#HTE
Hilarious “McMansion Hell” Website Tears the Architectural Style Apart With Callouts & Pictures
On one end of the architectural spectrum, you’ve got the self-important avant garde starchitects who design alienating structures incomprehensible to the layperson. On the other end, you’ve got the McMansion-designing maniacs whose designs appear to have been conceived of by creating collages in Photoshop. Which is worse?
An anonymously-written website called McMansion Hell takes aim at the latter group, heaping scorn on the style while trying to educate laypeople with “weekly informative essays about urbanism, architecture, sociology, and interior design.” While the scornful stuff is obviously more fun, let’s start with the educational stuff:
An article called “McMansion 101” explains the difference between a proper mansion and a McMansion, with both photographs and explanatory text. Here’s an excerpt:
Mansion or McMansion: What Distinguishes the Two?
The distinctions between a Mansion and a McMansion can be divided into three categories:
1.) Age
2.) Craftsmanship (e.g. being designed for the space of the lot, the quality of the building materials)
3.) Architectural and Stylistic Integrity (how well historical design styles are integrated or reproduced, attention to detail and principles of design)
It then goes into detail into these three categories and more. It’s worth a read. While some of the points are obvious to those of us with design educations, the information would certainly be of use to laypeople, in terms of training their eyes for what to look for.
More fun are the entries, like this one, which excoriates the design of a $1.7 million home in Virginia.
The original entry also features tons of explanatory text accompanying the photos, you can read it here.
http://www.core77.com/posts/55683/Hilarious-McMansion-Hell-Website-Tears-the-Architectural-Style-Apart-With-Callouts-n-Pictures