Archinect - News

Wealthier communities are cracking down on the size of megamansions

2024-08-12T19:37:00-04:00

The fight to curtail so-called megamansions was picked up recently by Realtor.com. They say the colloquial square footage "horse" has "already left the barn," adding the caveat that the typical American home size has increased by 150% between 1980 and 2018.

Some other choice takeaways include Paul Goldberger telling a Hamptons community meeting in May: "We want to be East Hampton, not Levittown-By-the-Sea." (The growth of estates there began back in the Gilded Age, however.) Zoning regulations in wealthy enclaves such as this tend to focus on a design's aesthetic features and proportions relative to its lot size. The phenomenon of "Iceberg Houses," e.g., where much of the home expands below grade, is another area of scrutiny as more scrupulous planning ordinances begin to take hold.

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.

A new NIMBY-ism in America's foremost mansion district

2016-12-05T16:46:00-05:00

This windswept outcropping, peering over the Atlantic, was a Gilded Age haven where the wealthy built mansions known by their names, not addresses: The Elms, Marble House and, most famous of all, The Breakers... Newport has cared deeply about appearances ever since. So when large steel beams rose high in the air between the city’s most storied thoroughfares, framing a mansion that will have an unusual, many-sided shape and a flat roof, neighborhood residents and observers were aghast.

More on the architecture of the mega-rich: