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You are correct, this thread really belongs in Architecture. McMansions are an affront to architecture and style.... Marketing.
They control us.
Thank you for getting to the heart of the matter. The preference for gaudy and overdone is a testament to the values of the age. Plus, the blogger is an architect: it's educational to examine what makes a structure pleasing to the eye vs risible.
Love, love, love the snark, and these places SOOO deserve it!
My faves: #4 for taking a perfectly flat landscape and making everybody go up at least 10 steps to get into the house. Either the nouveau riche don't carry their own groceries, or as Kate says, these aren't real entrances and everybody just uses the garage. AND
#8 for that stupid MC Escher-esque portico over the driveway.
Thanks Kate for a few moments of fun in an increasingly grim world!
I think people have lost touch with "McMansion" means. It's not the homes in the OP.
McMansion to me, means a little smaller and easily reproduce-able... and very necessarily, in a development of nearly identical copies... Bigger than the old track houses, they are showy big homes with fancy entrances... that's the "mansion" part of it... but they're in a row with 20 others that only vary slightly between about 3 floor plans... That's the "Mc" part of it.
The houses pictured in the op are large custom homes... And they appear to be on big lots, with mature landscaping. They're real mansions. You can hate them for their hugeness, or whatever, if you really want to... but the're not what I would call McMansions.
That's so cool!- I just received a commission to design a California Contemporary Cape Cod (love the alliteration, hehe) last week and I've been sketching out a design where all the major rooms are designed around the Golden Ratio (or Golden Rectangle). The proportions are coming out beautifully. I'm not sure if I can wrestle the entire building geometry into that ratio but so far have a simple "H" design to the roof; a major side gable and two minor cross/front to back gables at the ends. It has a nice simple, strong and balanced composition to my eyes as I'm playing with the massing model.
Definitely the anti-McMansion, though it is the largest house I've designed at 4000 sf.
That looks like a very cool house. I like 'Cape Cods'!
I'd make one change, though. I'd have the laundry on the second floor. That's where 99% of the dirty laundry originates; clothing, towels, sheets, etc.
Why drag all that stuff downstairs? Unless, of course, there's a central laundry chute...
That looks like a very cool house. I like 'Cape Cods'!
I'd make one change, though. I'd have the laundry on the second floor. That's where 99% of the dirty laundry originates; clothing, towels, sheets, etc.
Why drag all that stuff downstairs? Unless, of course, there's a central laundry chute...
If you have to drag it downstairs, you also have to lug it back up! I agree! I want the laundry in my next home to be in the master bath/closet or in between. Where the laundry is.
I'd like to know what they keep in that tiny tower over the door! eek!
"Johnny, for getting a drop of jelly on my granite countertop, you're confined to the tower!"
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but the one on the left is more obvious... more inviting! 
