McMansion Hell also gives voice to gut reactions, those intuitive senses of what is “good” or “bad” about buildings that people find hard to articulate. The website uses humor to explain basic principles of architectural design and history in a more entertaining and engaging way than a textbook. “It’s just one of those things that gives you a context of where you are … the built environment has everything to do with place as the natural environment does.”Įmbedded in the pages of McMansion Hell are lessons in consumerism and materialism, but also illustrated stories about the fundamentals of architecture, including and beyond columns and windows.
They give people a sense of place, evolving through a combination of taste, location and necessity, and “that’s why you’ll see like Pueblo style architecture in the West” explains Wagner, rather than, say, Cary, North Carolina. It would be easy to chalk up the more aesthetic elements of McMansions to matters of opinion, but different styles are more than just fashion statements. Despite all of this, the popularity of McMansions is picking up again as well – we have not seen the end of this. Other people are choosing a middle path, building homes that suit their needs and opting to put money in quality design and materials. Aside from livability, there is real concern that McMansions are a bad investment. Small-space living and tiny house movements have begun to take off, partly out of economic necessity but also in response to excessive architecture. Meanwhile, there are countervailing trends as well. Wagner lays the blame for this mindset at the feet of HGTV and similar channels. According to Wagner, they are indicative of a larger shift in thinking: a house is no longer a place that we live in (potentially for the rest of our lives) but rather an asset that we are decidedly not supposed to live in forever.Īccordingly, people started designing their houses not just for themselves but with a future sale in mind. Wagner notes that “if you have these really big columns and they are holding up the tiniest little pediment or portico it looks like pretty ridiculous.” Big columns conjure images of wealth (like banks) and power (like state capital buildings).Īll of this snarky criticism is entertaining, but there is also a larger point to be made about the design of the McMansion. In theory, a set of columns should physically and visually balance the thing they are holding up. Many McMansions would also not be complete without columns, often oversized or undersized relative to their apparent structural purpose. A proliferation of window shapes makes it increasingly hard to form a coherent architectural design. Wagner advocates for two or fewer window shapes on a facade and a single style of window across a given floor.
While there are always thoughtful and interesting violations of any design guidelines, there are limits to what can work visually.
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One unusual window might be fine, but many McMansions are riddled with various sizes and shapes of windows that fail to match or line up. A big entryway, of course, calls for a big door, and perhaps a big window above. These windows are often arched on top then squared off below, a shape that is relatively unique to the McMansion. From real estate brokers to house-flipping shows, marketers like to show these off. Sometimes this result in weird protrusions, “where you’ll see a roofline that is relatively organized, and then you’ll just have like this ‘nub’ at the top, because somebody had to have some feature and they just couldn’t fit it in.”Īnother hallmark of many McMansions is the two-story entrance, meant to create a dramatic impression on arrival. “They are really just there to put a hat on a ridiculously crafted house,” says Wagner. A gabled roof here might mismatch a hipped roof there and a pyramidal roof on another part of the same home.
It may feature various pitches, odd heights, strange shapes and angles. One victim of this inside-out design process is the roof. The end result: a model home modded from the inside out, its exterior a confusing reflection of all kinds of small changes to interior spaces. But if their grand entrances, granite counters and stainless steel appliances are not enough, the structures can be further customized. The opulent base models of these mass-produced homes reflected that trend.
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