As someone who has lived in a suburb my whole life, I figured writing a paper on such should be a breeze. Boy, was I wrong. Before I even started researching, I thought I knew a lot about cities: the curvy streets, sense of isolationism, intense nature, etc. The one thing I really didn’t know anything about prior was McMansions. What even is a McMansion? A mansion combined with McDonalds? A McMansion is what the naked eye would think is a mansion that is a lot bigger than it needs to be, often incorporating many modern designs. They are the massive houses in suburbs that will catch your eye—for good or for bad. I thought they all looked cool and was a nice addition to what could be a boring suburb. On the contrary, many people do not like McMansions for multiple reasons and there are actually many articles out there of people expressing their dislike towards them. This really sparked my interest: What is this whole ordeal with McMansions?
Before I knew I wanted to research the details on these elaborate houses, I was lost. I signed up to read articles about suburban spaces in my English class because that just sounded simple and easy to understand. Lucky for me, my teacher provided me with two brilliant articles on McMansions called “McMansions 101: What Makes a McMansion Bad Architecture?” and “McMansions 101 Revisited: Aesthetics Aside, Why McMansions Are Bad Architecture.”. These were two interesting reads, but I figured discussing just a simple McMansion would be too vague. So, I continued to research, but this time incorporating a new beast: the World Wide Web.
Now I was sitting down in room 227 in Raynor Library on October 25th. Dr. Blair and her friend from the library showed us how to use the databases for our research. At this point, I was very intimidated with all this material—I felt lost. Thankfully, we had time in class on this day and the following classes to do our own research. This allowed me to get my feet wet in what seemed like an endless pit of research I was about to encounter. I found a lot of valuable information, mainly articles that could build logos and establish ethos, which would be good to use as sources on McMansions. Plus, these were peer-reviewed scholarly articles, making them even more reliable. It was at this point that I was getting a good—not great—grasp on the task at hands
After learning how to dig through the databases to find proper sources, we got actual books from Raynor library that could help us out on November 1st. This gave us even better sources and they were quite convenient. To do this, I used the Marqcat button on the Raynor library portion of Marquette’s website to search for books I could get my hands on. I used keywords such as suburbs and architecture to help me narrow down my results. By the time class was over, I found 10 books that had potential to be beneficial for me. Although I did not find this process very advantageous compared to the databases, I still found a couple of books that peaked my interest. For example, I found a book with mostly pictures on it which helped me visualize how I wanted to proceed with this paper better. This book was called Toward New Towns for America. Unfortunately, out of the 10 books I looked at, only two were useful.
As I approached my paper’s due date, I still didn’t have a general research question. After discussing and planning with Dr. Blair on November 8th, I understood that McMansions intrigued me. Plus, I’ve already been researching architecture and the suburbs. After multiple questions being shot back and forth, my question came to me: What is the whole ordeal with McMansions?
It is clear that not many people like McMansions. But why? First, McMansions lack many design principles that are apparent to all architects. McMansions are not like most suburban homes. They possess many ugly qualities that are obvious to architecture students such as Kate Wagner. In “McMansions 101: What Makes a McMansion Bad Architecture?” we see that “McMansions lack architectural rhythm.” (Wagner, Kate. “McMansions 101: What). Wagner uses images to show how this is the case. The McMansion she is showing us breaks three principles of architecture: The principle of proximity, similarity and continuation. Objects on the house she shows us are too close together and do not complement each other. The house has multiple different shapes and variety making it appear extremely disorganized. Continuing, Wagner shows us another example of a McMansion and says, “McMansions have notoriously poor balance.” (Wagner, Kate. “McMansions 101: What). Some houses can get away with not having a perfect balance because they may still appear to be so visually. However, McMansions have no balance, it is nearly impossible to distinguish the line of symmetry in said house due to its overbearing architectural elements.
More information is provided on the disapproval with McMansions in Wagner’s second article called “McMansions 101 Revisited: Aesthetics Aside, Why McMansions Are Bad Architecture.” In this article, McMansions are proven to possess poor architecture and ignore the aesthetics of a house. First, McMansions are an awful investment. “the rich and powerful who desire super-sized houses are building new ones, with all of today’s bells and whistles. Nobody wants someone else’s outdated, used luxury.” (Wagner, Kate. “McMansions 101 Revisited). Wagner makes a very good point here. McMansions will only be going down in value. Only the wealthy can purchase these massive McMansions, and those that are wealthy are not looking to purchase property that is multiple years old—they want newer, more stylish possessions. Therefore, as McMansions become older, they will become harder to sell. Wagner provides a truly unique perspective on these houses because she herself is an aspiring architect. She studies this material and understands it much better than most of the people you will come across on the internet. Ironically, she expresses her perspective in these articles jokingly, using memes on multiple occasions.
Looking at McMansions with a broader scope, we can find more problems with them. Boulder, Colorado is currently trying to rid their city of McMansions. “‘What was once very rural and very lovely and very open, it’s gone,’ Morzel said. ‘With these giant fences, you can’t have the foxes, the deer, the mountain lions. You’re creating an impermeable” compound.’” (Castle). This is very understandable. Boulder is a beautiful town above Denver in Colorado and is known for its landscape. So, it is apparent that no one wants these enormous McMansions to ruin the natives form of paradise. Furthermore, Castle writes, “The surfeit of scrape-and-replace builds has already transformed the once-rural neighborhoods, councilwoman Lisa Morzel said in a rebuttal of Nagle’s position, with huge homes that take up every allowable inch of space.” The residents who sincerely want to live there are being kicked out by these McMansion owners that are about to ruin a beautiful aspect of nature in Colorado. These regulations to be put in place, as stated in the article, should benefit the community of Boulder, Colorado. It is interesting to see that even legislature officials have an issue with McMansions in the suburbs.
Aspects that make up a community are a big part of suburban spaces that can eventually lead to McMansions. Some urban developers plan for these massive, ugly homes when developing a town just as landscape architect Fredrick law Olmsted did. “Olmsted required setbacks of thirty feet so that private houses, especially poorly designed ones, would not intrude too closely on the streetscape.” (Beveridge). This shows how everyone educated in any field of architecture understands the drastic effects McMansions have on a suburb. They are difficult to contain when the wealthy members of a community have the money to build them, so Olmsted plans around it. Charles Beveridge expresses his ideas as he tells a story about what could have been the perfect city in “Designing a Middle-class Community Riverside, Illinois”.
McMansions also take a toll on the environment. All that space having to be maintained obviously is not environmentally friendly unless done correctly—which very few McMansion owners manage to do. “tens of trees have been removed to make way for not only the massive buildings… They also mean fertilizer, weed-killer, other chemical products … These changes of vegetation” (Nasar, Jack L., Jennifer). At this point, these houses aren’t just affecting the members of a certain suburb, but everyone that lives on Earth. Nasar goes on to elaborate on ecology and how the lawns are the issue. But, these lawns would not be an issue if these unnecessarily large and obnoxious homes were not built in surplus in the first place. Jack Nasar is a professor emeritus of regional and city planning at Ohio State University and has many scholarly articles related to the environment just as “McMansions: The Extent and Regulation of Super-Sized Houses” is. This is peer reviewed and written professionally by the doctor himself, so it is clear that this source is an expert as he expressed facts constantly.
It is important to look at how residents themselves respond to infill McMansions. This proves to be beneficial in that it could develop visual quality guidelines for design review since communities themselves are the ones with the right to regulate esthetics of their neighborhood. A peer reviewed paper called “Infill McMansions: Style and the psychophysics of size” showed a study allowing us to better understand the matter. The following quote concludes this research:
“For application the findings of the six studies suggest that controls for the contextual fit of the style would have favorable effects on compatibility and visual appeal. Controls for the relative size of the infill house would have favorable effects on compatibility, and, for ratios larger than 2.28 they would also have favorable effects on visual appeal. Controls of absolute size…did not produce any meaningful effect on compatibility or visual appeal.” (Nasar, Jack L. and).
This study was conducted by our expert Jack Nasar once again and is peer reviewed so it is a trustworthy source. This source particularly builds logos because it reported six studies that provided raw data on the compatibility and how visually appealing McMansions were in relation to the infill house’s attributes and its context. However, it must be noted that statistics cannot always accurately show how these McMansions may affect neighbors compared to just observers used in this study. Nonetheless, the statistics show that certain regulations with these McMansions would favor residential members and benefit the community.
Lastly, because of how awful the McMansion is in all aspects, when the economic crisis in 2008 occurred, foreclosed McMansions had no place whatsoever in any community. Since they occupy large amounts of land, they were put to new and beneficial uses. This was named the Great McMansion Repurposing. “A film collective in Seattle has taken over one behemoth, turning the wine closet into an editing room. Outside San Diego, the former residence of a husband and wife and two kids is being converted into a home for autistic adults.” (Barbara). These are just two instances in how McMansions are being converted into more functional uses of land. However—as stated in “Reinventing the McMansion”—this may not be enough. Suburban residents do not want to live around these odd buildings for good reason. Some real estate companies went to the extent to rent out rooms in the former home. Barbara and Kiviat write a powerful last sentence reading, “the ultimate goal may be to design neighborhoods in which such large houses wouldn’t make sense in the first place.” (Barbara).
After researching exclusively on McMansions and all the complications that go along with them, it is clear to me why no one seems to like these mega homes. Between the effects on communities, financial costs, and frankly ugly design, I have come to the conclusion that a McMansion wouldn’t be my dream home and shouldn’t be yours either. Although, now I find it necessary to research why people feel the need to build McMansions in the beautiful suburbia when there seems to be no benefits towards doing so. On a side note, I have learned that writing a research paper is extensive and difficult. It is certainly not something that can be done the day before the paper is due—a lot of preparation is required. I am thankful for the help Dr. Blair and the Marquette library have provided me with and feel as though I am ready to take on my next challenge—a traditional research paper.