Tag Archives: architecture

Drawing Israel’s sprawling “urburbs” in the sand

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Urban sprawl is not limited to the United States; a new installation in Israel looks at that country’s sprawl in the last half-century.

The State of Israel was created in 1948, with a population of around 800,000. Today, 8 million people live there—a tenfold increase that happened over the course of just a few decades. That kind of growth sparks a ravenous demand for land and housing, and in Israel has led to a housing sprawl that a group of designers, architects, and artists have coined the Urburb: neighborhoods that aren’t quite urban (they’re outside metropolitan areas) but not quite suburban (they lack the pockets of commercial businesses that define most suburbs).

To convey the notion of the Urburb, this group—comprised of architect Ori Scialom, artist Keren Yeala-Golan, designer Edith Kofsky, and professor Roy Brand—created an installation at the Israeli Pavilion for this year’s Venice Architecture Biennale. Inside the sunlit space, guests will find four large patches of sand. Atop each is a sand printer, a machine built by the group specifically to trace blueprints, Etch-a-Sketch-style, of Israeli neighborhoods into the sand. After the sand printer has drawn one plan, it wipes the sand clean and draws another. The four printers trace city plans of Jerusalem, Holon, Hadera and Yahud, and in succession, they show how Israel’s neighborhoods became what they are today…

This wasn’t by design. In 1951, when the nation was still in its infancy, a Bauhaus-trained architect named Arieh Sharon created a housing plan for Israel that advocated a dispersed approach to development. Unfortunately for Sharon, people gravitated towards the coast, Israel saw an influx of immigrants, and the plan didn’t take. Units went up quickly to accommodate a booming population, without much regard to architectural integrity. (Yeala-Golan describes the residences as “cookie-cutter houses.”)

Lousy aesthetics aside, the sprawl has also created a commuter culture that’s bad for the environment: Residents have to drive into the nearest city for practically everything—groceries, schools, entertainment, and so on—since commercial properties weren’t built into the neighborhoods.

Urburb is a unique term that seems most like bedroom suburbs in the United States that are primarily about residences.

There are perhaps some parallels here to American sprawl patterns. After World War II, facing rapid population growth, both countries allowed/promoted more sprawling development. In the United States, this was often tied to millions of returning veterans who encountered housing shortages when returning from the war and in Israel it was related to immigration. “Architectural integrity,” an interesting term in itself, was not a priority as people needed housing. When looked at in hindsight, this has its drawbacks.

An interesting question to ask may be what would lead countries like the United States and Israel to promote more sprawling policies while other countries have tried to contain growing populations in more dense urban centers. In the United States, you had a combination of government support (changed mortgage rules, Interstate construction) alongside a developed frontier and individualist ideology and stirrings of sprawling growth in the booming 1920s. Other countries have much longer histories of valuing the urban center. Perhaps where this is most pertinent today is in places like China that in several decades have moved from largely rural to largely urban. What are the political and cultural dimensions of that sort of rapid change?

Remodeling dated and garish McMansions

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Some buyers of McMansions do quite a bit to update the homes:

The towering (and disintegrating) stucco walls, pretentious interior columns, two-story great room, and four vinyl garage doors that greeted visitors didn’t do much to distinguish it from its neighbors.

“We knew it was, inherently, a version of a McMansion. So one of our challenges was: How do we bring a new identity to it?” said Seip, vice president of Chase Building Group, based in Doylestown.

As the region’s stock of oversize – but often under-designed – suburban tract houses ages into its teens and 20s, some homeowners are looking to reverse the gravest missteps and most ludicrous larks of prerecession developers. They’re ripping out never-used master-bath Jacuzzis, lowering space-wasting cathedral ceilings and replacing builder-grade finishes with more personalized selections…

“If you have a house that was cheaply built with bad materials, with a short-term development mentality . . . it will always plague whatever you do,” he said. “We can solve for a badly planned house. But we can’t change a badly made house into a well-made house.”

This is one answer to the question of what will happen to McMansions several decades later: some of them will be remodeled to fit new trends. New owners often want the latest features and want to avoid the appearance of dated finishes.

There are several possible responses to this:

1. Not all McMansions are likely to be significantly remodeled. What happens to them and how many will there be?

2. The last quote in the passage above is interesting: the changes can only go so far to fix earlier features of the house.

3. Critics of McMansions might suggest no one should buy these homes in the first place but it is interesting to note that there are homebuyers who think McMansions can be “fixed” or changed to better meet their needs. Even if significant remodeling is desired, is square footage still a key drawing point of these homes?

4. The stucco McMansion finishes in Pennsylvania seem to draw quite a bit of attention. Are there no stucco McMansions further in the Northeast? Perhaps builders got a little carried away with this exterior finish in an area that has more roots in northern European architecture.

The origins of the American split-level home

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Where do all the American split-level homes come from?

Split-levels can be found in many regions, especially in neighborhoods developed after World War II.

The homes borrow a bit of the horizontal profile of a ranch – if the ranch was sliced down the middle, with the bedroom wing bumped skyward half a story to create space underneath for a garage and family room.

It’s not clear when they were invented, though a version of a split-level can be found in Sears, Roebuck & Co. home plan books from the 1930s, according to Minnesota architects Robert Gerloff and Jeremiah Battles, who wrote an online guide to renovating splits called “Split Visions.”

“Splits offered a unique separation of social space, with bedrooms perched a half-story above the formal living space and the informal living space found a half-story below,” the authors say. They shake up “the traditional American pattern of formal rooms on the main level with bedrooms upstairs and a full basement below.”

My interpretation: they are a pragmatic American solution in housing that might just rank up there with the ranch house and the McMansion. Such homes take a basic design and develop multiple living levels as well as spaces that can be connected to various degrees (depending on whether walls are fully intact between spaces or levels). They are relatively cheap to build. They are not necessarily aesthetically pleasing; they tend not to evoke traditional architectural styles (making them easy to plop down anywhere) though are usually not ostentatious.

Side note: I spent most of my years growing up in a split-level. I can attest to their advantages, particularly the multiple social spaces. At the same time, I’m not sure I would buy one myself in the future except for the fact that they seem to be cheaper than homes of a similar size.

Mid-century modern ranches as the anti-McMansion

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If you don’t want a McMansion, one Pinterest user suggests looking into a mid-century modern ranch:

 

 

 

 

 

 

I don’t buy this argument about modern ranch homes winning out against McMansions. Here are a few reasons:

1. I don’t think most Americans would choose a modernist home over a McMansion.

2. These ranch homes look they still have a decent amount of space. How much smaller than a typical McMansion does an anti-McMansion have to be? Others have argued a better opposite end of the spectrum is a micro-apartment: significantly smaller and located in a much denser context.

3. McMansions get criticized for poor architecture but ranches are fairly limited in this arena as well. Of course, there are degrees of modernist homes and a “normal” ranch may not have many of these features such as stark lines and simple designs. Or, ranches may go all in regarding their modern design while McMansions dabble in various styles. But, authentically undesirable architecture may not be that different from inauthentic undesirable architecture.

4. The interiors of these ranches look tastefully decorated. Can’t the same be done for McMansions? I would also guess ranch homes can be made to look bad and those are the ones that don’t make it anywhere near Pinterest.

Bad options: “grand McMansion” vs. “cookie cutter townhouse”

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This description of a Season 87 House Hunters episode suggests the homebuyers have two less than stellar options:

Ryan and Stacey have $300,000 to buy their first home outside Baltimore, but they want very different things. He dreams of a grand McMansion, but she wants a cookie cutter townhouse with a uniform look. And since they’re both a bit stubborn, neither one is willing to give an inch. Can they find a place that they can agree on, or will this house hunt become a Battle in Baltimore?

This sounds like a typical House Hunters episode: the couple have different visions on what they want and perhaps they will compromise on a third option that gives them each a little of what they want. But, the choices set up here are interesting. McMansions are disliked by numerous critics. Does Ryan himself say he wants a McMansion or is this description using this as shorthand to describe a large suburban home? Then, is a “cookie cutter townhouse” a superior alternative? Critics of McMansions might note that at least townhouses are denser developments and tend to not be as large. Yet, townhouses aren’t usually known for their fine architecture and a uniform look doesn’t help anyone distinguish themselves. Both McMansion owners and critics tend to buy into the idea that a home is supposed to express yourself – though they disagree on what should be expressed and how – and a townhouse with this sort of description wouldn’t fit the bill.

A McMansion that can be built within Austin’s McMansion Ordinance

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One Texas home designer shows off what he can build under Austin’s McMansion ordinance. Based on all 69 pictures of the house under construction, how different is it from a McMansion?

1. It looks relatively large. At the least, it is not a small house.

2. It is built in a more traditional style: no two-story entryway, no Palladian window, there is some lawn around the whole house (though not much on the sides of the house), there is a limited number of roof gables. There is a real front porch where residents can actually sit. At the same time, the siding is not too distinctive, there don’t appear to be too many windows on the sides of the house (the neighbors are fairly close), and the kitchen is fairly typical dark cabinets, granites countertops (including an island), and stainless steel appliances.

3. The first floor has an open floor plan where the living/family room to the right of the front door opens right up into the kitchen. There are at least two bathrooms. Oddly, there are photos of two laundry rooms.

Zillow suggests the home has 2 bedrooms, 2 baths, is 2,248 square feet, and is in a neighborhood with a range of home values. This particular house seems fairly muted compared to some of his other designs. It is hard to know exactly how much the Austin McMansion ordinance changed what could be done with this particular house but the McMansion designs elsewhere seem more stereotypical.

One last question: the designer appears to have labeled the home a McMansion. Given the loaded nature of this term, is this the best strategy?

Piling on to the argument we’ve sacrificed everything for McMansions

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Going through Thomas Frank’s recent argument that we’ve sacrificed quite a bit for some to have McMansions, one Co.Design writer adds a few choice phrases about McMansions:

The soul of the McMansion is as ugly as its faux-classical facade…

The result? Sprawling suburbs made to accommodate larger and larger homes that tend to be a ugly mishmash of architectural sensibilities. McMansions present a unique design challenge that, sadly, is rarely overcome with dignity…

There’s a domino effect that has profoundly affected the way all of America lives to accommodate the desires of those wealthy enough to afford such gargantuan and opulent residences…

Long live our McMansion overlords.

Think there are any redeeming qualities in McMansions? While Frank emphasized the economic sacrifices and conditions necessary for McMansions (financing sprawl, cheap mortgages, wealth funneled to the well-off), this argument relies on a common McMansion critique: they are lacking in architectural quality and design. The subtitle to the article sums this up: “Hideous houses are ruining America.” Is the bigger problem their lack of soul and architectural authenticity or the system that exists to make McMansions possible for the relative few? I side with Frank on this one.

“25 Lessons You’ll Learn From a McMansion”

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One contributer to MyOldHouseOnline.com finds humor in things you can learn from a McMansion:

1) The builders did not have all the answers.  Sometimes, they didn’t understand any of the questions.  Feel free to display bewilderment and dismay at their cluelessness.

2)  When you find a light or window in an inexplicable location or missing where one should decidedly be, refer to lesson #1.

3) Four words: What Were They Thinking?

4) McMansion owners can be the best-dressed people at the party.  But when the party is at their house, try not to stare, point, or snicker…

The main joke here appears to be that McMansions are not built that well. Hence, be prepared to find lots of things to fix or to have to make major changes to poor decisions by builders.

What do McMansions look like on Shutterstock?

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After earlier this week looking at an iconic McMansion photo, I decided to see how Shutterstock, a stock photo site, portrays McMansions. See the results here.

Some patterns:

1. Most of the homes are in suburban settings. While the term McMansion can also apply to teardowns or large homes on small lots in more crowded neighborhoods, these stock photos are primarily about big houses in neighborhoods with larger lots.

2. Most of the homes are “normal” looking McMansions. They share features like a two-story foyer, at least a two-car garage, and multi-terraced roof line. There are few photos of homes with more castle-like features or modern architecture.

3. There appear to be some particular audiences for these photos: real estate agents who need pictures of nice homes with sold signs in the front yard and people who like flagpoles in the front yard (it appears a number of these are the same photoshopped flag).

4. The photos are mostly of lighter-colored houses, either either white or grey siding with some light brick mixed in. Few homes had darker brick or stucco.

All together, there could be a lot more variety of McMansions on this site.

Fake Georgian office building to hide electric substation next to fake Hard Rock Cafe in Chicago

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It is not uncommon for cities to have fake buildings or facades to hide infrastructure and here is an example in Chicago where the same architect designed the Hard Rock Cafe and fake mansion next door:

The most noteworthy, a faux Georgian mansion in the River North area of downtown, was designed by perhaps the city’s most famous living architect, Stanley Tigerman, former director of the School of Architecture at the University of Illinois at Chicago.

“The building is somewhat tongue-in-cheek , a bit of a joke,” said Tigerman, who had first designed a restaurant just west of the site. “The Hard Rock Cafe: fake stucco, fake Georgian, nothing real about it. Then they came to me and wanted me to do the ComEd substation next door, but to be contextual, to relate it to this ersatz piece of junk.”

So rather than construct a bogus building based on a fake, albeit one he designed, Tigerman cut the other direction.

“I decided to go absolutely hard core, as classically designed as I could, done authentically Georgian,” he said. “The brick bonding is  English cross bond, the one Mies van der Rohe used whenever he used brick. It’s very expensive to to lay bricks that way, but it makes the walls sturdy and impervious to cracking. I knew the building would never receive any maintenance, so the idea was to do as good a building as I could.”

He also had to take into account the building’s true purpose — so if you look closely, what seem to be windows are actually vents, to help cool the 138 kV electrical transmission equipment inside.

Hiding in plain sight. Here is the Google Streetview image of the two buildings, the covered substation on the left and the Hard Rock Cafe on the right:

55WestOntarioChicago

This could lead to a great architecture conversation: which of the buildings is more fake or authentic? The restaurant which is about evoking a particular spirit (a museum? an imposing older structure intended to lend more gravitas to rock ‘n’ roll?) to make money? Or the fake mansion with more pure design that does nothing but hide the infrastructure that is necessary for big cities? Both could be considered postmodern for their application of old styles to new purposes, their exteriors projecting certain images that don’t match their interiors.