Translator: Lynn Wang
Reviewer: Nada Qanbar First of all, I'd like to apologize
to anyone in the room who considers themselves
to be architecturally sensitive. What you're about to see may upset you. So, the number one question
I get in my inbox all the time is, so McMansion hell,
what the hell is McMansion? So, it's pretty easy. I've narrowed it down
to a couple of factors. First of all, they are oversized. That means there's over 3,000 square feet which is 500 feet more than the highest
national housing average. So, AKA that space, as you can
see here probably 26 children. (Laughter) And the other thing is,
if you look at this house, which is quite lovely, (Laughter) I'm sorry. This house probably has
three media rooms, seven bathrooms with a garden tub,
and a chandelier and whatever, but it doesn't have a front porch
and I cannot find the front door. (Laughter) Also there's no lawn So, that leads to my second point,
they are poorly designed. So, that means there's no respect
for form or scale or other things that people in the architecture would call
'the basic rules of architecture.' So, as you can see here, this house looks like
it was designed by someone who maybe saw a house
once in their life, but either had some sort of visual issues or was wearing kaleidoscope glasses
that you get during Halloween. Even worse these poorly designed houses
are cheaply constructed. So, I will get to that in a second. But, I'd like to point out that
this is an engineering marvel. This is a house that is a wood frame
covered in different types of foam. (Laughter) So, and finally, they are disrespectful. (Laughter) So, you have to feel really bad
for the poor folks in these little houses who on longer have
any natural light in their homes. It is a dark time for them
as it is for all of us. So, basically they are
fundamentally bad architecture. Now, even though
I'm dressed impeccably well, I'm not the gatekeeper of what is
and is not good aesthetic architecture. But, we've been talking about these
things in architectural history for thousands of years
starting with Vitruvius, the great-great-great
-granddaddy of architecture. Sorry art history majors,
this is going to be boring. So, Vitruvius said that architecture
should be three things, right? It should be durable, it should be useful
or functional, and it should be beautiful. And McMansions are well,
you know, none of these things. So, let's start with durable. So, through most of human history
houses were built to last generations, that means that you
were born in the house, had kids in your house,
died in your house, and then your kids had kids
in your house and died in your house. AKA, they were permanent. That changed in the 1980s with access to
cheaper construction methods and materials and also in deregulation economies, etc, causing a huge housing bubble,
right? That we all know of. And basically these houses
weren't built to last 15 years, because they were built to have the most
amount of space for the lowest price, and people didn't really care about
how long they'd last anyway because they were going to live there
for maybe six years, maybe less because they were going to flip that house
and make, like, a million dollars. A million dollars. (Laughter) And they would be on the next house
before you ever knew it, so it was not their problem anymore, but we all know how that ended. So that brings me
to another part of durability- they are not aesthetically durable. That means that certain
house designs like you know, you have the box, and the box
has a roof and the roof looks like this, and this is the house that every child
draws, this is your idea of the house. These houses, of course,
as you can see in this case, this is a house that is got water damage,
and the balconies don't lay anywhere, you can actually go out open those doors,
you will fall into your yard. (Laughter) These were just trends. People saw stuff like this on TV
and said, "I want that on my house." And so they're not really
aesthetically durable because they were built on these trends, and when the trends ran out, they would be onto
the third house or the fourth house because they were flipping
and making millions of dollars. So, according to Bloomberg now,
these houses aren't selling well. And houses that are smaller,
you know, like normal people houses, built for normal people
not giant cars to live in, are appreciating
at a much higher and faster rate. And so we are gonna move on to useful.
What does it mean for house to be useful? So there are primary uses for a house. One is to keep us,
you know, out of the elements. Like you saw in the last example, it's not doing a good job of that
with the water damage in the missing deck. Oh, speaking of the elements, imaging trying to heat
and cool that house. So you can't even stay warm or cool
without spending millions of dollars. (Laughter) But most of all, a house is
suppose to be our home. It's a place for our sanctuary, community,
and being one with our families. And in a space that is designed
where everyone has their own room, and their own living room,
and their own dining room, and their own pool table? You don't have to interact
with any members of your family. So trust me I would have
loved that in the seventh grade. But I think most of us
are the well-adjusted people that we are, because we've had to fight
with our siblings in our parents, and all these things that come
from living in a smaller-knit space. And when you rob that sense
of community from our homes, what real purpose do they have? But McMansions ignore both of these
purposes to focus on a new purpose, and that purpose was
the house is an asset, the house was now becoming
through series of, you know, deregulatory
economic policies, etc, a liquid asset, it was money,
it was no longer a place to live, and it was seperated from the sense
of place and space that we know and consider our homes,
and so beautiful. McMansions don't follow
the rules of traditional architecture, but really love to use
the icons and the symbols, and shapes of the traditional architecture
like columns in windows styles, and the box with the roof, though the roof is three times
as big as the box. And in this case, you can see none
of the windows actually match. Some have muntains which is the bits
that separate the panes of glass, and some don't, and most of all it looks like
it is a screaming animal. (Laughter) So, there's no regard
for basic matching, scale, you know, the rules of architecture, because they were designed
mostly from the inside out, and mommy really needed
her cathedral ceilings in the bathroom. You know sometimes that meant you
had a roof on that looked like this. Okay what's the point, right? Why do I even care about McMansions
if they are so horrible, and why do I write about them?
Well, it's about education. 60 percent of people according to the U.S.
census bureau live in the suburbs, and not all of us have access
to the fabric of our cities that have buildings from different eras, and all their beautiful details,
all interwoven into an urban fabric. Most of us have to live with,
you know, McMansions. And so it's about teaching
with what you have, and also they're politically charged. They're sort of the poster child
of the recession, and they are attached to concepts
like urbanism and sustainability and other things that
make up a better world. You might be still
asking, "Okay, well, why not talk about you know
good architecture?" Well why so negative? I started writing
about architecture in high school to defend buildings like this. This is the Goshen Government
Centre by Paul Rudolph, in Goshen, New York which is undergoing,
what I like to call 'a murder.' (Laughter). I discovered, in the fight
for preservation of late modernist and post-modernist architecture
which is the part that I like, if you were on the side
of "I don't like this," you have the advantage. People say, "Oh, I like this,"
and like, okay, but if you say, "I don't
like this," then like why? And if you don't know why
you're pretty much a jerk - but that gets people talking
and starts a disscusion and so in McMansion hell
I saw this opportunity to explore, because a lof people hate McMansions
but they have no idea why. They're like, "I hate that,
it's big and it's ugly!", but they don't know what is
so ugly about it or why it seems so big, and that's sort of where I come in,
and it brings me to my final point. It's about the greater purpose. So my professor at Peabody
where I study acoustics has this saying that says, "The first step to good design
is avoiding the bad, then you can design the good, and the first step to avoiding
the bad is recognizing the bad." It's about looking at the world
through a critical eye, and the best part about being snarky
is that you are automatically critical. And so people can say, avoiding the bad, right? You don't want a house thet looks like the ginormous thing that's
on the screen here. This is literally the McMansion, it is a house that someone
took to their little mouth and blew up into a balloon. It's like they took the nice house
with the cable and (Puffs) Now if you know I don't like that,
and here's why I don't like that then I can start thinking
about encouraging other people and educating them about
why I don't like that and they don't like that. And maybe through this sort
of education and design, getting people who don't care about
design to talk about design is another really huge step
in perpetuating better design. And so through using America's
ugliest and most hated houses, I mean, I'm sorry. We can... (Laughter) In talking about them
in a way that introduces humor so it's not, "I'm shoving my good design
down your throat, dang you!" We can encourage people
through discussion, through education, through empowerment, to be a greater force for change,
and a change towards a more beautiful, a more sustainable, a more inclusive, and you know, a better-looking world. (Laughter) Or at least, prevent them
from building more McMansions. Thank you! (Applause)
She seemed really nervous but I liked her talk.
She’s been drunk tweeting for a few hours now.
Kate Wagner are you in here?! AMA please!
Is she done with her bachelor's degree by now? I've not been following for a while
Loved that. She’s awesome.
Kate’s very cool! She invented the term McMansion and hosts a blog on tumblr about it