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. 

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." 

Citing research published in the journal Housing, Theory & Society by Maurie Cohen, a professor at New Jersey Institute of Technology, Peters argues that "if the world used resources sustainably and equitably, the average home for a single person would be no larger than 215 square feet, and a four-person family would live in no more than 860 square feet." 

And while the average size of new homes built in the United States has in fact been falling slightly in recent years as the tiny home movement and apartment living take off—Zillow reports that the average home was 2,700 square feet in 2015 and now clocks in at 2,620 square feet, as of 2018—outsize homes are still the norm. 

While physically shrinking these homes is not really feasible from an environmental or practical perspective, densification might prove to be a better alternative. Take California as an example, where the state recently moved to allow existing houses to be carved up into as many as three units. Changes in state law there as well as updated metrics for how the environmental impact of building projects are measured are priming the state's residential enclaves for deep densification that might finally help draw down the average size of homes while also reducing their environmental footprints. Similar efforts are underway in Minneapolis and other cities, as well. 

Perhaps this is a model that can be replicated nationally?