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Organizing at the community level and putting pressure on politicians can go a long way, but it’s not enough. Architects have to start seeing themselves as political actors with high stakes in the same way communities and unions do. Architects are workers and they depend on work.
The fight for climate justice, resiliency, and workers’ and tenants’ rights are only going to get harder in an era of political decay, cronyism, and systemic crisis.
— The Nation
The fight over congestion pricing and residential building retrofits in New York City are just a couple of the many flashpoints architects should involve themselves in heavily in order to better advocate for the profession, critic Kate Wagner writes. Rightly, she states, “The field’s most... View full entry
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... View full entry
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... View full entry
It is misrepresented as some inherently revolutionary technology, when in fact it is rather conservative aesthetically [...] Not only is this a gray area in terms of intellectual property; it also is, well, boring.
An architecture dependent on AI will produce content of the lowest common denominator.
— The Nation
While AI applications like Midjourney may have their advantages, Kate Wagner sees their implementation into the architectural design process as deeply flawed and the product of too many industry hype mongers. Despite their potential to make certain office tasks redundant, Wagner says... View full entry
In February, Amazon announced its latest design for a $2.5 billion headquarters in Arlington, "the Helix." Once visual renderings for the campus were released, the architecture community was quick to respond. Besides heavy criticism of its overall design, discussion regarding its surrounding... View full entry
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... View full entry
The clunky, amoebalike building cannot seem to decide between the digitally derived expressionism of such architects as Frank Gehry or Zaha Hadid, and Zumthor’s own brand of minimalist modernism. We’re left with a museum that benefits nobody and satisfies none of the needs of the art in its collection, nor of the public that will view it. And yet in April, it was approved... — New Republic
With the recent approval of LACMA's redesign back in April, Peter Zumthor's design for Los Angeles' iconic art museum has received an alarming reaction from the public, specifically those in the architecture community. In Archinect's most recent coverage of the museum, many of our readers shared... View full entry
In an effort to highlight the enduring influence and mystique of Frank Lloyd Wright’s groundbreaking designs on contemporary visual and popular culture, the upcoming edition of The Frank Lloyd Wright Quarterly delves into the connections between this legacy and some of the biggest popular... View full entry
For decades, Open Concept, and the togetherness-loving, friend-filled lifestyle it was supposed to bring, has been a home buyers’ religion, the one true way to live. Go to Houzz, the home remodeling site, type in “open concept,” and up come 221,569 photos. Over on HGTV, DeRon Jenkins, costar of the popular “Flip or Flop Nashville,” will tell you, as he recently told the Globe, that an open floor plan “allows the love to flow.” But now, experts say, people are starting to openly yearn for walls. — Boston Globe
Uninterrupted space. This is what real estate agents, interior designers, and almost every host on HGTV have promoted for the past decade. However, design experts are saying that people are beginning to miss walls. Homeowners realize they don't want to live in this "fantasy of uninterrupted... View full entry
“We just don’t build houses like we used to.” Whether we’re criticizing an individual home or a wave of boxy buildings, it’s a common lament... It’s a statement that contains some truth, but it also misses crucial context about the material conditions, functionality, and style trends of the past. — Curbed
Kate Wagner, the writer and critic behind McMansion Hell, has turned their sights towards an often-uttered statement about the current state of architectural craftsmanship: "We just don't build houses like we used to." Listen to our conversation with Kate on Archinect Sessions: Wagner... View full entry
The idea of the “both-and” suggested a new pluralism, and maybe a new tolerance, in architecture. But the phrase turned out to have its limits. To the extent that Venturi was making an argument in favor of a kind of big-tent populism in architecture, it was a space for new styles instead of new voices, new forms rather than new people. In fact, tucked inside Complexity and Contradiction is an argument for a renewed insularity in the profession [...]. — The Atlantic
Christoper Hawthorne, former LA Times architecture critic and now Design Officer for the City of Los Angeles, dissects Robert Venturi's 1966 book, Complexity and Contradiction in Architecture (which famously scoffs at the Miessian classical Modernism with the "less is a bore" tagline), and argues... View full entry
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. — vox.com
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... View full entry
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.
— Curbed
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... View full entry
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... View full entry
