On Thu, 7 Oct 2004 12:02:51 -0600, "Jay Windley"
wrote:

Having grown up in a family of architects my dislike for the McMansion
(a.k.a. the Starter Castle) knows few bounds.

A good friend of mine owns one -- built as close to the property lines as
the building code will allow; rooms sized not so much for comfort and
utility as to intimidate and impress.

Square footage for its own sake is bad. But that's not to say that lots of
square feet aren't useful. Another friend owns a proper mansion built in
the late 1800s sitting on several acres (complete with swan pond). While
often mistaken for a train station, it does have the quality of being
composed of livable, usable spaces properly married to the grounds. And her
lifestyle is such that this is an appropriate house for her.

What amuses me are those people who pay for such misproportioned and
ill-suited surroundings, and then spend the majority of their time in the
small, hidden-away spaces that are what they really wanted. Nancy, the
owner of the train station, is a wealthy socialite who entertains
frequently. The formal living room is a must for her. David, my other
friend, is an engineer who does no formal entertaining. His formal living
room gathers dust while the social center of his house is back in the great
room.

Another close friend, Charles, renovated an 1870s farmhouse (with an add-on
dating to about 1930) into a perfectly-sized house for two people. It
features the proverbial living-room-on-the-right and dining-room-on-the-left
with a center staircase going up to the second floor. The second floor is
really a unified attic which he has finished out into a spacious home
office. The kitchen, bedroom, master bath, patio/pantry and laundry are all
on the main floor -- not huge, but big enough. The main floor is perhaps
1,500 square feet. The dining room isn't used often, but doubles as the
display area for the couple's collectables. No garage. A simple shed in
the yard provides the shop and storage area. This is not a spacious house,
but it is a very comfortable house that "feels" large in the right places
and cozy in the right places.

I understand the economical need for "cookie-cutter" designs. Frank Lloyd
Wright was a fan of cookie-cutter design, where it would mean that people
could get an affordable house that fit all their needs. But where people
obviously have the money to spend on a fine home, I fail to see why they
apply that toward square footage as opposed to good design and fine
workmanship. I see custom-designed homes (sadly, occasionally from
architects who are friends of mine) that are monstrosities of the false
gables, cheep veneers, and other features that characterize the McMansion.
The baronial style is fine as long as you are willing to apply the full
baronial aesthetic to it.

Nothing irritates me more than mixing design idioms, or applying the
ornaments from a certain style without attention paid to the organizational
aesthetic in which those details are supposed to be applied. A plethora of
false gables doth not a mansion make. Would you mix the fruit cup, the
salad, the steak, the potatoes, and the cheesecake into one bucket?

How much more satisfying to pay an architect a fair fee to design a house
that fits you and your lifestyle, and who can help you distinguish what you
want from what you think you want. How much more satisfying to have 2,000
square feet of warm walnut than 8,000 square feet of featureless Sheetrock
painted in Sherwin-Williams Off-White no. 8263 chalk-based latex.

Perhaps the most telling episode in this state of affairs is David's
confession that he spent several minutes one evening working the key in his
front door and ringing the bell, only to find out he was attempting to enter
the house one street over from his that happened to be fundamentally
indistinguishable from his own. So much money, so little value.

--Jay


I'll blame television.

Americans have come to expect to have their tastes handed to them in
20 second commercials, one after the other. just hand 'em the
highlights... the idea that there could or should be an underlying
body of knowledge is an affront to the instant gratification mindset.