Big Box on Your Block

Very soon, I'll be starting a new blog with a more focused topic to handle, the epidemic of McMansions throughout the country over the past decade. Even with a severe recession still gripping the nation, some of these monster homes are still being constructed, with enough rooflines to make anyone dizzy. I'll feature a new starter castle every few days, and I'll see where it goes from there!

Also, the name for this blog was almost as bloated as the topic it covered, so I think I'm gonna go with something a little catchier.

Heading Home

I haven't really had the chance to update this in the longest time... I'm heading back home, so I'll have a chance to check out the new McMansions being built on the street that we moved to when I moved to NoVa back in '96. It's very weird, they were all built within the past 2 years, during the height of the housing bust.

Compromise?

What I've realized over the past couple years, relative to housing design, is that people will never abandon the traditional American home. While the form has certainly changed over the last 50 years, there's still a sense that most home buyers find comfort in a gabled roof, windows with panes (albeit fake), and a front porch. Rather than trying to design around these desires, we should try to meld both the new and old together, be it through the careful study and application of multiple styles to create something that can be innovative, while still considered inviting. Over the past week, in between midterms, I tried to develop a home that could exhibit what I am speaking of. Working on the design, I tried to incorporate different design styles, including Traditional Japanese, Prarie, Bauhaus, and New Modern (e.g. Marmol Radziner).While the sections not shown are incomplete, I was looking for some feedback on the design.

My Hometown (Sorta)

Wow, where do I start? While I've traveled the country looking for architectural disasters and oddities, if you've lived anywhere around the Virginia or Maryland suburbs, you'll know why I can always trust the Mid-Atlantic for a wide variety of wtf-inducing designs. Over the past winter break, I toured one of the wealthiest zip codes in the country, Potomac, Maryland. Expecting to see tasteful estates of the mega-rich (albeit I know there have to be some), I instead stumbled upon some of the most questionable-looking McMansions I've ever seen.
















I'm pretty sure what they were going for here, a classic Euro-Turret masterpiece, complete with requisite over-sized cheap windows to show off the chandelier, Corinthian columns, brick veneer, and a very awkward faux-dormer. This desire to escape the perceived dullness of modern American life through the emulation of European design has been around awhile, although with rising material costs, egos, and housing sizes, it's become a parody.


















This is truly a mess. From the Mediterranean tiled roof, to the universally despised fairytale-pink brick veneer, I'm not sure they could've fit anything else into --but yes, they have accomplished a feat many never attain: sandwiching a sole stone turret miraculously between three chimneys and an over-sized entrance. While this is pretty awful, the next one pushes all limits of copy and paste Neo-Eclectic Architecture.


















...Wow... I'll have to admit, this home certainly has it going on in the dormer department...I wasn't able to get a photo, but the guest home has enough to bring the grand dormer total to seven, along with two turrets on the back. Otherwise, let's see. Two chunky balconies placed awkwardly on the ends of the home, the popular and unexplainable Mediterranean tile roof/pink brick combo, windows of all shapes and sizes coexisting on the same facade, a rarely seen dutch dormer, snout-like porte-cochere, and finally, an elevated victorian gazebo in the backyard.


There were many, many more like this, in fact, an entire neighboorhood, but there were many just as architecturally confused as this...Here's a link to a live maps of the area if you can handle that many turrets in one sitting...

Palatine

McMansions Across America

For some odd reason, I have always been intrigued by those monstrous homes you see down the street, next to a humble 1950's ranch, along a busy road or highway, or endlessly copied in subdivisions snaking their way through the open expanses of former farmland. In some ways, these glorified, one-sided boxes, are the Victorians of our era. Although they lack the cohesive, highly-detailed ornamental designs of 19th century Victorians, culturally, they are both the product of eras in which new-found prosperity brought about a wholly new method of expressing wealth. Like Victorians, they are likely to be heavily-ridiculed in their dying years, as a severe recession forces many Americans to (once again) rethink the functionality and purpose of homes.


Ok, that was a little too much of a rant, and this blog will get really boring if that's how I sound the whole time. What I'm trying to say is that I find it weirdly interesting the way that people express their wealth, and the awkward forms and designs that many homes took over the past boom cycle. I'll talk about modern homes, which I've been hoping would become the predominant style for a long time. Overall, expect this to be a blog about houses. Albeit, the extremes and oddities of housing design in America (of which there are (sadly) many, many examples).