Guest writes the blog McMansion Hell. It sounds like there are several things she dislikes about McMansions:
Sometimes the owners want weird things on the inside, like a cathedral ceiling. Making that stuff work makes the outside look ugly.
People are too far on the “investment” side of “do you build a house as an investment or a place to live in”.
They look too similar to each other, you can tell where you are in the US from the normal houses but not from the McMansions.
Each one is self-inconsistent, it has different styles of windows and different pitches of roof and stuff.
(I feel like there’s some tension in these, like the person putting in a cathedral ceiling is probably doing it because they personally really want a cathedral ceiling and not because they think it improves the investment value. Also I can’t imagine that being so supposedly ugly improves the investment value. Also I feel like if I was building my own house I’d want to optimize for how it looks on the inside, and if guest wants to judge my taste in interiors she can go fuck herself.)
Guest says that whenever someone writes her saying “I didn’t used to care about McMansions but now every time I see one I hate it” she’s happy, because now one more person feels what she feels.
(Reiterate that I didn’t double check, and I listened to this episode a few days ago now. Higher than usual chance I’m misremembering something, which I mention explicitly because this summary is super negative.)
99% Invisible: McMansion Hell
Guest writes the blog McMansion Hell. It sounds like there are several things she dislikes about McMansions:
Sometimes the owners want weird things on the inside, like a cathedral ceiling. Making that stuff work makes the outside look ugly.
People are too far on the “investment” side of “do you build a house as an investment or a place to live in”.
They look too similar to each other, you can tell where you are in the US from the normal houses but not from the McMansions.
Each one is self-inconsistent, it has different styles of windows and different pitches of roof and stuff.
(I feel like there’s some tension in these, like the person putting in a cathedral ceiling is probably doing it because they personally really want a cathedral ceiling and not because they think it improves the investment value. Also I can’t imagine that being so supposedly ugly improves the investment value. Also I feel like if I was building my own house I’d want to optimize for how it looks on the inside, and if guest wants to judge my taste in interiors she can go fuck herself.)
Guest says that whenever someone writes her saying “I didn’t used to care about McMansions but now every time I see one I hate it” she’s happy, because now one more person feels what she feels.
(Reiterate that I didn’t double check, and I listened to this episode a few days ago now. Higher than usual chance I’m misremembering something, which I mention explicitly because this summary is super negative.)