In the late 1990s, Americans started referring to the new tract-built luxury homes popping up in suburbs across America as McMansions, a biting portmanteau implying that the new structures were mass-produced and ugly, with added, implied snark that their denizens, however wealthy, lacked the sophistication to tell filet mignon from a Big Mac.
Lately, these homes have come in for a fresh round of scorn, thanks to an anonymously authored blog that has been breaking down the genre’s design flaws in excruciating detail. Early posts lambasted builders for erecting garages bigger than the homes they’re attached to, a tendency toward dropping giant homes on tiny lots, plus shoddy construction and a mishmash of contrasting styles. (Gothic Tudor, anyone?)
Bloomberg