The article's approach is to list a series of hard aesthetic rules, then show how some McMansions break them.
That would be a valid critique, but the article never fully establishes that those aesthetic rules are universally desirable. In aesthetics, rules are made to be broken.
If standards are broken haphazardly or unintentionally, that may be a sign of poor aesthetics. But I'm convinced McMansions intentionally break several of those rules.
Breaking those rules is the only way to convey something that the author somehow completely fails to notice.
A better aesthetic test of McMansions would only involve two questions:
1) Are McMansions effectively conveying some idea, and,
2) Is that idea is worth conveying?
Setting (2) aside for the moment, I think McMansions meet (1) very well, primarily by breaking the author's "rules."
Think about who buys these. The architects and the purchasers are not ultra-rich, but are still in a class that wants to display wealth.
When purchasers in this group compare several homes, they are most likely to buy the one that makes them feel like they're displaying the most wealth and power for their price point.
Wait, why would a tangled mess of asymmetrical nonsense achieve that?
Because the aesthetic McMansions are shooting for is "this is more than one house."
Bits crop up all over the place and the masses are obscured so that the building gives the appearance of multiple dwellings.
What does it look most like? Villages that have cropped up around a central castle, organically growing in different heights and orientations without much central planning. (Maybe more from fairy tales than real world villages.)
The image the McMansion tries to convey is one of dominion over a territory or a population. I think McMansions succeed, primarily through the subversion of the author's favored aesthetic tropes.
But even if McMansions successfully evoke small villages, part (2) is the more important question.
Is mimicry of an order of magnitude of wealth and power beyond one's reach aesthetically appealing, or desperate and ostentatious?
I'd find a critique along those lines far more compelling. The fact that some buildings fail to satisfy some arbitrary checklist is not the more important thing, what the building says about the owner's character and insecurity is far more interesting.
The article's approach is to list a series of hard aesthetic rules, then show how some McMansions break them.
That would be a valid critique, but the article never fully establishes that those aesthetic rules are universally desirable. In aesthetics, rules are made to be broken.
If standards are broken haphazardly or unintentionally, that may be a sign of poor aesthetics. But I'm convinced McMansions intentionally break several of those rules.
Breaking those rules is the only way to convey something that the author somehow completely fails to notice.
A better aesthetic test of McMansions would only involve two questions:
1) Are McMansions effectively conveying some idea, and,
2) Is that idea is worth conveying?
Setting (2) aside for the moment, I think McMansions meet (1) very well, primarily by breaking the author's "rules."
Think about who buys these. The architects and the purchasers are not ultra-rich, but are still in a class that wants to display wealth.
When purchasers in this group compare several homes, they are most likely to buy the one that makes them feel like they're displaying the most wealth and power for their price point.
Wait, why would a tangled mess of asymmetrical nonsense achieve that?
Because the aesthetic McMansions are shooting for is "this is more than one house."
Bits crop up all over the place and the masses are obscured so that the building gives the appearance of multiple dwellings.
What does it look most like? Villages that have cropped up around a central castle, organically growing in different heights and orientations without much central planning. (Maybe more from fairy tales than real world villages.)
The image the McMansion tries to convey is one of dominion over a territory or a population. I think McMansions succeed, primarily through the subversion of the author's favored aesthetic tropes.
But even if McMansions successfully evoke small villages, part (2) is the more important question.
Is mimicry of an order of magnitude of wealth and power beyond one's reach aesthetically appealing, or desperate and ostentatious?
I'd find a critique along those lines far more compelling. The fact that some buildings fail to satisfy some arbitrary checklist is not the more important thing, what the building says about the owner's character and insecurity is far more interesting.