Passing Judgement on McMansions

The Austin Chronicle had an Am I a McMansion or Not contest, and you've got to see some of them to believe them. While I can't imagine living in a giant house (old or new), it seems only a fraction of newly built mansions have anything even approaching an aesthetic sense. That'll be readily apparent when you view the pictures posted for the contest. Some of the houses aren't ginormous, they're just out of keeping with the neighborhood by 1000 or so square feet. Others are just such gigantic monstrosities that I can't imagine anyone wanting to live nearby. Seriously, I've seen oil refineries with more aesthetic value than some of these.

The other interesting thing about this contest is that there's actually no way to tell just how large the houses are from the pictures. People love to point out huge old homes as somehow being exempt from being ugly, but in reality, it's kinda tough to find an original Victorian that's above 7,000 square feet. Most of them fall into the 3,500-5,500 category, and it's their architectural styling that creates the impression that they're larger. Troll a real estate website and check out the numbers - it's eye-opening.

But what really makes me wonder in all of this, is why people are so interested in just the square footage. The detractors tend to hate the hideous, with the greatest opprobrium leveled against the giant and ill-proportioned. But why would someone building a 8,000 square foot house decide that proper proportions, consistent styling, and careful material choice don't matter? Are they just aesthetically blind? Or do they care so much about the size that anything else doesn't matter? I walk around my neighborhood and see just terrible houses - and most of these are infill or remodeling jobs. There are 70s suburban-style split levels turned on their sides and sandwiched in, homes that keep getting larger as you move backwards in the lot (a homeowner's version of "big fish eat little fish"), and others that create a timewarp of 30s craftsman followed by 80s modernism. Others just build a giant garages (3, 4, 5, how many can I get if I don't pull a permit?) that fill the entire backyard. And yet those people still need to park on the street.

Apparently we need all this space for our stuff, but our stuff can't possibly be worth it. Maybe one or two percent of the population is housing a museum-quality collection of something in their back rooms, but most of us are just housing crap we haven't bothered to get rid of. And now that it's all coming from China, where it's been made in 15 minues or less by a person making a dollar an hour, it can't possibly warrant the extended life-span we insist on. At over $100 a square foot in nearly every community in America (up to $1000/sqft in the most expensive neighborhoods), that's a lot of money to spend storing old sweatshirts, unused exercise equipment, and VHS tapes. In my neighborhood, going from 2 bedrooms to 3 can be a $30,000 option. That's a lot of money for a "scrapbooking room."

Any thoughts?