Category Archives: McMansions

Making a concrete McMansion with a 3D printer

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A Chinese firm can put together a McMansion with a 3D printer:

WinSun Decoration Design Engineering Co., a Chinese architectural materials company with more than 70 patents to its name, has now come up with a way to construct a 12,000 square-foot home – a kind of McMansion – out of 3D printed blocks.

A special technique has resulted in a concrete building that, while requiring paint to be attractive, still manages to be perfectly functional.

The printer that created these buildings is 105 feet long, 33 feet wide, and 21 feet tall, larger than most rooms, but it works on basically the same principles as one of MakerBot’s printers. It uses a nozzle to pump a mix of concrete, sand and fiberglass (which are recycled; the company’s name seems to translate to ‘Surplus’) onto a flat substrate, slowly accumulating into a tough material that can be buffed to create a smoother edge and/or overlaid with various traditional-looking decorative elements. A zigzag design inside the pieces helps reinforce them, similar to corrugated cardboard.

It takes about a day to print all the components. The prefab blocks are then trucked to the construction site, where it takes just five days to put them all together. The final height of the building is 20 feet by 4,000 feet wide, and the total cost to build it was just $161,000. This method saves between 30 and 60 percent of construction waste, cuts down on time by 50-70 percent, and cuts labor costs from 50-80 percent.

While the cost seems attractive, I can only imagine what McMansion critics would say if some of these started showing up in American neighborhoods. Want mass produced? Want concrete as your primary material? Of course, this all may get refined over time but there is some work to do before this would meet single-family home standards in the United States.

Can townhouses look like McMansions?

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One resident claims units in a proposed townhouse development “look like a bit like the stereotypical “McMansions.” Here is a description of the proposed units as well as an artistic rendering:

“The idea is to capture the transient market of people coming from urban areas to work at the colleges,” Buhl said.  “They would ultimately buy a house, but don’t know where to locate.  We’re looking for young, two-worker families.  It’s an in-between type of rental of higher-end people that we’re looking for.”

Cayuga Farms has gone through several changes over the past recent years.  Originally it was conceived as a 144 unit townhouse condominium community.  Today it is being packaged as a 102 rental two and three bedroom townhouses with one or two-car garages in a total of 21 buildings.  Buhl characterized it as a high-end development targeted at young families who may have moved to town to work here, renting for a while before purchasing a house.  He said rents will range between about $1,800 and 2,200 per month…

cayugafarms elevation
An artist’s elevation of the proposed design for the townhouse buildings

These do seem to be aimed at a wealthier renter. So, could these be McMansions? These townhouses do appear to have some of the features tied to McMansions. A multi-gabled roof. Big emphasis on garages. A mish-mash of styles on the facade. Possibly two-story entryways (the windows right above the door do suggest this). Odd dormers on the third story. Windows of all sorts of sizes. Porticos at the front door. Height and width that seems to dwarf the green space between the driveways.

Yet, I think not being single-family homes is a big barrier as McMansions are viewed by critics as cartoonish versions of the single-family house. The design of townhouses seems not to be as much of an issue. Perhaps this is because there are fewer design options for townhouses or because they tend to be located within their own developments (avoids teardown situations) or density is a bigger issue for opponents compared to design.

My verdict: these look like McMansions but can’t quite be labeled McMansions.

Sales of McMansions up 21%; remaining 99% of market down 7.6%

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At least one statistic suggests the housing market is still split into two divided camps: one that is thriving and one that is not.

Consider this incredible statistic from the research analyst Redfin: through last April, sales of the McMansions of America – the top 1% of homes by price – rocketed up 21% compared to last year. But sales of the other 99% of homes were down 7.6%.

It’s not even clear that rising home prices – traditionally a way to measure a recovery – would be good for the middle class. Price increases harm the affordability of homes, particularly for first-time homebuyers, who have not returned to the market at their historical level. This is an important group: first-time homebuyers drive the entire market, allowing sellers to step up into bigger homes…

When prospective homebuyers are actually asked about their biggest obstacle to purchasing, a majority cites “rising home prices” and “quality of inventory”, meaning the lack of decent homes in the buyer’s price range. So it’s not surprising to see a drought in lending, and a reduction in homeownership rates from 69% in 2006 to 65% in 2014. It has nothing to do with bank regulation; it has to do with purchasing power.

In the words of senior loan officer Logan Mohtashami, “we simply don’t have enough qualified home buyers to have a true housing recovery in America.”

While I’m not sure that the top 1% of houses are all McMansions – the term tends to refer to certain styles of homes rather than just the price – the data seems fairly consistent in recent months: the housing market has not fully or evenly recovered. More expensive homes are hot as are particular locales, such as luxury condos in New York and Miami. The slump continues at the lower end of the market where builders aren’t that motivated (why build cheaper housing units when there are bigger margins on those luxury units?) and potential homebuyers don’t have the savings to move in or up and also may still be trapped in their current mortgages.

Academics summing up the evils of suburbia

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In looking at the new book Global Suburbs: Urban Sprawl from the Rio Grande to Rio de Janeiro, I was struck by the opening statement by the series editor, sociologist Sharon Zukin. Here is her opening (page ix):

In Global Suburbs: From the Rio Grande to Rio de Janeiro, Lawrence Herzog exposes the dystopian underside of the suburban American dream. A house of one’s own, on a little plot of land, is no longer a place of domestic comfort, spiritual renewal, and communion with the green space and clear air of nature. Instead, the mass suburban habitat that Americans pioneered features oversized McMansions stuffed with giant TVs and electronic gadgets, to which their owners commute in gas-guzzling SUVs, enduring stressful journeys on traffic-clogged roads, leaving neither space nor time for pleasure.

This human habitat, Herzog warns, is neither a happy nor a healthy place. It is, instead, a treadmill of over-consumption that burdens our bodies, our spirits, and the natural environment. Obesity, anxiety, toxic air: how can we think this is a good life?

Most important, the suburban dream that Herzog describes now spreads throughout North and South America…Every metropolitan area in the Western hemisphere bears a tragic cost: Overbuilding reduces the water supply, destroys the trees and insects on which all life depends, and creates an eco-disaster.

Naming these issues can be important as many suburban residents don’t consider the implications of consumption, their impact on the surrounding ecology (particularly if the rest of the world consumed at similar levels), and whether such a suburban life truly offers the be-all-end-all of existence. Yet, this description tends toward the over-the-top suburban critique that has been leveled for decades. Here we have another citing of McMansions and SUVs together – key symbols of excessive consumption – even though many suburbanites have neither. How anxious and stressed are these suburbanites – if the milieu is so toxic, why did they keep moving there for decades? (They are either dupes tricked by someone or have misplaced priorities.) Was there once a golden age of suburbs that wasn’t about over-consumption and truly was about “domestic comfort, spiritual renewal, and communion with the green space and clear air of nature”? (There is evidence of this but it tended to be limited to the wealthy, provided limited opportunities for women, and also had a view of a certain kind of nature.)

On to the rest of the book…

Another post-apocalyptic McMansion dweller on a new TV show

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A new Fox show featuring the last man alive has him living in a McMansion:

The former Saturday Night Live performer, creator and star of the new Fox comedy (March 1, 9 p.m. ET/PT), plays a survivor of a virus that decimates the Earth’s population. His character drives across the U.S. looking for people before settling in a McMansion in Tucson.

During filming, he has had the freedom to explore what a lone planetary survivor could do, such as roll bowling balls at aquariums in a parking lot…

Forte (Nebraska), who grew a big, bushy beard for the role, said he thinks many people have wondered about being Earth’s last survivor.

“This idea seems to be, even though it’s very far-fetched, very relatable,” he said. Many people “have heard the question, ‘What would you do if you were the last person on Earth?’ “

And yet this man who could do anything chooses to live in a McMansion? Aren’t these shoddily-constructed and mass-produced homes not going to last very long? I suspect the critique here is that even as the world ends, some of the products of our society that aren’t that great – like McMansions – will live on. A Google image search suggests the character will wander into a sports stadium and an art museum. Here is the one hint I could find of the McMansion-strewn Tucson landscape.

Presenting “McMansion man”

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David Siegel is wealthy and known for building the largest home in the United States (see my review of the film about its construction). Could he be known as “McMansion man”? Read this headline and story:

‘McMansion’ Man Gives Everyone a Raise

You of course remember the head of the Westgate Resorts timeshare billionaire whose efforts to build the largest home in the U.S. were the subject of the documentary “The Queen of Versailles.”

When last we heard from him, he prophesied that the election of Barack Obama would lead to economic ruin. He sent an email to his employees saying that the election of Obama will “threaten your job” and mean “less benefits and certainly less opportunity for everyone.”

It turns out his crystal ball was clouded. In a company-wide email to employees announcing that he was raising minimum wage to $10 an hour, he noted: “We’re experiencing the best year in our history.” It is not clear what he was paying them or how many of his employees will be impacted, but a company spokesman said it numbers in the thousands.

As I’ve argued before, Siegel is building much much more than a McMansion: a 90,000 square foot home is super mansion territory and is unlikely to show up anywhere near a typical suburban subdivision. (Perhaps this is illustrated best by the years it has taken Siegel to build his gargantuan home.) Thus, I don’t think he qualifies.

Who might qualify as “McMansion man”? What might such a superhero look like? Or, given the negative attention often paid to McMansions, perhaps a super villain. If you have read a lot of the press coverage of McMansion in the last 15 years or so, perhaps one of the executives at Toll Brothers deserves the title. (But, they are now into urban building.) Maybe the McMansion protestors in Los Angeles could name such a figure.

A tale of two teardown McMansions in Miami and the guidelines that might follow

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The Guardian contrasts the teardown fate of two Miami homes and discusses how preservationists want to set new guidelines:

City of Miami Beach figures show that from 2005 to 2011, only 20 requests for the demolition and reconstruction of architecturally significant pre-1942 homes were submitted; another 20 more came in for the calendar year 2012; and from January to October 2013, the latest period for which figures are available, a further 40 applications were received.

James Murphy, principal planner for the municipality, described the trend towards development as “off the chain” and said that the city’s Design Review Board, the ultimate authority in decisions of destruction versus preservation, was trying to keep up…

The preservationists, meanwhile, have been here before. The Miami Design Preservation League, which fought and won a battle in the late 1970s to save the curvy art deco facades of Miami Beach hotels and condominium blocks, is eyeing a way to convert what it claims to be a groundswell of support over the Hochstein villa into new legislation.

It is discussing with city commissioners a proposal that would require any application involving a property more than 50 years old to automatically go through a formal review process before demolition could be approved.

The two stories presented are interesting ones. The first involves a wealthy owner moving an older house on the property and restoring it. The second involves a wealthy owner finding an older house with lots of problems, leading to its demolition and the construction of a 20,000 square foot home. Should both cases be subject to the same rules? Presumably, preservationists would develop a whole set of guidelines that would dictate when owners could and could not make changes but I do wonder if they would prefer that no old homes are demolished for any reason.

Side note: here is the definition of a McMansion in the article.

Already going up in its place is a 20,000 sq ft waterfront palace, complete with an enormous games room, walk-in wine cellar and 17-seat cinema. Such oversized homes, frequently occupied only by successful professional couples or their small families, have become known as McMansions.

The luxuriousness of the home may lean toward a McMansion but (1) the size is simply too big (this is a mass-produced tract home) and (2) it is relatively rare to discuss what kind of family structure is present in a McMansion.

“America’s Ugly Mansions”

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As this Forbes piece notes, “Money, after all, doesn’t buy taste.” See some of America’s ugliest mansions here:

“Everyone has opinions on other people’s houses,” says Sarah A. Leavitt, a curator with the National Building Museum in Washington, D.C., which recently unveiled the exhibition House and Home, surveying how the American hearth, from two story colonials to row houses, has changed over the last 200 years. For some, their nightmarish take on someone else’s dream home may be “because they would have done it differently.” For others, the critique may be “because they can’t afford it.”

Most homes, after all–colonials, capes, ranches and splits, follow the same boxy patterns. Developers “have to appeal to the common denominator,” Leavitt says, leaving only those with deep pockets to tailor their own palaces.

One thing seems to unite these ugly homes: they have features or portions that are out of proportion with the rest of the house or with what people typically expect in homes. Take the Gas Station home. A portico is not necessarily a problem but one that extends over the driveway at a two-story height looks cartoonish. Or the Concrete Blocks house. Concrete can be effectively used in modern architecture but an elongated concrete garage looks like too much. Thus, if you have money and want a big house, try to have a design that has some moderation.

If you want to vote for which home you think if the worst, go here.

A picket line against McMansions

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McMansions may be unpopular in Los Angeles but they rarely attract picket lines:

Residents in the Melrose District Sunday protested what they’re calling mega-mansions in Los Angeles.

A picket line was set-up outside of a new home in the 700 block of N. Vista Street which some claim towers over much smaller residences nearby and isn’t energy-efficient.

Demonstrators say they timed their protest to coincide with the realtor’s open-house of the residence…

The owner of the home being picketed was not available for comment.

I am guessing this doesn’t build goodwill among neighbors. Imagine you are trying to sell a home (or buy that same home) that attracts a picket line…I’m not sure there is a good outcome for that seller. I assume the people in the picket line hope this (1) draws attention to their cause and (2) tells other owners in the neighborhood that they will be unhappy with similar teardowns. Yet, I wonder if this truly acts as a deterrent and instead affects their own property values. Directly protesting the actions of one homeowner tends to violate neighborhood friendliness or at least the suburban moral minimalism (a term from The Moral Order of a Suburb by Baumgarner) of leaving each other alone that marks many sprawling communities.

Can a home be unassuming on the outside but a McMansion on the inside?

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One Detroit house for sale looks unassuming on the outside but has a remodeled interior that Curbed claims is a “McMansion on the inside”:

House hunting in Indian Village is usually an adventure. Covering a wide range of architectural styles, every house in the neighborhood has its own personality. Plus, it’s Detroit, so there’s always the chance of finding a hot mess of a mansion.

Perhaps that’s why 2741 Seminole is kind of a bummer. The four-bedroom house dates back to 1915, but a recent remod swiped its personality for that of the local Marriott. Beige tile, beige backsplash, beige granite, and beige carpeting a sad interior do make. There is hope in the living room, where you’ll find original wood floors and what looks like an old bar. Ask: $264K.

After looking at the pictures, it seems that McMansion is used here as shorthand for bland. As noted, the colors are not that exciting though it looks like much of the trim is still dark wood and at least one stained-glass window and built-in drawers feature was saved. The bland charge hints at a kind of mass production that one wouldn’t expect looking at the exterior of the home or the year it was built. If a buyer was looking for character in this interior, it has been glazed over with neutral colors and updated features. Perhaps there is a market for this kind of house: people who want the exterior to exude true gravitas (as opposed to the garishness of newer McMansions) but want the updated and neutral interior.

Another connotation of McMansion is of poor design or quality; it is hard to know from these pictures whether that is the case with the interior changes.

But, would critics of McMansions really be willing to brand this home a McMansion? Many such determinations are based on the exterior and the image the owner projects to the neighborhood. But, if the owner doesn’t offend the sensibilities of those who see it, is it really that bad?