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. — The Nation
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
6 Comments
Awesome. Kate is brilliant and the Betsy DeVos edition was so good!
Buckle up capitalist pig-dogs, get your subs ready to go.
They are no doubt quaking in their gucci boots.
I look forward to hearing actual solutions to the McMansion phenomenon rather than more snarky criticism. Shooting fish in a barrel is getting old.
But is it a critic's responsibility to provide solutions?
IMO, that's what made Sorkin (and the other superlative critics from post-war through the 2000's) so great. Many had practiced or continued to practice and could identify and propose solutions. Sorkin, ALH, Gideon, etc... I think maybe Mark Lamaster comes closest to that now.
I like Kate's writing (particularly the cycling stuff, architecture is so boring and over-done) but it's all too easy to criticize McMansions, as you point out.
Staaaaap, she's not an architect, but purportedly you are, Thayer. Architect, heal thy community.
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