Designing Houses - Worst of McMansions

[Jim]

On Facebook I stumbled upon a nice article about design flaws in McMansions. Admittedly, I had to look up the term McMansion. It is a pejorative term for a "mass-produced mansion".

This article describes what's wrong with these kind of houses. Some of it can be applied to modular designs as well.

If shows, for example, why this house has a good balance:

While this house hasn't:

Check out the article. It's an interesting read!

Rick, I think it belongs here. If you think otherwise, feel free to move it.

[Exetrius]

Thanks for sharing, this should be very helpful for future mocs!

[jimmynick]

Wow, that guy really hates McMansions! Thanks for the interesting read.

There's one going up in my neighborhood, and the worst thing about it is the stone facing on the walls of the ground floor. All the stones are different sizes, colours, shapes, etc. and they're connected by wide strips of grout. Whenever I see it, I wonder who the builders are trying to kid - it's perfectly obvious that the house is not made from stone, and something like siding or brick would be much more in keeping with the rest of the neighborhood.

[Man with a hat]

Interesting read indeed. Very clear pointers to a good design.

[jus1973]

Living in Europe, I'd never heard of this McMansions thing before. Saw a few this summer on my holiday to various areas of the US. Didn't know that they had a name for such badly designed houses. To the european eye, its almost as if the houses start off much smaller, and then get bits added over time, with little or no regard for the overall appearance. Something in Switzerland and the UK, that i know the local authorities work very hard to avoid, so we don't see so many.

Definitely something to watch for as I've built a few modulars and haven't liked how they've turned out in the end. I suspect this sort of balance and symmetry might have been part of it.

[Littleworlds]

Personally I quite like a more chaotic style. The buildings remind me on castles and rural villages and town-centers, which have simply grown in their current shape over centuries. So as for newly built houses, I can see why someone dislikes such a style. Especially being used to more grid-like city layouts.

But I think making it a rule to reject this style is a bit too far reaching. One could argue its bland look vs. Interesting Different tastes and all that

[fred67]

Agree with Littleworlds. While I see some styling I don't care for (especially different aspect windows and... very horribly, different types of shutters), on the whole I don't have a huge problem with their aesthetic appeal. I wouldn't want one for functional reasons (like, maintenance - they require a lot more roof, and the roof is a lot more complicated - if you needed to get new shingles, it would cost a lot more while a similar sized, better designed house would amortize a simpler roof design), but I don't think they look bad.... often more interesting visually than the ones he's comparing them to.

[ReplicaOfLife]

Thanks for posting that.

It's useful to know a bit about the theory behind design. While I don't find all the examples he posted in this article or the related ones on his blog to look altogether horrible, most do or at least have several areas that just don't work in their general context, or look out of place. This also happens to be the case with a lot of modular MOCs you see.

When designing a MOC; I usually go with what feels right, but when reading the article I found that most of 'what feels right' has solid reasoning behind it. Usually, when something doesn't follow the basic rules, it just bugs me. One example being the right hand facade of my Record Store, where the window/door arrangement on the ground floor doesn't match that on the upper floor...I need to change that.

[kevinb120]

We call it neo-eclectic here as it is just throwing everything at one house to make it look 'fancy' to others. With no regard to a specific theme or style(other then wealthy builders laughing all the way to the bank). The county I live in here in the US is very wealthy, and there are hordes of these newer mcmansion neighborhoods with 4000+ square foot homes, usually around around a golf course with a 'gated' community, where the 'gated' part only extends at the front road entrance to the sidewalks, half the time they don't even pay for an actual guard to man it. Most communities are completely cleared before building, so they tend to be grass islands in the middle of what was a forest or farm, 'Over the Hedge' covers this pretty accurately in the kid's movie :)

You will see nods to Victorian homes, combined with stone houses, colonial elements, and attempts at post-modern elements in the rear all mish-mashed into the same house; and made out of chipboard OSB with minimum materials-and people can't get enough of them apparently. Most feature the same unused theater rooms and home gyms. With their vast square footage, rarely do you see one properly furnished and decorated, with virtually empty 1500 sf finished basements common. When it comes time to decorate, very few wish to spend the costs to re-do thousands of square feet properly. $1m 5000 square foot home decorated from lumber liquidators and target. But hey, government jobs abound and 4% interest, why not go big? Buy a mcmansion and lease a mercedes and figure out how to afford the rest later.

Here they run from $650k-$1.5M+ and are everywhere. Having worked in a few thousand of these homes, even with unlimited wealth I would never even consider one a 'home', I'm more of a Frank Loyd Wright kinda-guy with a properly done post-modern one of a kind home that incorporates the existing landscape/wild life, and much of the decorating clearly built into the home, let alone actually owning some sizable property along with house itself. Amazing how many of these properly done homes reside just a few hundred yards from the latest and greatest 'drop a BLU82 daisy cutter and break out the cardboard' neighborhoods. Most with names like STONERIDGE ESTATES or the likes on a huge road sign containing the only real architectural stone in the neighborhood. Doubtful you'll ever see this stuff in the EU.

Although it is also trending now to have planned-neighborhood 'euro' style condo/shopping complexes here randomly scattered about. They attempt the instant 'town center' approach with the hopes of mom and pop niche retailers simply showing up suddenly to fill the stores with an organic wonderland. Apparently there isn't much thought given to locations as most of the entry level storefronts sit vacant for years other then the obligatory starbucks and cell phone retailers, as there's usually a mega-mall somewhere nearby. So you enter your trendy million dollar condo every day between a couple empty stores with faded NOW LEASING signs.

Edited August 20, 2016 by kevinb120