My attempt to design a "tasteful" Mega Mansion (bigpics)

[Crossroads Inc.]

EDIT: Original plans Here
As some may know, I tend to be a bit of an Architecture Curmudgeon.
I often poo poo most buildings constructed after 1950, and spread special scorn among most modern residences. Specifically the ever growing cancer of "Mega Mansion" These tend to be massive, sprawling houses with little to know architectural charm. they often look like huge warehouses with a facade of French or English chateau to them. and of course the interiors are the most horrific. Everywhere you look huge wasted space, two story rooms everywhere, walk in closets as large as a bedroom, Garages as large as a whole house, etc.

Well, a friend challenged me to put my money where my mouth is and design a "Mega Mansion" that wouldn't immediately disgust me.

The following is an attempt at doing just that, I was given the floorplans to what I considered an especially egregious mansion, and challenged to make them as "useful" as possible, utilize as much of the interior floorspace asI could. The following is the result and I am curious to see how some others might interpret my attempt.

A note, this is in NO WAY something I would consider a "dream house" I would go out of my mind in such a monstrous place. The house this is based off pf is almost 17,000 sq ft.

First Floor

Second Floor

Basement

[Scrib]

Looks pretty good.

Though, I have to say, I'm finding it difficult to see the charm in a ginormous house that utilizes it's parsecs efficiently compared to a ginormous house that doesn't, especially when I don't know how bad the latter is. Don't really see the importance. Perhaps you could link the original for contrast? Maybe it'll be egregious enough that I change my mind.

In general though: Nice McMansion.

[TimothyC]

Not bad, but I have a few concerns (that most McMansions don't come close to addressing either)

• Lack of access between garage/exterior and kitchen.
• Lack of separation between the public (dining facilities, living rooms), private (bedrooms, possibly the rec room), and utility (garage, pantry, kitchen, ect)
• Difficulty in setting up cross-ventilation in some of the bedrooms. Natural airflow is awesome and should be reached for whenever possible.
• No fireplace(s).
• A bedroom that can only be reached from the master bedroom or the swimming pool?

[Crossroads Inc.]

Looks pretty good.

Though, I have to say, I'm finding it difficult to see the charm in a ginormous house that utilizes it's parsecs efficiently compared to a ginormous house that doesn't, especially when I don't know how bad the latter is. Don't really see the importance. Perhaps you could link the original for contrast? Maybe it'll be egregious enough that I change my mind.

In general though: Nice McMansion.

Oh "der" yeah linking the orginal plans would have been helpful...
Here ya go

And personally, again I have no real love for modern 'ginormous' houses as well. This was done more just as thought exercise. Ironically the plans I came up resemble much more Grand houses of the turn of the (last) century. Ones like Vanderbilt and Rockerfeller.

Not bad, but I have a few concerns (that most McMansions don't come close to addressing either)

• Lack of access between garage/exterior and kitchen.
• Lack of separation between the public (dining facilities, living rooms), private (bedrooms, possibly the rec room), and utility (garage, pantry, kitchen, ect)
• Difficulty in setting up cross-ventilation in some of the bedrooms. Natural airflow is awesome and should be reached for whenever possible.
• No fireplace(s).
• A bedroom that can only be reached from the master bedroom or the swimming pool?

On the first point, I actually meant to add an outside door in the laundry room just for access to the garage, I would have to go back and edit that.
There are a few fireplaces, one in the "music room" and one in the Library. I actually cut down on those quite a bit, orginally almost ever room had a fireplace, and often they were jammed into spots that took up or wasted space (IMHO)
As far as the airflow concerns, well, I am just a critic and not a real architect, so I have no idea if such changes would be fiesable or even valid in terms of the "guts" of a house, plumping, electrical, etc.

Oh, the basement room you mentioned, That was my idea for a "Safe room". A bit silly concept, but most Mc Mansions seem to have one these days.

[TimothyC]

On the first point, I actually meant to add an outside door in the laundry room just for access to the garage, I would have to go back and edit that.

I'd place it outside of the laundry room, and move the window on that wall back a bit.

There are a few fireplaces, one in the "music room" and one in the Library. I actually cut down on those quite a bit, orginally almost ever room had a fireplace, and often they were jammed into spots that took up or wasted space (IMHO)

I think I'd add a pair of them back to back on the wall between the owner's suite and the Grand room. You'd only lose one of the four closets in the upper living room.

As far as the airflow concerns, well, I am just a critic and not a real architect, so I have no idea if such changes would be fiesable or even valid in terms of the "guts" of a house, plumping, electrical, etc.

What I was thinking of is to have have, whenever possible, two windows on opposite walls for each bed room - this way you can open both and get a cross-ventilation without having wind tunnels in the hallways. Right now, my studio apartment has one big window on my only outside wall, and I get a lot less airflow than when I had a place where I had windows on two walls.

Oh, the basement room you mentioned, That was my idea for a "Safe room". A bit silly concept, but most Mc Mansions seem to have one these days.

That makes sense.

I'd double check a lot of your labels - it's obvious you've mirror-imaged a lot of rooms, and the text is now backwards. Don't get me wrong, I think you've got a nice layout, but I'd like to offer tweaks.

[Jaepheth]

Needs a secret passage so that Yvette can stab the cook.

Also, having the kitchen merged to the dining room seems... off.
You don't want the noise and heat of the servants preparing meal service to effect the guests.
Even without servants the mess made while cooking should ideally not be visible while dining IMO.


I think my fantasy home would be almost entirely built into a hill (e.g. Hobbiton)
Or probably, built and then a hill placed on top of/over it.

[salm]

I´d tear out a couple of walls as i prefer less big rooms to many small rooms.
Esspecially the walls that separate library from reading room and music room from sitting area are unnecessary and waste potentially interesting room shape.
The Foyer and the space right above it in the second floor are waste of potential as well. You´ve got an interesting shape but it´s only used as a glorified hallway.

The Masters Suite doesn´t have any windows. Windowless bed rooms are not really cool imo.
Actually rooms without windows are pretty bad in most cases no matter.

That said, looking at the images of the building on the website you linkt to, I think it´s difficult to turn the place into something good without tearing it down completely.
Buildings mimicing styles from past eras are usually horrible.

[fgalkin]

This has to be the shittiest mansion design I have ever seen, bar none. I'll take a dozen McMansions over this monstrosity any day.

A few problems I can think of off the top of my head:

First Floor.
1. Sitting Room isolated from the rest of the house by the Owner's Suite. What do you think it's used for?
2. Laundry room right next to the music room. Whaaat? Laundry room on the first floor, for that matter.
3. Kitchen and dining room joined together.
4. Private study connected to the Grand Room.

Second Floor.
1. Two identical covered terraces. I thought the key was efficient use of space?
2. Each bedroom has its own WC, and some have even two!

Basement.
1. Guest bedrooms downstairs next to the swimming pool- damn and smelly
2. Office(?). What? Why? And next to the pool, too!
3. The most interesting rooms along the grand staircase are dedicated to storage.
4. Right mirror of the office- you just ran out of ideas, haven't you?
5. Where do the servants live? A house that size requires at least one permanent staff member minimum.

Have a very nice day.
-fgalkin

[Crossroads Inc.]

I am LOVING the reactions so Far
Fgalkin yours are some of the best so far, because I totally agree with them.

I did say it was a "Challenge" from my friend, he told me he was picking one of the most monstrous crappiest houses he could find, and I drove myself crazy trying to think of things to do with the massive rooms and yeah, eventually ran out of ideas. I would say "What else can you piut into a house" But I have seen houses with following...
I shit you not:
"rock climbing gym"
"Indoor Jungle/playroom"
"Golf Simulator Room"
"Movie theater" (like not just a big room with a tv, but, like a movie theater, with a ticket counter and 'snack stand')
and of course the very popular, and mindlessly pointless bowling alley.

As for a break down of just what I have been thinking...
The "Merged kitchen dinner room" In truth, the room next to the "Music room" is supposed to be the 'official' dinning room. Something I notice about houses, is often there is an 'official' dinning room, that usually never gets used. People like to eat close to the kitchen, especially for parties or with friends. Often the space near the kitchen ends up as an un-offical dinning room.
The doorway from the private study to the great room... The 'Master suite' Was just so freaking big, It bugged me the amount of time it would take to get up, walk out the front door, and walk across to the kitchen. I added the second door if only to reduce the amount of time it would take to cross the huge house.
Laundry room was sort of the same thing, I tried to come up with other places to put it, but it kept ending up feeling like you would have to hike 5min to get there. That just seemed a centrally located area.

As far as the two covered Terraces, well you got me, again I just couldn't think of anything to put out there. And as far as the closets go, I actually REDUCED the size of some of them. Really I have seen houses with closest as big as whole bedrooms.

Yeah guest rooms by the pool... I see this a lot in BIG houses also! I would like ot think that the fact I 'sealed' the poolroom would insulate the chemical smell from the rest of the basement. Maybe those rooms could be the 'servants' quarters? And the 'mirror' office. It originally was supposed to be a mixed "Wine closest/Smoking lounge". Which made no freaking sense.. Why would you want to have a Cigar in a wine closest? And why the hell would you need a wine closet THAT big.

Again I have not pretense of saying my design is "nice" at all, I jkust tried to make it somewhat more appealing then the original monstrosity I had to work with.

[Starglider]

The redesign is not an improvement. Moving the swimming pool indoors invites damp problems and the owners presumably requested the large interior garage because they wanted to admire their car collection, which you have forced to an outbuilding. Interesting angles in the house in general and the rooms on the right in particular have been deleted and replaced with boring rectangular layouts. Basement office is redundant given existence of study. Increase in bedrooms from six to ten is almost certainly pointless, as the additional rooms won't be used (particularly awkward basement bedroms - if you'd left these out you could have had a pool and a garage). Layout is more confusing, additional spiral staircase is bizarre. Deletion of impressive two story atrium (classic mansion feature) to insert pointless dust-trap additional 'sitting' area is the worst downgrade.

[fgalkin]

As for a break down of just what I have been thinking...
The "Merged kitchen dinner room" In truth, the room next to the "Music room" is supposed to be the 'official' dinning room. Something I notice about houses, is often there is an 'official' dinning room, that usually never gets used. People like to eat close to the kitchen, especially for parties or with friends. Often the space near the kitchen ends up as an un-offical dinning room.

Here is the thing though. I bet most of those houses were your average upper middle class home, not a stately mansion that you're going for. In those cases, the hosts actually cooked. That would not be the case here. This is why this, and many other MacMansion designs suck, and why you're running out of ideas what to put there. If you're serious, I'd actually suggest visiting the Breakers and other Newport Gilded Age mansions for layout ideas.

In this case, the kitchen should be down in the basement, with the food being delivered via elevator, or at least in an adjacent room. There might be a smaller kitchen and dining room if the owners want to cook

The doorway from the private study to the great room... The 'Master suite' Was just so freaking big, It bugged me the amount of time it would take to get up, walk out the front door, and walk across to the kitchen. I added the second door if only to reduce the amount of time it would take to cross the huge house.

A massive floor to ceiling window showing some beautiful vista, and the room's size is no longer a liability.

Laundry room was sort of the same thing, I tried to come up with other places to put it, but it kept ending up feeling like you would have to hike 5min to get there. That just seemed a centrally located area.

Yeah, and how you're trying to play over the noise of washer and dryer running. Plus, how many bedrooms did you have? How many bathrooms? How many linens, towels alone? Do you think that tiny room will handle it all? Would you want servants carting loads of dirty laundry past you while you're there? Off to the basement with it, where it can host some industrial washers and dryers. Knock down the wall of the laundry room and stick a grand piano there

As far as the two covered Terraces, well you got me, again I just couldn't think of anything to put out there. And as far as the closets go, I actually REDUCED the size of some of them. Really I have seen houses with closest as big as whole bedrooms.

First of all, does the family have kids? I know, probably not the first thing on your mind, but if they do, that's a nursery, a play room, and the nanny's room. Thee rooms on the second floor taken right there. Of the terraces, one remains as it is, one becomes the new private study/library/office, connected to the master bedroom via private staircase. The guests won't live in the house, they will have a separate guesthouse on the grounds. Maybe one bedroom for close friend

Yeah guest rooms by the pool... I see this a lot in BIG houses also! I would like ot think that the fact I 'sealed' the poolroom would insulate the chemical smell from the rest of the basement. Maybe those rooms could be the 'servants' quarters? And the 'mirror' office. It originally was supposed to be a mixed "Wine closest/Smoking lounge". Which made no freaking sense.. Why would you want to have a Cigar in a wine closest? And why the hell would you need a wine closet THAT big.

Are these indoor or outdoor pool? As for the wine cellar that big? Because you have a lot of wine. Fortunately, you now have two things that need space- kitchen and laundry, so that should take care of that nicely.

Again I have not pretense of saying my design is "nice" at all, I jkust tried to make it somewhat more appealing then the original monstrosity I had to work with.

The problem with your design is that it's an upgraded McMansion. Where is the arts gallery housing original Picassos? The smoking/billiards room?

Have a very nice day.
-fgalkin

[Crossroads Inc.]

Yes, 90% of all MacMansions do indeed suck.. A lot of the ones me and my friend look at are in the 6000 to 10,000 square feet range, and tend to fall under what I would call "Mega-MacMansions" Huge, but still lacking in taste. This monster was over 17,000sq ft and I thought I could try and make it into an 'old estate' but failed because I was thinking too modern.. A lot of what you say is true, if I had REALLY wanted to go for change, I would have made it much MUCH more like a turn of the century Estate. Things like 'Nanny Rooms' were common, and most extra bedrooms were crammed full of servants. A lot of the rooms could easily be split into much small servant quarters, especially the ones in the basement. Again in a real old estate, The kitchen and other such things would never be in the main house, after all, its the servants who cook.

And thats the problem with modern Mega Mansions, at the end of the day, they try to be just an oversized house. Kitchens are often in the center of the house, few have live in servants any more and often either have people come in to do certain things only briefly, like cleaning and yard work. That is where I made my mistake in retrospect.

As for the Breakers? Been there before, some time ago a friend was able to get me the floorplans of that Palace, truly one of the best gilded age estates of all time...




Now the breakers is nearly 65,000 square feet so It is a hell of a bump up from my experiment. That said it is easy to see a lot of the aspects you point out.

[fgalkin]

Oooh, thanks for those plans, they are awesome.

But yes, the main problem of the modern mega-mansion is that it is really no longer sustainable except by the truly ultra-rich. This is why all those Newport Mansions are currently museums. You need an army of cleaners, gardeners, cooks, just to keep them staffed, contractors to keep them in repair, etc. The live-in staff now has to earn a decent living+benefits, so you would be easily shelling out hundreds of thousands of dollars just for that. As an example, my boss's moderately-sized Greenwich, CT house (smaller than the monstrosity in the OP) with only two permanent live-in staff costs over a $1 million a year to maintain. So, people go for the "upgraded middle class home" route, which doesn't really work because there is a firm limit as to how much a single family can take care of on its own and your house is way past that.

Have a very nice day.
-fgalkin

[Crossroads Inc.]

Most welcome, I tend to collect floorplans for historical buildings of all sorts, I think I have a few Vanderbilt and Rockefeller mansion floorplans somewhere on my hard drive I will need to dig up...

But yeah, you can't really have truelly HUGE palaces like the old days because of the staff invovled, and because you can no longer pay them a few dollars to do all the work.
I have seen a few shots of 'Mega' mansions, usually ones 15 to 30,000 sq ft, and often it is sad to look at because you end up with huge rooms becoming dirty, disused and neglected. 'Updown court' used to be a good example of this, there were images circulating the net some time ago that showed several rooms with broken windows, huge layers of dirt, dust, mold, all because it was just too huge to maintain.

It is sad that there are super rich out that wish to live like the super rich of old, without really knowing just WHY the old super rich lived they way they did. The ultimate example of this is the stalled mega MEGA mansion ""Versailles" which clocks in at a whoping 90,000square feet.
I actually got fairly high rez floorplans of that monstrosity, that I might post later just for the 'LOL' factor.

Right now I've gone back to the drawing board and am trying to work on a few other designs of 'Mansions' making a more tradtional old style one, and the a more modern one that is a bit more sensible (I hope)

[PeZook]

There's a guy in Poland who wanted a castle.

Predictable, he went bankrupt before the job was done, but man...

Check this out...

[fgalkin]

Pfft, lightweights. They have nothing on people who can literally dig money out of the ground. behold, this is how you build a mansion

Have a very nice day.
-fgalkin

[Crossroads Inc.]

PeZook, That link you sent, it really pains me. Not because I think that what was being built was anything special, it looked horrific. But just, well, its so painful to see so many resources just, WASTED. >_<

fgalkin, That link you posted was bloody amazing, the sheer SCALE of that Palace. And that IS a palace, not some oversized mega-mansion but a real palace. The gardens the grounds, only in Russia could you pull it off, and possibly, Possibly pull it off tastefully.
Also I found the pics to the monstrous "Versailles" a note these are big HUGE pics. Posting links only...

Basement
First Floor
Second Floor

Not a bad place really... For a Hotel...

[fgalkin]

It's not difficult to build a palace, when you're literally building a replica of a UNESCO World Heritage Site

I mean,


Have a very nice day.
-fgalkin

[Sea Skimmer]

Isn't the guy building that place the chairman or CEO of Gazprom? It might be modest by the standards of that job. Certainly the heads of major western corporations not even so big make more then enough money to build such a thing, they just don't because they'd rather buy small mansions all over the world instead. Or boats. A billion USD will buy you a 150,000 GRT cruise liner. Think about one of those redesigned to be a floating palace, and how many billionaires the world now has. Operating costs would be rather absurdly high, but you could moderate that, partly, by anchoring most of the time and hooking up to shore power.

[fgalkin]

Why would you need a 150k GRT liner, anyway? Roman Abramovich actually has a $1bn yacht, but it's nowhere near that size (despite being the largest in the world). Instead, it's pimped out with things like a helipad, mini-sub dock, and probably tons of things we don't know about since he's fairly selective about whom he lets on board.

Have a very nice day.
-fgalkin

[Sea Skimmer]

Need!? Why would you need a reason to need it? But on a more practical sense I doubt it'd actually have so many decks and thus lower GRT tonnage, but that kind of displacement hull. Just think at that point you could have different mansions on board, a go kart track, mountain sized rock climbing wall, enough space to keep your coked up kids from going completely cage crazy when you lock them up on board to detox, an actual hanger for that helicopter so its available full time

I know of the Abramovich yacht, reports of it being one and even one point five billion USD are exaggerations. It was more like 300 million USD as designed, though apparently some major design changes during construction pushed up the price. Even at 550ft it would be very to make such a small ship cost a billion dollars unless you were just outright plating the decks in gold or installing AEGIS. Even the liners I have in mind actually don't actually cost 1 billion USD outright, its just close enough for rounding up. A couple of 300-400 million dollar yachts exist in the 500ft range.

If you want total crazy though, the following is actually a slightly serious project though it has no mad buyer.

Streets of Monaco superyacht.

[Eternal_Freedom]

As an aisde, if you are committing yourself to spending hundreds of millions of not billions on an insane super yacht, how feasible/advantageous/pointlessly stupid would it be to have it nuclear-powered?

[Sea Skimmer]

Completely and utterly unrealistic, and the cost would be insane, two billion extra maybe? That assumes you could even get the French to sell you a nuclear reactor for this, as nobody else will or reasonably could, and then it will be a LEU fueled plant that needs refueling every five years. Meanwhile you'd be banned from most ports and face an endless problem keeping the ship certified to operate anywhere because nobody is going to insure it. You'd have better luck getting a nuclear reactor installed in the basement of your mega mansion on land, at least then you could basically get the area zoned industrial and build and operate it like a commercial power plant if nothing else. Use the surplus power to run a giant fountain to rival that completely absurd Saudi one.

Unless you intend to cruise around the world constantly at high speed you'd really gain nothing anyway. It doesn't actually take all that much power to move ships this size at moderate speeds, 40MW maybe without the hotel load. That's why nuclear merchants never even got close to getting anywhere, and you could easily have bunkerage to circle the globe in this context. The minimal installed cost of any nuclear plant is going to be extremely high, at least with any present day reactor design.

[Eternal_Freedom]

I thought it would be pointless, but I wanted to know just how pointless it woudl be.

[Crossroads Inc.]

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