Architect designed domestic Architecture Since 1945

Frank Lloyd Wright, Usonian House

Pope-Leighey House, Fairfax VA, built for Loren Pope in 1939, moved from the path of freeway 1965

Usonian House, Broad Margin, 9 West Avondale Drive, Greenville, Greenville County,

SC, 1954

Regional Variations

• Joseph Eichler

• Exposed supporting beams

• Hired Wright disciple Robert Anshen of Anshen & Allen to design the prototypes in 1949

• leveled small building lot

• Similar to Wright’s Usonian House

Other Wright variations

Condominium Housing

Condominium= a legal system of separate ownership of individual units in a multiple unit building.

No legal difference with “apartment”, but rather distinction is form of ownership.

Area outside the individual unit, or common area is under the control of the HOA, or Homeowners Assocation.

Owned space, can be changed

Common space, cannot be changed

Harlem, adaptive reuse, in-fillSmall scale, high density

Post-modern, eclecticism, urban apartments

And in the 1990s, we met…

… The “McMansion”

What is McMansion?

McMansion is a pejorative term for a large new house on a separate lot, which is judged as pretentious, tasteless, or badly designed for its neighborhood

Origins

Starting in the 1980s in California, the larger home concept was intended to fill a gap between the more modest suburban tract home and the upscale custom homes found in gated, 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.

Design

• McMansions mix multiple architectural styles and elements, combining quoins, steeply sloped roofs, multiple roof lines, unnecessarily complicated massing and pronounced dormers, all producing a jumbled appearance.

CriticismConstructed with less expensive exterior materials and extremely

expensive interior fittings, materials and appliances.

Putting more money into the interior than the exterior materials virtually assures maintenance problems in the future.

Typically, these roofs are extremely high; this type of roof is the most likely to leak and most time-consuming to construct. In addition, such roofs bleed energy and increase the actual cost of ownership.

Another criticism is that they have 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

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

Removal of older housing stock to make inappropriately large resideneces

The end