Archinect - News

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."

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."

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Inside the high-strung world of McMansion-moving

2019-07-25T13:35:00-04:00

More than 8,000 structures are moved each year, due to development, environmental hazards and historic preservation, according to Tammie DeVooght Blaney, executive director of the International Association of Structural Movers. Industry leaders estimate that high-end, single-family homes at 4,000 square feet or greater account for about only a dozen of these moves annually.

Oceans are rising, hillsides are collapsing, and low-lying neighborhoods are flooding, so what are rich people doing? Relocating, of course.

The Wall Street Journal takes a look at the logistically complex world of McMansion-moving, profiling a series of contractors and building movers who reposition giant homes for a living.

The reasons why homeowners decide to move their homes varies, but one thing is for sure: It's not cheap. “The more logistical issues involved in the move, the greater the costs, the more you need to prove the value of the house,” John Clegg, president of the Texas Association of Structural Movers, told The Wall Street Journal, adding, “Ninety-five percent of people who reach out to us don’t do the move. It’s just too expensive.”

There's a glut of McMansions on the market

2019-06-17T15:06:00-04:00

Many baby boomers poured millions into these spacious homes, planning to live out their golden years in houses with all the bells and whistles. Now, many boomers are discovering that these large, high-maintenance houses no longer fit their needs as they grow older, but younger people aren’t buying them.

The Wall Street Journal reports that wealthy baby boomers in America's far-flung retirement suburbs are having trouble selling their McMansions. The problem? The homes are too big, too expensive, and too far away from everything else.

Another issue: Too many multi-million dollar homes are hitting the market all at once. As the TV generation begins to age out of homeownership and sky-high student debt keeps city-loving millennials locked out of the housing market, giant suburban homes are sitting for longer than in previous years. As a result, owners are increasingly accepting below-asking price offers.

The problem, the report warns, could get worse in the coming decade as demographic transformations reshape America and some 32 million baby-boomer-owned homes go for sale.

Rick Palacios, Jr. of John Burns Real Estate Consulting told The Wall Street Journal, “You had this wave of homes built that now just don’t make sense for a lot of the people who bought them."

Maybe it's time to ...

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."

A Texas McMansion Hell bracket approaches, check out the 8 contenders

2018-07-03T17:38:00-04:00

I’ve been poisoning my brain the last couple of weeks narrowing down 2000 prospective McMansions to 16. Please give me a round of applause for this immense personal sacrifice. Instead of ranking them myself like I usually do, I will be doing a bracket at the end of the next post where you can vote for the Most Terrible in Texas! (After all, everything’s bigger in Texas!)

McMansion Hell, a bi-weekly blog delighting in architectural education through ridicule, now brings us a Texas bracket. The top 8 worst McMansions of Texas suburbia have been chosen and properly mocked. Now it's your turn to choose which belongs at the innermost circle of hell.

Here are a few of the contenders:

Montgomery County (House 3) (AKA Cascading Nope)

Denton County (House 5) (AKA Mt Nub)

Collin County (House 7) (AKA The Triple Can)

Check out the full lineup at McMansion Hell and get ready to cast your vote!

Want to learn more about McMansion Hell? Check our our conversation with McMansion Hell's author Kate Wagner, from a previous episode of Archinect Sessions...

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

Listen to "Bro, Do You Even Quoin?":

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Download: this episode

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Having bazillions of dollars helps

2016-12-01T20:21:00-05:00

Even if the townhouses look alike and they’re next to each other, they don’t always have the same floor levels. So we’ll have to find a way to eliminate the party wall between them. It’s really taking apart both houses and rebuilding them as one. If the client wants these big open spaces, we have to dismantle the interior of these buildings and then rebuild them together as a 40-foot-wide building

S. Jhoanna Robledo reviews the latest trend in urban living for the wealthy, the Frankenmansion.

Is the McMansion era finally over?

2016-09-06T13:40:00-04:00

The McMansion style, built between 2001 and 2007 and averaging 3,000 to 5,000 square feet, lacks the appeal with today's buyers compared to old vintage homes or large freshly built homes. The realization is especially hard on homeowners trying to sell because when they bought the giant homes in the early 2000s, they thought of them as great investments, Feinstein said. Then, the idea was that bigger was better because prices presumably would keep going up.

Now, housing analysts say the day of the McMansion has come and gone. An analysis just completed by Trulia shows that the amount buyers are willing to pay for McMansions over other homes has fallen 26 percent in just four years. As homes in general have been regaining value, McMansions have been losing appeal in comparison to others as the giants of the pre-crash years have aged.

In related news:

Dissecting McMansion ugliness

2016-08-16T15:56:00-04:00

The aptly named "McMansionhell" tumblr has taken the time to carefully note just what makes a McMansion an ugly, terrible, no good architectural atrocity. Skipping over frothy diatribe and going straight into meticulous point by point dissection, the tumblr notes that McMansions fail in four key areas: Masses & Voids, Balance, Proportion, and crucially, Rhythm. "McMansions lack architectural rhythm," the tumblr states, using slidetool graphics to help you wince and blanch in an informed way (as opposed to just experiencing an overpowering visceral dislike each time you pass one on the street).

Other ugly building news:

Mansionization in Los Angeles faces new opposition from City Hall

2016-07-15T14:21:00-04:00

Los Angeles moved one crucial step closer Thursday to tightening city rules meant to stop mansionization – the phenomenon of big, boxy homes popping up on not-so-big lots. Local politicians first sought to tackle mansionization years ago, passing city rules to curb the size of new and renovated homes based on the size of the lots they were built on. Neighborhood activists soon complained the rules were riddled with “loopholes” that afforded builders additional square footage [...].

How architecture is helping make Arcadia a magnet for Chinese money

2014-12-04T18:43:00-05:00

Blocks that were once sleepy, with single-story ranch houses from the 1940s set comfortably back from the street, are now lined with bloated villas pushed near the front of their lots [...] What's happening in Arcadia is less about big new houses and startling sales figures than how new patterns of immigration are transforming the architecture of Southern California. [...] The architectural landscape is being remade not to displace [Chinese immigrants] but as a magnet for their money.

A classic American look, feng shui notwithstanding

2014-10-13T00:22:00-04:00

“Seattle was a better opportunity for me than China right now,” Mr. Wang said. “A lot of Chinese families are planning to move here.”

Robert Frank reports in from Seattle, where wealthy Chinese seeking to relocate and/or invest are driving up the real estate market in eastern suburbs.