there's a certain type of house that
people love to hate
they're called McMansions that is like
so really it looks like perfect
McMansion hell material god these are
all pretty stupid though
Kate Wagner runs the architectural blog
my banchon hell she's on a mission to
explain to the world what so uniquely
awful about these buildings what
separates a McMansion from a normal
house is 99% of the times its size it's
a house that's usually over 3,000 square
feet which is 500 square feet above the
net highest national average the designs
are sloppy they don't take into account
things like scale and balance and the
basic rules of architecture most big
mansions are amalgamations of different
architectural schools borrowing a gable
from here a window shape from there with
no rhyme or reason
some even co-opt an entire regional
style and Transplant it like placing a
southwestern style tile roof on an East
Coast home all this things sort of
combined together form this thing that's
really easy to dislike because it's it's
pretentious McMansions are generally
built by developers in suburban housing
developments these homes are designed
from the inside out to satisfy certain
luxury requirements that help it meet
its hefty price tag like cathedral
ceilings in a bathroom the first design
casualty is usually the homes roofline
the nub is what happens when roofers or
designers are lazy and you know instead
of doing the logical thing which is to
square out a roof or to have like a nice
like you know hipped roof or a nice
light gable they decided instead to just
combine the two into like this this
hunch that kind of sits on the top of a
house and makes really like no
architectural sense there are degrees of
novenas
I think on a scale of 10 of like 1 to 10
I think this house is like maybe a seven
on the nub scale I've seen some really
heinous gnomes in my life other
hallmarks of the McMansion include
mismatched windows turrets a two-story
entry way that Kate likes to call the
lawyer foyer and columns lots and lots
of columns here we have some columns
that are like carriers so you're
forgetting a visual weight right and
they're holding up nothing but like a
slab of foam
it's been the McMansion and a lot of the
little attributes to it like the big
columns and like the huge two-story
entryway are like a direct metaphor for
a bank like you think about how a bank
looks like you have this stately like
this is where the money is kept and so
it's like this is where my money is this
is my money
none of the columns are actually
load-bearing it's all it's all
decorative a lot of them are hollow a
lot a lot of them are literally just
pasted on there have always been really
large houses in the United States but
historically the people who owned them
were wealthy like really wealthy think
Roosevelt and Rockefellers McMansions
first began to appear in the United
States in the 1970s as people fled city
centers for the suburbs the 90s saw
McMansion boom is the availability of
cheap oil allowed for people to keep
massive homes and drive everywhere
mortgage reforms under the Clinton
administration made McMansions
accessible to even more buyers than ever
before but kate doesn't lay the blame
solely with cheap energy and policy
changes you have to think also popular
media at the time with MTV Cribs
oh I'll just focus on on other people's
money and people translated this idea of
like I have a lot into I have a big
house Thompson welcome welcome welcome
welcome and TV I was always an HGTV kid
like I've been fascinated with houses my
whole life probably a little too much
HDTV started mostly is like an arts and
crafts kind of channel like things like
shabby chic like how to like upscale
upcycle a dresser how to make cute like
outfits for their cats that all changed
in 1999 when house hunters premiered
that took off this is part of the
reality TV craze of the 2000s
I'm gonna do something kind of radical
I'm gonna go buy a house and if you look
at like those old episodes of HGTV you
can see the sort of economic bubble even
in its prime form as a primary source
I've done all my numbers and I know I'll
be fine as long as I'm responsible and I
am responsible so it'll go very well
when we look back on these things it's
like yes we were documenting them the
whole time but not from the angle that
we thought we were
the legacy of the McMansion maybe is the
poster child of the housing bubble in
2008 but trends say McMansions aren't
going away anytime soon they offer a
high return on investment for developers
and even though it might be maddening to
readers of McMansion health people are
buying them my favorite emails to get
are people who are realtor's who are
like I want to say these things so much
it tears my hair out this is like giving
me like a reason to continue on but it
turns out like everyone hates McMansions
and I think that giving people the
freedom to be like I actually hate that
and then giving them the vocabulary and
the sort of knowledge to say I hate that
and I know why I hate that if you give
people the power to express why they
don't like something then it creates a
discussion and I had no idea so many
people hated these houses as much as I
hate them and now everyone has to suffer
alongside of me because now they will
forever notice that the shutters won't
actually close over the window
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