Ran into a good and funny blog called "McMansion Hell".

[Odin]

I ran into this absolutely hilarious blog by a 22yo architecture student that makes fun of McMansions and other houses with terrible, tacky design. Her comentary has me laughing my ass off.

[pbrower2a]

I get it. Building houses simply but solidly makes eminent sense, as shown by the livability of many modest houses (built to be owned by factory workers in the 1950s who had a mortgage on the house and a car loan, but were otherwise on a pay-as-you-go basis for everything else... ah, the economy of the 1950s). I can't say the same of the pretentiously-made McMansions  that builders and real estate hustlers pushed with  the perfect word for attracting suckers:

LUXURY!

[Odin]

(10-17-2016, 05:34 PM)pbrower2a Wrote: I get it. Building houses simply but solidly makes eminent sense, as shown by the livability of many modest houses (built to be owned by factory workers in the 1950s who had a mortgage on the house and a car loan, but were otherwise on a pay-as-you-go basis for everything else... ah, the economy of the 1950s). I can't say the same of the pretentiously-made McMansions  that builders and real estate hustlers pushed with  the perfect word for attracting suckers:

LUXURY!

Yeah, she makes quite clear that some of the defining features of McMansions is that they use really fake, cheap materials, cheap construction methods, and poor design based on trying to fit as many "features" into the home as possible, style and architectural balance be damned, in order to give the APPEARANCE of luxury.

Tip, never buy a house that has a 2-story entryway with columns.

[Mikebert]

I thought it a bit snooty.  I liked many of the houses in the early sections.  I like lots of dormers, roof levels, turrets on other people's houses (not my own of course).  They are nice to look at when you walk by and give the neighborhood character.  In the latter part there were what I consider McMansions, pretentious houses too large for their lots made of cheap materials that look fake.

[pbrower2a]

(10-18-2016, 04:19 PM)Mikebert Wrote: I thought it a bit snooty.  I liked many of the houses in the early sections.  I like lots of dormers, roof levels, turrets on other people's houses (not my own of course).  They are nice to look at when you walk by and give the neighborhood character.  In the latter part there were what I consider McMansions, pretentious houses too large for their lots made of cheap materials that look fake.

Quoins, multiple roof angles, cheap materials, Great Rooms (as if one wanted to live in a Tolstoy novel), and turrets (I suppose that if one needed sentries on site to defend against barbarians, a proletarian revolution, the Mossad, Spetsnaz, or Seal Team Six one might need turrets with sentries) are obvious offenders. The blogger did not mention one of the obvious failures of aesthetics: the violation of symmetry.

In view of my age I am unlikely to see this happen, but I can imagine these buildings becoming slums within thirty years

[Odin]

(10-18-2016, 04:19 PM)Mikebert Wrote: I thought it a bit snooty.  I liked many of the houses in the early sections.  I like lots of dormers, roof levels, turrets on other people's houses (not my own of course).  They are nice to look at when you walk by and give the neighborhood character.  In the latter part there were what I consider McMansions, pretentious houses too large for their lots made of cheap materials that look fake.

I think her point was that turrets look goofy and out of place in houses that are not otherwise trying to harken back to Victorian or similar style homes, too much thoughtless eclecticism is bad for the "unity" of the design and makes it look like the designer picked out a bunch of random things that "looked cool", not caring about how they all fit together.

[pbrower2a]

This sort of housing is a Veblen good, something built or bought because it is expensive and thus impressive. It need not be better or even functional. Examples include furs and gemstones.

[pbrower2a]

(10-18-2016, 08:19 PM)X_4AD_84 Wrote:

(10-18-2016, 07:41 PM)pbrower2a Wrote:

(10-18-2016, 04:19 PM)Mikebert Wrote: I thought it a bit snooty.  I liked many of the houses in the early sections.  I like lots of dormers, roof levels, turrets on other people's houses (not my own of course).  They are nice to look at when you walk by and give the neighborhood character.  In the latter part there were what I consider McMansions, pretentious houses too large for their lots made of cheap materials that look fake.

Quoins, multiple roof angles, cheap materials, Great Rooms (as if one wanted to live in a Tolstoy novel), and turrets (I suppose that if one needed sentries on site to defend against barbarians, a proletarian revolution, the Mossad, Spetsnaz, or Seal Team Six one might need turrets with sentries) are obvious offenders. The blogger did not mention one of the obvious failures of aesthetics: the violation of symmetry.

In view of my age I am unlikely to see this happen, but I can imagine these buildings becoming slums within thirty years

Well at some point, the overall demand for housing will fall. Population dynamics make it inevitable. Combine that with many Millies having little to no taste for McMansions. Silver lining - they are built so poorly, many will fall down within a few decades. Meanwhile our little 1000 S.F. built-for-GIs place 20 miles out from DTSF will be going strong as it hits its 100 year birthday.

Bingo. The house built for the GI Generation was built to last. It was also made to avoid fads and eccentricity. Housing pushed to the GI was functional and durable, meant to last as long as the original owners at the least. In the event that a house had to be foreclosed upon it had to be marketable to another owner.

The McMansion will eventually prove its inadequacy for the high-end market. Many seem suited to be cut up into tiny, bad apartments. As apartments they will become slums, and as such they will become targets for 'urban renewal' as understood in the next Awakening Era. .

[disasterzone]

(10-19-2016, 09:26 AM)pbrower2a Wrote:

(10-18-2016, 08:19 PM)X_4AD_84 Wrote:

(10-18-2016, 07:41 PM)pbrower2a Wrote:

(10-18-2016, 04:19 PM)Mikebert Wrote: I thought it a bit snooty.  I liked many of the houses in the early sections.  I like lots of dormers, roof levels, turrets on other people's houses (not my own of course).  They are nice to look at when you walk by and give the neighborhood character.  In the latter part there were what I consider McMansions, pretentious houses too large for their lots made of cheap materials that look fake.

Quoins, multiple roof angles, cheap materials, Great Rooms (as if one wanted to live in a Tolstoy novel), and turrets (I suppose that if one needed sentries on site to defend against barbarians, a proletarian revolution, the Mossad, Spetsnaz, or Seal Team Six one might need turrets with sentries) are obvious offenders. The blogger did not mention one of the obvious failures of aesthetics: the violation of symmetry.

In view of my age I am unlikely to see this happen, but I can imagine these buildings becoming slums within thirty years

Well at some point, the overall demand for housing will fall. Population dynamics make it inevitable. Combine that with many Millies having little to no taste for McMansions. Silver lining - they are built so poorly, many will fall down within a few decades. Meanwhile our little 1000 S.F. built-for-GIs place 20 miles out from DTSF will be going strong as it hits its 100 year birthday.

Bingo. The house built for the GI Generation was built to last. It was also made to avoid fads and eccentricity. Housing pushed to the GI was functional and durable, meant to last as long as the original owners at the least. In the event that a house had to be foreclosed upon it had to be marketable to another owner.

The McMansion will eventually prove its inadequacy for the high-end market. Many seem suited to be cut up into tiny, bad apartments. As apartments they will become slums, and as such they will become targets for 'urban renewal' as understood in the next Awakening Era. .

I prefer Victorian Houses to McMansions or to GI Generation houses. I think McMansions are low quality and that the GI homes are well built but don't have the frills I want.

[Ragnarök_62]

(10-20-2016, 06:07 PM)disasterzone Wrote: I prefer Victorian Houses to McMansions or to GI Generation houses. I think McMansions are low quality and that the GI homes are well built but don't have the frills I want.

http://www.zillow.com/homedetails/411-N-...=campaign1

If you're in with a mob of hipsters, this is your kind of place!
http://homes.trovit.com/listing/preforec...I31vQ151G1
This is Oklahoma, not California. There shall be no teeny tiny excuses for houses or rinky dink apartments that cost
way way too much. So save the inter group squabbles and make a 1 way trip east on interstate 40 now.

Rags owns a 1926 vintage house in Oklahoma with a full basement and 1400 sq ft all for the low low price of $30,000!

[gabrielle]

Betsy DeVos’s summer home deserves a special place in McMansion Hell

[pbrower2a]

It fits into my discussion of the taste of dictators -- ten boats? In my dream of success, one sailboat would be enough. McMansion meets dictatorial tastes? I can imagine her as a successor of Donald Trump, and then I reach for a barf bag.  

This house is proof that great wealth does not automatically bring admirable taste. But this is not your ordinary rich person who got rich by offering real solutions to people's problems:

Quote:Trump official and fellow rich person DeVos just rolled back Obama administration loan forgiveness rules for students defrauded by for-profit colleges. It’s unsurprising that she doesn’t want to forgive the student loan debts of those defrauded by for-profit colleges considering that she got her net worth of more than $1 billion from her husband’s company, the multilevel marketing giant Amway, which is often described as a cult. Meanwhile, her brother Erik Prince owns the Blackwater firm, which essentially sells mercenaries. As we can see, we are not dealing with nice people.

(Well, who expects nice people to fit in with the Trump Administration?)



This would definitely not fit in in Newport, Rhode Island. But it does not fit Michigan, a state struggling with the transition from the best place in the world for an industrial worker (in which someone who worked in an automobile plant could buy a modest cottage on a lake with a small motorboat) to a post-industrial nightmare in which people just aren't doing so well. Everything is expensive except labor, and we all know what Karl Marx said of the proletariat: it has nothing to sell but its labor.

Asymmetry, flamboyance, and unreality are in bad taste in architecture. A double grand staircase leading to the lake from the second floor?

Cue Carly Simon's You're So Vain.

[gabrielle]

(03-27-2019, 09:22 AM)pbrower2a Wrote: It fits into my discussion of the taste of dictators -- ten boats? In my dream of success, one sailboat would be enough. McMansion meets dictatorial tastes? I can imagine her as a successor of Donald Trump, and then I reach for a barf bag. 

I thought about posting it there, but realized that rather than a pompously opulent monstrosity attempting to recreate old world or ancient glories, this was a more like a suburban house that grew and mutated with extra appendages and other growths until it became a Lovecraftian nightmare.  After raging at her for gutting spending for education and our children's future, I welcome the chance to laugh at her and her stupid ugly house.