Tag Archives: architects

McMansion owners want “a front and rear entrance, a dining room, and a recreation room”

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According to this description of McMansions, they offer suburban homeowners the basics:

When Sandy and Chris Ross were in Portland, Ore., they lived in a house built for those who buy large suburban dwellings.

“Our house was a McMansion, designed for most people who want a front and rear entrance, a dining room, and a recreation room,” says Chris Ross, a software engineer.

But the Rosses are not most people.

When they moved to Bryn Mawr, they wanted a house built to accommodate their family’s special needs, limited finances, and environmental awareness.

The main contrast developed here is between a McMansion and a custom-built home designed by an architect. McMansions provide the basics of a suburban home: a front and back door, some basic rooms, and plenty of space for living. In contrast, the home designed by an architect allowed the couple to have a kitchen that met their needs, a house that highlighted a notable Japanese maple in the front yard, and a good insulation and design that helps keep utility costs low.

Perhaps the bigger issue here is that most suburban homes are not built by architects nor are they really customized for their buyers. The article seems to suggest the custom home is desirable but a majority of homebuyers choose not to go this route. This particular story does not say how much this custom home cost. Additionally, a custom design might take longer and many homeowners may not feel equipped to help put together or desire a more customized home. Yet, a custom-designed home could allow more homeowners to really say their home reflects them.

New Urbanist Andrés Duany discusses “lean urbanism”

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Architect Andrés Duany talks about his latest idea: lean urbanism.

Galina Tachieva: Can you summarize the big topics that are on your mind today? What about some short-term actions we can take as urban thinkers and doers?

Andrés Duany: We at Duany Plater-Zyberk & Company have been engaging many of those topics, and are in the midst of writing a book to be called Lean Urbanism. Big things changed on a permanent basis around the 2007 meltdown; many of the false premises that guided American urban planning seem almost comical today, while, in fact, in the past they had the dignity of seeming tragic. One of the most interesting topics is identifying another set of appropriate models. Our current thesis is studying the great American continental expansion of the latter half of the 19th century, when thousands of towns and cities were founded in the absence of financing. We must understand what allowed that and what makes it seem impossible today. Among the constituent elements are a very light hand of government and, often, management genius—as well as normative patterns like the continental survey, the town grid, etc. But the key element is successional urbanism. Start small at the inauguration, and later build well, culminating in the climax condition of the magnificent cities of the 1920s. By contrast, for the past 15 years or so, planners have been going straight to the climax condition, bypassing the inaugural condition and successional stages of urban molting. We need to develop protocols for every level—financial, administrative, and cultural—that will allow successional planning to occur again. Those are the big things…

Galina Tachieva: Why is it important to talk about and further develop Lean Urbanism?

Andrés Duany: Some of the conditions we find ourselves in are permanent. Even when the effects of the real estate bubble are overcome, what is revealed is an underlying impoverishment. We are no longer the fantastically wealthy nation that we had been since the Second World War, in which we could implement simpleminded ideas and then proceed to mitigate them by throwing money at them. The primary wasteful idea is the building of very high-grade highway infrastructure, not just for inter-city commerce, but also for securing quite ordinary things. Taking an arterial to get a cup of coffee at Starbucks is now conventional. This posits an urbanism in which it is assumed every adult will purchase a car because it is a prerequisite for a viable social and economic life. This is an astoundingly profligate conceit, and one quite unfair to the 50 percent or so Americans who don’t drive because they are too young, too old, or too poor to have access to a car. We can no longer even pretend to afford that kind of thing.

There is more interesting material in the full interview including Duany’s take on the historical stages of New Urbanism.

The portion in the quote above sounds like New Urbanism tweaked for a recession era: you can’t put it all together at once so you need to build in modules and continue to question some of the basic assumptions about planning so that we don’t incur unnecessary long-term costs (like keeping up with cars). Of course, the economy doesn’t necessarily have to stay in the doldrums, oil may be plentiful, and Americans may have more wealth down the road to continue to have cars (which are quite costly). But, it sounds like Duany assumes these problems will persist – and this may just be good for New Urbanism in hte long run.

If the economic situation continues to be difficult, it would then be interesting to ask how this is supposed to work out in practice. Building whole towns in a New Urbanist style is out? It is worth noting that Duany mentioned the need not just to have good planning of physical space but also the right administrative and cultural elements. Indeed, the physical planning may be the easiest part as it takes a lot to put together good yet limited management/government within communities that are meaningful from the start.

McMansions, housing markets, and the influence of banks

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An Australian architect argues homes should be valued on newer tastes rather than older interests in McMansions:

Recent sales and development figures have highlighted a trend towards smaller living spaces but the system for valuations in the capital seems biased towards larger average quality homes, Canberran architect Allan Spira said…

Mr Spira said building smaller, more affordable and sustainable homes will only be an option for “cashed up clients” unless the current system of valuations is changed.

“It’s time for the banks and their valuers to stop basing their assessments on the ‘McMansions’ of the past and start acknowledging the way of the future – smaller, smarter, better fitted out homes,” he said…

Mr Spira said most recently his clients struggled to get a $300,000 loan to build their three bedroom home in Wright.

Built across 127 square metres, he said it was “probably the most affordable and sustainable home in the suburb” but valuers CBRE based their calculations on inappropriate figures as no previous sales figures existed in Molonglo.

It might be hard to make a larger argument based on two cases. But, this argument does raise some larger issues:

1. Just when exactly do bankers and others know when the housing market has turned? In this case, the architect suggests people now want smaller homes compared to the McMansions they wanted a few years ago. It is easier to see change over the course of several years or a decade but it is harder to see this in the short run.

2. How much do banks and their choices about mortgages influence house purchasing and building patterns? Banks were partly blamed for the housing meltdown in the late 2000s but what percentage of blame do they deserve? I haven’t seen someone parse out the particular effect banking and mortgage choices have on what homebuyers are willing to do. This architect suggests homes aren’t being built because banks won’t provide financing for them but it is not clear how often this really happens.

Planning for the 7 billion person city

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Two architects recently won an award for planning for a city that would include all the residents of the world:

This is the premise behind an ambitious research project, called “The City of 7 Billion,” for which the two recently won the $100,000 Latrobe Prize from the American Institute of Architects College of Fellows. With the geo-spatial model Mendis and Hsiang are creating – think a super-enhanced, zoomable Google Earth, Hsiang says – they’re hoping to study the impact of population growth and resource consumption at the scale of the whole world.

Every corner of the planet, they argue, is “urban” in some sense, touched by farming that feeds cities, pollution that comes out of them, industrialization that has made urban centers what they are today. So why not think of the world as a single urban entity?…

Now she and Mendis will be trying to do something similar – sew together disparate data sets, turn them into spatial models, then make those models accessible to the public – with a vastly more complex scenario. They want to connect not just land use with population density, but also income data, carbon dioxide levels, and geographical terrain. Their model of the whole world as one continuous urban terrain could then be used as a predictive tool for planning development into the future.

Hsiang and Mendis are hoping to communicate data and ideas that the political and scientific communities have had a hard time conveying to the public. This may sound like an odd job for architects – visualizing worldwide data about air quality – but Hsiang and Mendis argue that architects are precisely the professionals to do this…

More often, however, they have not been working at the same scale as policy-makers and scientists. “For too long, the architecture profession has been complicit in focusing on buildings and the scale of buildings,” Mendis says. “And I think that’s been detrimental to us.” The City of 7 Billion is an attempt to change that, to involve architects in big-picture questions more often debated by economists and geographers and social scientists.

This sounds like an interesting project on multiple levels:

1. Trying to imagine what a megacity of this size would look like. We are a long way from a megapolis this size yet there are parts of the world that might benefit from such thinking.

2. Putting together data in new ways. This is stretching some of the boundaries of data visualization by putting it in 3-D form.

3. Helping architects get involved in larger conversations about cities.

It will be worth watching where this goes.

Architect Jeanne Gang opposed to sprawl

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An interview with Chicago architect Jeanne Gang, designer of Aqua in the Loop, reveals her dislike for sprawl, and, along the way, the designs of Frank Lloyd Wright:

“Urbanization is the huge issue of our time,” she says. “We can’t survive if we can’t solve the problems of population growth, loss of clean air and water and loss of biodiversity.”

Gang and her firm, Studio Gang Architects, are pioneers in ecological urbanism, a field of design that considers rising populations and dwindling resources. Cities are key laboratories, and Gang says they must become denser and more nature-friendly.

She hasn’t hesitated to take on global icon Frank Lloyd Wright with her anti-sprawl approach. Chicago’s — and America’s — most famous architect spent decades promoting single homes on suburban lots where residents would savor nature far from downtowns and connect with society in cars.

“I want to turn Wright’s legacy upside down,” Gang says with no hint of doubt. “The way to be ecological is not by spreading out. It’s by clustering together. It’s by having a better relationship with nature in the city than you can have in a far-out suburb.”…

Taking on Wright is not an easy task. While he may have designed a number of single-family homes, he also designed a mile-high tower. Particularly in Chicago, Wright is someone revered for his ability to design in a Midwestern sort of way, drawing upon prairie influences and helping Chicago grow up. But, I’m sure Gang could find many people who agree that sprawl uses too many resources. Additionally, if new designs like that of Aqua can be more ecologically friendly, attract residents and business, and give cities iconic buildings, city leaders are likely to see this as a big win.

We know a McMansion when we see the outside but what is inside?

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A Quora forum member asks a broad yet intriguing question about McMansions: “What do McMansions look like on the inside?” Most of the attention McMansions receive is about the exterior. There are several common issues. It simply looks like a large house. Such homes do not have a consistent design as they can borrow from a variety of architectural styles. The house looks imposing from the street. The garage, at least two cars, can dominate the facade. The home does not fit with the style of the rest of the neighborhood. It may dwarf nearby homes. The front may be well-appointed but the sides and rear have vinyl siding, little brick, and little character. All of these critiques have something in common: houses should fit in with their surroundings and also present a coherent and less-than-ostentatious image. One group who have critiqued McMansions at times, New Urbanists, tend to make this argument that homes should be part of a larger neighborhood and have less to say about the interiors of large homes.

But, there is another aspect to McMansions that seems to receive less attention. I assume the reason for this is fairly obvious: most observers of McMansions, whether they are driving by homes on the way home from work or academics writing about the phenomenon, have less access to the interiors. In other words, homes are private spaces that generally aren’t open to private viewing. We might know some of the broad trends: people in recent years like granite countertops and stainless steel appliances, McMansions can have large foyers, there is a lot of interior space including rooms in addition to the standard ones, relatively more money is spent on the size of the home so less is devoted to long-lasting appointments, and McMansion owners may have little furniture or nice appointments because they spent so much on the house (this is a common stereotype).

There are architects and others who are more worried about the interiors of large homes. Architect Sarah Susanka, developer of the Not So Big House, argues that it is much better to have a home that fits a homeowner’s individual needs than to simply have a large house. She advocates for custom spaces within a home that both reflect the individual tastes of the homeowners as well as their activities. In contrast, McMansions are viewed as soulless homes that homeowners must fit into rather than the other way around. There are also others who argue there should more of a psychological fit between homeowners and their home.

This reminds me of the 1981 book The Meaning of Things: Domestic Symbols and the Self. The two researchers spent time observing people’s homes as well as talking to them about how they related to the objects they had in their home. I think there is a lot more research that could be done in this area. On one hand, we often buy into the idea that the products we buy and display say something about us (and we often also view our homes as expressions of our self) and yet, we don’t think too deeply about this most of the time.

Hit by the recession: “Architecture revenue down 40% since 2008”

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Amongst those hit hard by the economic crisis and the downturn in the housing and building industries, don’t overlook architects:

Between 2008 and 2011, gross revenue at architecture firms fell from over $44 billion to $26 billion. More than 28 percent of positions disappeared…

Architecture is dependent on construction, which is notoriously cyclical – usually three or four times more volatile than the market, says Kermit Baker, the AIA’s chief economist and a professor at the Harvard Graduate School of Design. “It’s been devastating,” he says. “Construction activity has been down 50 or 60 percent – architecture has a long tradition of trying to survive the construction cycle, and it’s extremely challenging because architecture firms are by and large small- and medium-size firms.”…

But the highly competitive market has also encouraged innovation. The percentage of architectural firms that employ LEED-accredited professionals has doubled since 2008, from one-third of all firms to two-thirds. Baker, who helped prepare the report, says sustainable design is a way for firms to distinguish themselves in a crowded field. But it also demonstrates a larger, permanent shift toward environmental awareness…

Particularly in small practices, architecture firms are expanding their range, fostering talents in interior design, construction, or environmental planning. Again, this multidisciplinary shift reflects a desire to compete in a crowded market, but it also speaks to a larger trend toward “one-stop-shop” firms where clients can find everything they need. Progressives have been advocating closer contact between design professionals for ages, and the recession has made it pay off.

Even before the recession, relatively few homes were constructed with the aid of architects.

Thinking more broadly, economic prosperity and hardship leads to changes in the more cultural aspects of society. In response to these changes, architects have expanded into two areas, sustainability and design, which could lead to different kinds of buildings in the years to come.

Modernist homes doomed by being too small?

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Here is an interesting suggestion regarding modernist homes like those found in New Canaan, Connecticut: the homes were just too small to compete with McMansions.

Among the houses that Philip Johnson designed in New Canaan, Conn., the suburban enclave that became a laboratory for postwar Modernist design, the Robert C. Wiley house, completed in 1953, remains one of his most elegant. It is a strikingly simple composition of two rectangular boxes: one, a glass and wood pavilion with a single, 15-foot-tall living, dining and kitchen space, is cantilevered over the other, a stone and concrete base that contains, among other things, four small bedrooms, bathrooms and a sitting room. The 3,000-square-foot house typifies Modernism’s insistence on efficient use of space, but by the advent of the McMansion era, despite its architectural pedigree, it merely seemed quaintly, and unsalably, tiny.

The house had been on the market for some time when an enlightened buyer — Frank Gallipoli, the president of Freepoint Commodities, an energy trading firm — bought it in 1994. “I wasn’t looking for a Philip Johnson house,” he recalled, but given the price of land in New Canaan, the building, along with the six acres on which it sits, offered good value. “It had the utility of a house,” Gallipoli said, “but I was getting an art object.” And art is a subject close to Gallipoli’s heart: he owns an extensive collection that includes works by contemporary British artists like Damien Hirst, Tracey Emin, Gary Hume, Jenny Saville and Marc Quinn. Many of these pieces are too big to show in a domestic setting, so Gallipoli began to think about converting a barn on the property (it also served as a garage) into a private gallery. About 10 years ago, he asked Johnson himself to come up with a design, but the architect’s idea for a series of domed structures was never built. Ultimately, Gallipoli commissioned Roger Ferris, of the Connecticut firm Roger Ferris + Partners, to design the barn, along with a pool house, a new garage and a substantial restoration of the existing house. (Ferris also did some work on Gallipoli’s Manhattan house and designed a “surf shack” for him in the Hamptons, which includes a pink Corian aboveground lap pool.)

I know the point of piece is to discuss the intriguing rebuild of this home but I find the suggestion at the end of the first paragraph fascinating. The tone of the piece is that people should recognize the beauty of the home and it took an “enlightened” buyer with a true interest in art to see it for what it could be. But, alas, Americans got bogged down with buying humongous homes like McMansions and lost interest in homes with “architectural pedigree.”

I’ve suggested this before: if given a choice, I don’t think most Americans would select a modernist home. I’m not sure square footage is the only reason for this. Critics and architects may not like these choices but it also doesn’t necessarily mean Americans only go for the largest space, the best bang for the buck, the kitschiest house, or the most impressive space. Perhaps many Americans imply aren’t trained to know what critically praised architecture looks like or to appreciate it. Indeed, where is this training supposed to take place and when should it occur? (I don’t think it happens much in the curriculum from kindergarten through college.) Or perhaps it has to do with how Americans view social class and the suspicion Americans tend to have toward educated opinions and movements. Additionally, hiring an architect to design a home requires money that is likely out the reach of many Americans.

Further discussion of MoMa’s “Foreclosure” exhibit

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A few months ago, we wrote a couple of times about the “Foreclosed” exhibit at MoMa (see here and here). Here is an extended “roundtable debate” about the exhibit and a paragraph of argument from the four participants:

It is equally interesting, and maybe troubling, that the overwhelming majority of the projects did not take up practices of participatory design that also date back to the 1970s and even earlier. Still, it is worth noting that the more recent codification of “bottom-up” approaches to housing, particularly in Latin America, has coincided with neoliberal “structural adjustment” in the global economy. In the case of sites-and-services and other models of user-generated, low-income housing — in which municipalities provide only minimal financing and basic infrastructure (e.g., water, electricity, sanitation) and depend upon residents to construct their own shelter — this has often meant, among other things, offloading the material cost of that housing onto the backs of already dispossessed residents. This reality in no way delegitimizes vital efforts to empower residents in the provision of housing; it merely marks one of the potential contradictions — the fact that residents are often compelled by implicit, seemingly horizontal power relations to participate in processes that validate and perpetuate their own dispossession. And it suggests that empowerment from below must center on developing the political resources with which to contest — intellectually and pragmatically — the very structures by which this occurs…

That said, public-sector officials can help to encourage both for-profit and non-profit private developers to actually make diverse and inclusive housing — housing for all. Let’s say that we — we the people, via our elected representatives — insist that housing be provided for 100 percent of the population (and actually none of the Foreclosed teams addresses this most basic goal). As a robust player in the housing market, public housing would not only ensure that everyone has adequate housing; it might also spur other housing sectors to better performance. In other words, if the private sector cannot meet the large social goal, then public agencies will develop housing and in this way make the market more competitive. (In the ongoing medical insurance debate, it’s become clear that that the one thing both private and non-profit players will do almost anything to avoid is government competition, which in the case of health care might extend the proven success of such popular programs as Medicare.) It is important to acknowledge that housing is a tool of political power. Just as high jobless rates work to drive down wages (thus hurting workers and helping employers), so too high rates of homelessness, as well as overcrowding and substandard housing, serve to inflate the profits of real estate developers and mortgage bankers. At this most fundamental level, the threat of homelessness gives the 1% greater leverage over the 99%. If we guarantee that as a nation we will uphold the right to housing codified in Article 25 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, then we will empower the poor — a class which these days is expanding to include many who once felt secure in the middle…

These are just a few examples of thinking big/starting small. Central to all is the belief that design matters. For decades now, we have waged a battle between Architecture (high design) and architecture (social design). But as with public and private, this is a false debate. Ultimately good design must be aesthetically engaging, economically viable, environmentally responsive and socially just. There is no either/or. If we are to meet the goal of housing for all, good design must be part of the process. This is why Foreclosed is compelling; regardless of the criticism they’ve inspired, all of the projects grappled with the power of good design to reshape housing. And yet they all neglected one final quality of good design: the ability to be actionable. Let’s pair them with more agile, smaller-scale innovative processes, as a first step in realizing their big-scale visions…

Finally, we need an open, democratic approach to long-range planning. I don’t believe it when planners and designers talk about “smart growth,” “retrofitting the suburbs,” and “transit-oriented development.” These seem to me the new mantras for professions that lack the courage to confront the real problems and challenge the dictatorship of developers. The urban planning profession fully endorsed and helped create suburban sprawl when it chose to collaborate with the homebuilding industry and accommodate itself to the highway system. It is now obediently following the market trend towards denser development without critically engaging with and supporting the widespread movements that place quality of life over growth.

These are some big issues to tackle: the impact of neoliberal capitalism on housing, providing housing for all, marrying design and social design, and long-range planning that doesn’t just cater to developers. One exhibit can’t solve all of these concerns but they are important ones that more people should be discussing.

I had an interesting conversation with an architect a while ago that touched on some of these issues. He was interested in partnering with social scientists who could help him better understand how structures fit within a community. I wonder if this isn’t the route more architects will go: looking for a broader understanding of planning, design, and social life. This would require some openness from both sides but there is a long history of overlap between the two parties.

“McMansions making a comeback”!

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Several sources picked up on the latest data from Trulia that suggested more Americans are interested in bigger homes. With a headline of “McMansions Are Making a Comeback,” here is what US News & World Report said:

After greed and excess torpedoed the housing market a few years ago, Americans understandably began favoring more modest homes instead of pricey palatial abodes.

But it seems old habits die hard.

Reverting back to a “bigger is better” mentality, interest in mega-mansions 3,200 square feet and larger has almost doubled from a year ago, according to new data from real estate website Trulia. About 11 percent of today’s house hunters say they want their own McMansions, up from just 6 percent last year…

About 16 percent of those surveyed said their ideal home was in the 2,600 to 3,200 square feet range, but according to listing data from Trulia, homes currently on the market skew much smaller, with only 10 percent of homes listed falling within that range. Nearly 60 percent of homes listed are 2,000 square feet or smaller, which means many house hunters’ hopes will be disappointed.

More from the Wall Street Journal as architects are also noting the trend:

Big homes are back in style.

That’s the headline from the American Institute of Architects’ first-quarter Home Design Trends Survey set to be released Thursday. Eight percent of the 500 architecture firms responding say square footage of homes increased in the first quarter, up from 5% a year ago. This change, the biggest year-over-year jump since the survey started in 2005, ends a multiyear march toward smaller homes driven by the housing implosion…

But today’s buyers are different from those seen during the buy-as-big-as-you-can boom. “People don’t want bigger homes just to have bigger homes,” says Steve Ruffner, present of the Southern California division for KB Home, one of the nation’s largest home builders. “Buyers show up with calculators. They actually calculate cost per square foot. They really understand what they’re getting for the money.”

Interestingly, 45% of architects reported more interest in single-story homes, up from 35% a year ago. The result is the largest percentage since 2005, according to the AIA. During the easy credit housing boom, builders quickly inflated home sizes to generate more profit. An easy way to do that was to tack on a second – or third – floor, making single-stories hard to come by in some communities. While more of today’s buyers seek more space, they don’t necessarily want to deal with stairs. Aging boomers are also more likely to seek a one-story address.

We will see how this plays out. Of course, the story is more complex than “Americans want bigger homes again” or “the housing recovery has begun.” And it will be fascinating to watch how these new, larger homes are marketed and perceived: if buying a McMansion is really a moral choice, can there really be a good defense for such a purchase?