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. — The Baffler
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."
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elitist snobbery behind a shield of environmental righteousness with mean girl undertones. Picking on hard working new money families who like their homes…keep punching down
Meanwhile you keep regurgitating right-wing propaganda and talking points.
No I don’t. I just don’t participate in the dogmatic illiberal thinking that’s engulfed the left.
And you’ve been fooled into believing that the left-right battle is the battle being waged. It’s not. The battle is on the up-down axis. And by not understanding this the left and right are being slowly teetered by corporate and statist forces into accepting authoritarianism and abandoning their reasoning. And so, anyone using logic will arrive at similar places…so you’ll find folks like bill Maher being called right wing. What a crazy time
But to keep it on topic, this is the same things that have been written about extensively. Kunstler pretty much summed it up without targeting individual houses. Poor taste imo. There is a big difference between writing about the obesity epidemic in the US, and the website People of Walmart, where pictures of shoppers are posed and made fun of. McMansion hell was the architecture version of People of Walmart. It’s absolutely detrimental to the profession imo. Suburbia is the most pervasive condition in the US, and if we are to improve it, mocking potential clients taste is a terrible way to engage that market.
Again, you're wrong.
"The present crisis surrounding the depleted Colorado River, owing to overconsumption and a world-historic megadrought plaguing the Southwest since the 2000s, will be the first real test of the McMansion way of life, the life of endless plenty. If the recession saw entire suburban developments reduced to eerie ghost towns, imagine what water rationing will do to golf courses in Phoenix, Arizona. Already, the nearby city of Scottsdale has cut off the wealthy suburb of Rio Verde from the municipal water service, leaving residents holding the bag. When the resources of the commons no longer subsidize the whimsies of the rich, when there is truly nothing left to drink or burn in the tank, then, and only then, will we be able to look at the McMansion in retrospect."
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We are in for so much trouble. The way we make cities is not supportable. Personally, Kunstler was always problematic for me, because he did use worries over sustainability to cloak a desire to control the taste of others. It is a tragedy of the commons kind of problem, but the message often reads like the commons should not be for the commoners, and that is grating AF. Kate Wagner walks the line with more wit and insight than Kunstler, who was more of a get of my lawn kind of person (to give credit where it is due, also a very good writer). I think mostly because she is not offering a prescriptive answer, more pointing out that the emperor isn't wearing clothes. How to turn that into something positive and useful, that anyone can agree with, including libertarians and the liberal left is a serious challenge. Maybe climate change will take care of it in some parts of the world, brutally and without recourse. But for now Kate is right. Those big-ass buildings represent social status and achievement. They aren't going away until achievement is measured differently....
“Sun-urban” environments can potentially be more sustainable and enriching than urban environments. “Suburban” environments are what happens when architects and urbanists completely write off this highly desired urban arrangement and density.
Sub-urban environments exist all over the world. The sub-urban areas in Japan or Italy for instance are much different than the ones found in Phoenix or southern Californian. There is this religious obsession with super dense urban environments that has stolen the focus of architecture and urban design education for decades, with little evidence that this form of living is even the most beneficial if all other options were pushed to their greatest potential by the design disciplines. It’s partly a measurement problem, and partly a imagination problem, and partly a mind virus problem. There is a strange line in the sand at Broad acre city. As if that is the only incarnation of alternative sub-urbanization that may exist. Broad acre with flying cars or some KB track homes. That’s it. This is a huge failure that stems from the same type of fear among academics that has corralled them into refusing to challenge anti-scientific illogical dogmatic wokeness. A fear to go against an orthodoxy that deems suburbanization as “bad” and “immoral” and dense cities as “good” and “moral”. It’s just a given. Urban=good and if you don’t parrot that you are bad. The suburb is where the low brow deplorables graze on fast food after all. Fuck that large swath of the planet and focus on some posh urban district or modernist concrete castle on 10 acres in Napa . The profession needs to accept that many humans prefer the balance of suburban environments, a balance between outdoors, vegetation, parks, shopping, neighbors, etc. Kates own admission to the endurance of this urban form is evidence to my point. It’s not going anywhere unless disaster strikes, and if that happens no where will be ok and misplaced Doric columns will be the least of our worries.
What can suburban environments be? How can we integrate sustainable permaculture, natural wildlife corridors, quality architecture, geeen energy production, rainwater harvesting, small mom-pop businesses, parks, walkability, good sized homes for large families…. I am completely convinced that the MAJORITY of suburban residents would flock to a suburban development that was really well done and sustainable, but none are available, so they take what is available. My beef is with the blanket dismissal of this pervasive and persistent phenomena.
And, just to push it a little further beyond the practical issues of sustainability…the suburbs are not the cold dead cultureless places that Kate describes. All you need to do is look to the many many films of the 80’s where suburbia is portrayed with a certain mystical feel, or the grunge music of the 90’s that seemed infused with a suburban vernacular. The list goes on, but my point is that suburban culture is not nothing.
"Those big-ass buildings represent social status and achievement. They aren't going away until achievement is measured differently...." Well said Will...
Or until there are ways to have money with being subject to inflation. Banks used to pay interest on money. Now, the only way to ensure that your money will be able to maintain its value is to invest it into a commodity like RE that inflates against the value of the currency. That’s part of the problem. Fiat money has created this situation where savings money under the mattress isn’t beneficial in the long term.
McMansions are what happens when architects and builders don't educate homebuyers.
Sounds paternalistic and elitist.
Ms. Wagner is as witty as she's predictable. This kind of kitsch will always be with us because we aspire for status. In her case and in those indoctrinated by modernism, laughing at people who like traditional architecture is second nature and the fact that so much of it is kitsch is part of the same equation.
Unfortunately, the tackiness of this building type has nothing to do with the decisions that are destroying the planet, but if architects took the public more seriously, we might have a built environment worth saving. As for sprawl, its not in the perview of the architect, although based on how we educate architects, I can see how some think it is.
I'd be curious to hear her solutions and not just more snickering as she seems to be intelligent as well as possessing a good eye.
Her role is not to offer solutions, that is for the architects and developers. It must remain acceptable (and I daresay, beneficial) to be a critic, not charged with correcting wrongs but instead to make light of them.
I don't see anyone here laughing at people who like traditional architecture (including Kate.) I certainly wouldn't call these building traditional architecture, they are nothing but the frailest pastiche thereof.
Nor do I think they are a result of stylistic decisions - this goes so much deeper - think zoning, codes, land-use planning, capitalism, and entire political and social structures.
It may not be an architectural problem if we accede to the idea that architecture is about style. But who among us really would agree to that? We are advocates, entrepreneurs, theorists, and most importantly citizens. We can and should be doing all of the things that those roles allow us to in order to change the way our cities work - and not incidentally, for whom.
The snickering is not the point of Kate's work. That is good way to dismiss it, but ignores the problem her commentary is pointing at. We can build better cities. Sprawl is hard to avoid because of zoning, but it is not inevitable as a matter of unfettered market forces, and maybe not even of our culture. It is what we have right now, but there is no reason it could not switch if people could make money developing better places.
Right now cities around North America are changing the laws that give us the current status quo. Toronto, where I am teaching, is one city that is poised to shift its direction. A big chunk of that shift is a direct result of ARCHITECTS working to change the rules through lobbying and a concerted effort with a gaggle of interested groups. It was never elitist. Whether it is enough is an open question. There is waaaay more to be done, and architects will be part of that process, not house by house, but policy by policy. That is our job too, I think.
It is not going to be enough to stop climate change or even enough to make our cities adaptable, but it is a pattern we can copy for when needs and incentives begin to shift. Luckily it is not all on us, but good to know we can play a part. Kate's work is at the very least a part of all that.
This from the person who equated New Urbanism with "the Truman Show and pseudo-fascism"? Keep telling yourself that your above style while slandering those who like styles you deem not valid.
As a citizen, I agree with your and Kate's priorities and probably your politics which is why the virtue preening is a bit rich. If you believe we can affect how land gets developed as architects, more power to you but ironically it's been the New Urbanists who've actually moved the needle on how we consume land by talking to the market and not just huddling in the ivory tower, throwing shade at ticky tacky plastic boxes.
The traditional city and its buildings were built before the advent of cheap fossile feul burning energy. Like the New Urbanists, we might learn something from traditional architecture academia can accept there are things people like about traditionalism, modernism, and everything in between. Time to move beyond the style wars and embrace the diversity of taste that exists on all the arts. Try that on your students in Toronto and tell us how it goes.
Can you explain why new urbanism is “pseudo-fascism” ?
@Thayer, I actually agree with a lot of this comment, but you need to get the stick out of your ass about modernism and academics. New Urbanists are not the saviours you make them out to be. Will I give them a W in some cases where they've moved the needle a bit? Sure.
"The traditional city and its buildings were built before the advent of cheap fossil fuel burning energy. We might learn something from traditional architecture and accept there are things people like about traditionalism, modernism, and everything in between. Time to move beyond the style wars and embrace the diversity of taste that exists on all the arts."
Yes, agreed - but that's about style.
Will's comment actually addressed the real issue, which as you correctly point out, most architects are relatively powerless to affect.
precursor to unsustainable development done to show social status or legitimate realization of humanistic values and traditional craftsmanship?
i'd bet this building was a lot more sustainable in the 16th century than it is now. maybe sustainability isn't a property of buildings, just how we use them...
Regarding Palladio, I would say it began as a show of social status while working nicely as country house. Only later was it described as the realization of humanistic values bla bla bla. As for traditional craftsmanship, his work was often brick stuccoed to look like stone, the same thing that incensed 19th century moralists and their modernist progeny who, like Corb, did the same with many of his 'purist' buidlings.
Take the mini-McMansions of 19th century San Francisco, drenched in gables and mass produced ornaments that the most sophisticated tech gurus pay millions for today. A lot of architectural theory is pre or post-rationalized blather having little or nothing to do with the problems of the actual design and construction of architecture. Most is designed, like the temple pediment stuck on Palladio's villa, to up the status of the owner. That said, it can be extremely fun if not taken too seriously!
Why do people keep calling things that have sustained for centuries “Unsustainable”?
As if the human drive to display status is something unique to our time. This has been what humans of all cultures have done forever. The “progressive” types have a silly arrogant idea that they can change human nature with convoluted theory gymnastics. “Equity” requires government force because the natural tendency is to survive and reproduce and move up in social hierarchies. Suburbia offers an almost tiered social hierarchy system that is easier to recognize among the non-archi people. The status ques are obvious to the untrained eye. Modestly in architectural expression goes against this desire to express one’s place in the hierarchy. When modesty exists, it’s often in a sort of sub-culture whom understands the value of such minimalist and high quality details…like a watch that looks modest but is worth 100k, still playing the social hierarchy game but within a different tribe (architecture and high design culture). So I don’t see the moralistic difference between the two at all. If McMansions are a problem, and I’m not sure they are, then you have to figure ways to embed and convey status
symbols and indicators in whatever else you are building in its place. How? Who knows.
BTW, here's an interesting discussion about how we ended up with the sprawl that chokes of arable land, disrputs ecosystems, and created social isolation by the acre.
https://commonedge.org/why-mas...
From R. D. Laing, Knots:
For example:
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