However, I do feel that we need to bring the elephant in the room out into the open so everyone can appreciate it properly. If you strip away all of the polite planning jargon about massing, square footage, curb cuts, along with most everything else gets said in those circles, and then boil it all down to its core essence, the view becomes much clearer. What we are talking about here are some very large and quite ostentatiously designed houses.
I call it Adele Chang’s Dilemma. How do you build McMansions that don’t look like McMansions? You can’t. No matter what the design style, or where you place the garage, or how you reconfigure the roof, or bedeck the place with curlicues and cornices, or shuffle the massing, or even bring in a small gaggle of winged gargoyles and lawn gnomes, the result is still going to be one heck of a big barn.
In other words, some will argue that McMansions are just too big, even if are designed well or maybe even fit local architectural traditions. Underneath those design elements will always be too many square feet. And why is this square footage so important?
We are talking about a clash between two differing cultures here. On the one hand you have the traditional version of Sierra Madre. A place where people are comfortable with what they have today and don’t view house size as a measure of their personal or spiritual worth.
The culture Adele Chang and her CETT bosses cater to, on the other hand, is a nouveau riche arriviste’ sort crowd who somehow believe that building a vanity castle on the side of an open hillside will be recognized by all of those living below as a sign of an innate personal superiority. It is a form of unchecked clodhopper consumerism that most people living here today do not respect or care to live beside.
The size matters because it (1) suggests something vain about the owner and (2) is resented by others because it is a blatant status symbol. A big new home in a community that does not want it is tied to an owner who is seen as a jerk.
Legally Sociable 