McMansion - AbsoluteAstronomy.com

McMansion is a pejorative

Pejorative

Pejoratives , including name slurs, are words or grammatical forms that connote negativity and express contempt or distaste. A term can be regarded as pejorative in some social groups but not in others, e.g., hacker is a term used for computer criminals as well as quick and clever computer experts...

term for a large new house

House

A house is a building or structure that has the ability to be occupied for dwelling by human beings or other creatures. The term house includes many kinds of different dwellings ranging from rudimentary huts of nomadic tribes to free standing individual structures...

which is judged as pretentious, tasteless, or badly designed for its neighborhood. Alternately, a McMansion is a large house in a sub-division of similarly large houses, which all seem mass produced and lacking distinguishing characteristics, and at variance with established local architecture.

The "stunt word

Stunt word

A stunt word is a neologism created to produce a special effect, or to attract attention. Examples are gloatation, titterosity, santorum, scrumtrulescent, and truthiness. Some stunt words are portmanteau words....

" McMansion seems to have been coined some time in the early 1980s. It later appeared in the Los Angeles Times
Los Angeles Times
The Los Angeles Times is a daily newspaper published in Los Angeles, California, since 1881. It was the second-largest metropolitan newspaper in circulation in the United States in 2008 and the fourth most widely distributed newspaper in the country....

in 1990 and the New York Times in 1998. Other terms applied to this type of dwelling include "Persian palace," "garage

Garage (house)

A residential garage is part of a home, or an associated building, designed or used for storing a vehicle or vehicles. In some places the term is used synonymously with "carport", though that term normally describes a structure that is not completely enclosed.- British residential garages:Those...

Mahal

Taj Mahal

The Taj Mahal is a white Marble mausoleum located in Agra, India. It was built by Mughal emperor Shah Jahan in memory of his third wife, Mumtaz Mahal...

," "starter castle

Castle

A castle is a type of fortified structure built in Europe and the Middle East during the Middle Ages by European nobility. Scholars debate the scope of the word castle, but usually consider it to be the private fortified residence of a lord or noble...

," and "Hummer

Hummer

Hummer was a brand of trucks and SUVs, first marketed in 1992 when AM General began selling a civilian version of the M998 Humvee. In 1998, General Motors purchased the brand name and marketed three vehicles: the original Hummer H1, based on the Humvee; and the H2 and H3 models that were...

house." An example of a McWord

McWords

A McWord is a word containing the prefix Mc-, derived from the first syllable of the name of the McDonald's restaurant chain. Words of this nature are either official marketing terms of the chain , or are neologisms designed to evoke pejorative associations with the restaurant chain or fast food...

, McMansion compares the generic quality of these luxury homes with mass-produced fast food

Fast food

Fast food is the term given to food that can be prepared and served very quickly. While any meal with low preparation time can be considered to be fast food, typically the term refers to food sold in a restaurant or store with preheated or precooked ingredients, and served to the customer in a...

meals.

Architecture

The term is generally used to denote a multi-story house of no clear architectural style, with a larger footprint than existing homes and either located in a newer, larger subdivision

Subdivision (land)

Subdivision is the act of dividing land into pieces that are easier to sell or otherwise develop, usually via a plat. The former single piece as a whole is then known in the United States as a subdivision...

or replacing an existing, smaller structure in an older neighborhood.

One real-estate writer explains the successful formula for McMansions: symmetrical structures on clear-cut lots with Palladian windows centered over the main entry and brick or stone enhancing the driveway entrance, plus multiple chimneys, dormers, pilasters, and columns—and inside, the master suite with dressing rooms and bath-spa, great rooms, breakfast and dining rooms, showplace kitchen, and extra high and wide garages for multiple cars and SUVs.

Typically it will have a floor area over 3000 square feet (278.7 m²), ceilings 9–10 feet high, a two-story portico

Portico

A portico is a porch leading to the entrance of a building, or extended as a colonnade, with a roof structure over a walkway, supported by columns or enclosed by walls...

, a front door hall with a chandelier hanging from 16–20 feet, two or more garages, several bedrooms and bathrooms, and lavish interiors. The house often covers a larger portion of the lot than the construction it replaces. McMansions may also be built in homogeneous communities by a single developer.

Origins

Starting in the 1980s in California, the larger home concept was intended to fill a gap between the more modest suburban tract home

Tract housing

Tract housing is a style of housing development in which multiple similar homes are built on a tract of land which is subdivided into individual small lots...

and the upscale custom homes found in gated

Gated community

In its modern form, a gated community is a form of residential community or housing estate containing strictly-controlled entrances for pedestrians, bicycles, and automobiles, and often characterized by a closed perimeter of walls and fences. Gated communities usually consist of small residential...

, waterfront, or golf course communities. Subdivisions were developed around such communities, as well as in pre-existing neighborhoods, either in empty lots or as replacements for torn-down structures. The larger homes proved popular and demand increased dramatically, particularly in light of new land-management laws that were enacted over the next 20 years. Attempts to save money may have led to a decline in quality of some new homes, prompting the coinage of the term.

Reports suggest that the most recent recession has caused house sizes in the United States to stabilize.

Criticism

The general criticisms stem from disagreement over the overall look and feel of the homes as not being appropriate for a given neighborhood, being wasteful in terms of space (too much room for too few people) and resources (building materials, electricity, gas), perceived pretentiousness (and lack of taste or refinement) of parvenu
Parvenu
A Parvenu is a person who is a relative newcomer to a socioeconomic class. The word is borrowed from the French language; it is the past participle of the verb parvenir...

owners and differing architectural preferences.

Design

A McMansion often mixes multiple architectural styles and elements, combining quoins

Quoin (architecture)

Quoins are the cornerstones of brick or stone walls. Quoins may be either structural or decorative. Architects and builders use quoins to give the impression of strength and firmness to the outline of a building...

, steeply sloped roofs, multiple roof lines, complicated massing and pronounced dormer

Dormer

A dormer is a structural element of a building that protrudes from the plane of a sloping roof surface. Dormers are used, either in original construction or as later additions, to create usable space in the roof of a building by adding headroom and usually also by enabling addition of windows.Often...

s, all producing what some consider a displeasingly jumbled appearance.

The builder may have attempted to achieve expensive effects with cheap materials, skimped on details, or hidden defects with cladding

Cladding

Cladding is the covering of one material with another. It may refer to the following:*Cladding *Cladding *Cladding **Copper cladding**Rainscreen cladding*Cladding *Cladding...

Though construction quality may be subpar and materials shoddy (from faux stucco to styrofoam crown molding and travertine compounded from epoxied marble dust), McMansion buyers are eager; the real-estate writer locates them in the generation of my angst-ridden Boston University students: "mostly young, mobile, career-oriented, high-salaried 30- and 40-something individuals" who are too time-squeezed to hire an architect but seek "a luxury home" that they might soon (and easily) sell whenever "it's time to move on."

Another criticism is that a McMansion has been designed from the inside out, rather than from the outside in. Because priority has been given to the interior, the house's exterior appearance suffers, with oddly placed windows and an amorphous bloated quality.

Size

The construction of what seems to be too large a house on an existing lot will often draw the ire of neighbors and other local residents. In 2006 for example, a recently built house in Kirkland, WA, (an affluent suburb on Seattle's Eastside

Eastside (King County, Washington)

File:Seattle-lakewashington-lakesammamish.PNG|250px|right|The Eastside is to the right of Seattle.# rough city boundariespoly 137 256 148 256 158 194 172 179 172 237 212 266 133 266Renton...

) stood so close to the house next door that, in the words of the chair of the city's Neighborhood Association, "you can read the lettering on the canned vegetables in the house next door." Built as tract "mansions" or executive homes

Executive homes

Executive home is a marketing term for a moderately large and well-appointed house.Such houses were formerly described as mansionettes or bijou residences. The word mansion historically denotes homes with more character or uniqueness than an average executive home...

in marketing parlance, they generally are found in outlying suburban areas because lot sizes in older neighborhoods generally are not conducive to residences of this large scale. These homes usually are constructed among other large homes by a subdivider on speculation; they generally are built en-masse by a development company to be marketed as premium real estate, but do not feature custom features.

External links

Photographs of a McMansion's interior, including the tall hallway with chandelier, Boston.com.