Dumb Consumer Item of the Month: McMansions

Image from the McMansion Hell blog.

“This idea of extreme consumerism took off in the ’80s. It was a time of big hair, Madonna’s Material Girl— and great big houses.” 

- Kate Wagner, architecture critic

How do we define who we are in consumer societies? Mostly by the stuff we own.

And in that regard, the big three are

1. The car we drive,

2. The clothes we wear, and

3. The house we live in.

Basing our social standing on stuff instead of our value to the functioning of the community we live in leads to the rapid adoption of dumb consumer items.

It's consumerism gone wild.

Nothing highlights this deficiency more than the McMansion craze. 

Why McMansions? 

Because like the fast food they are named after, Mcmansions were mass-produced, cheaply made with questionable ingredients, not that beneficial for the greater society, and yet were still hungrily eaten up by consumers.

McMansions were most popular between the 1980s up to the Great Recession in 2008. 

Their popularity has decreased since then, although large, oversized homes remain the number one choice of many home buyers. 

In fact, by 2014, three times as many U.S. homes were built in the 3,000 to 3,999-square-foot range as in the under 1,400-square-foot range.

While some home buyers are opting for smaller homes, these down sizers remain a minority. For now, the tiny home movement is tiny.

A related website I visit from time to time is called McMansion Hell, written by a blogger with architectural training.

The witty and humorous McMansion critic, Kate Wagner, writes that these humungous homes are "an accumulation of deliberate signifiers of wealth, very much a construction with the secondary purpose of invoking envy, a palatial residence designed without much cohesion". 

Other less than flattering names used to describe such homes marketed to anyone able to get a mortgage large enough, are Persian palace, Garage Mahal, starter castle, Hummer house, tract mansion, Millennium Mansion, or executive home.

They are typically between 3,000 and 5,000 sq. ft. because building large homes is more profitable for builders than constructing smaller, less ostentatious alternatives. 

The McMansion Hell blog points out many other problems with these "look-at-me!" awkward abodes. 

"It’s not just a very large house", Wagner explains. 

“It’s also poorly constructed and poorly designed,” she says. 

“It’s a hodgepodge of several different architectural styles, lots of different extruding masses, windows that don’t match. It really looks like everything has been put together in a cobbled way.”

It’s basically an architectural expression of hyper-consumerism.” 

Infill Mcmansions look out of place compared with the existing neighborhood, and clash with the local architectural characteristics, which has made them unpopular and unwelcome in most communities.

The main problem is that these big cookie cutter homes were built as statements, rather than practical places to live. 

They are environmentally problematic, expensive to maintain, and are often built far from city centers on less expensive land, necessitating long commutes.

These biggest of bungalows are the very expensive equivalent of a super-sized fast food meal that makes your stomach hurt moments after completion.

We have covered several dumb consumer items on our blog, but few are as dumb, or as expensive, as the Mcmansion.

This one will be hard to top. 

But of course I will try for there is no shortage of dumb to be exposed when it comes to the toxic products of hyper-consumerism.