion Hell. Image: Kate Wagner/Pricey Pads.

Kate Wagner's case against formal residential spaces

2018-07-17T18:12:00-04:00

Nobody is actually using their formal living and dining rooms. Families actually spend most of their time in the kitchen and the informal living room or den. Yet we continue to build these wastes of space because many Americans still want that extra square footage, and for a long time, that want has been miscategorized as a need.

McMansion Hell creator, Kate Wagner, makes a passionate case against wasting precious square footage (and associated resources) on formal living and dining rooms in our homes.

Her plea is backed by data from a recent UCLA study which suggests that entertaining rooms, instead of bringing families together, actually divide us: "There’s a reason why the UCLA study showed that the most-used common areas are the kitchen and the informal living room: People like to spend time together eating and watching TV, without the glare from those two-story great-room windows. Large, unused spaces designed for social functions foster isolation instead."

Bro, Do You Even Quoin? A conversation with McMansion Hell's Kate Wagner

2017-07-13T16:41:00-04:00

On this week's episode we’re joined with Kate Wagner, the author of McMansion Hell, a blog that balances serious essays on architecture and urbanism, with brilliantly funny analysis of the absurd trends in American suburban architecture. Kate has recently emerged, triumphantly, from a widely publicized threat from Zillow to stop using their imagery. As reported on Archinect recently, Zillow withdrew their legal threats after the Electronic Frontier Foundation responded on behalf of Kate, and McMansion Hell is back in business, with a larger following than ever.

A taste of what McMansion Hell offers

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