Now entering the era of right-size
A lively online discussion in our magazine’s LinkedIn group centered around the following question: Are the days of the McMansion over? I understand the thoughts behind the question, but the wording isn’t as clear as it could be. There’s more than one issue at hand here; There’s the issue of uninspired, ho-hum design and there’s also the issue of home size.
The more clear-cut issue of the two is that of home size. Yes, the days of over-sized homes for the sake of over-sized homes are gone, and for a few reasons. First, the economy stinks and it won’t return to full force for a long time, so the money simply isn’t there to fund unnecessarily large homes. Second, there’s this green movement everyone’s talking about, and most people equate green with conservation, and conservation with less, which means less square footage. Then there are reports such as the one from the American Institute of Architects last week that reveals home sizes have been trending down for a long time. That’s fact, plain and simple, which makes it easy to predict the future of home size.
As for the ho-hum designs most people think of when they hear the term McMansions, I’m not so sure its days are numbered. A nice home forever will be a symbol of wealth and success, and there will always be successful people who want to show off their wealth or at least create a perception of it. Many of these people either won’t know good design when they see it, or they’d rather sacrifice quality design for that dream kitchen or flat-screen TVs in every room. There’s nothing wrong with either of those options; they’re just more attractive than good design to some people.
Perhaps life after this recession will change the fate of uninspired design. The new economic reality might sway those with money to build custom homes in a way that ensures they get the most bang for their buck; in other words, with great design. And just as the recession has pushed all the tire kickers out of the trade show aisles, it might also have pushed out the designers who are not as committed to quality design as all of you. That pesky fly-by-night design firm down the street or on the other side of town that bought that fancy software might not be around as market recovery begins.
I believe we’re entering the era of right-size everything. Right-size homes, right-size cars, right-size vacations, right-size spending and hopefully right-size portions at fast-food restaurants are the immediate future. And probably in 15 or 20 years when we all forget about this awful recession we’ve just been through, we’ll get back to our old habits. But for now things will be different.
Ultimately, I can’t predict the future any better than you can. So who knows what will happen. I’d still like to know what you think. Share your thoughts with everyone. Scroll up to the first paragraph of this blog entry, look to the right and click where you see, “Leave a comment” or “Post or view comments.”