New super-engrossing website alert! I found this site via my talented cousin who has the tech skills to be living and working in the US right now. She shared this wonderful website – McMansion Hell – and now, as we hurtle towards that big election night, seemed as good a time as any to share it.

The site is dedicated to detailing and deconstructing the American phenomenon of the McMansion* – huge family homes built to look old and important, often achieving their muddled architectural results with an eye on cheapness rather than coherence. Bad taste, bad design and acres of empty space to furnish add up to lots of fun to be had for the writer, who posts annotated interior and exterior shots for your delight.

Timely for many reasons, not least because one celebrated property developer with dubious aesthetic values (and the rest) could be about to be fitting framed stock art and Best Western-style curtains to the Oval Office. A good way to distract yourself from the impending horror? Go browse through this witty and well-informed website. x

*I think the ‘Mc’ prefix to describe anything cheap, identikit and soulless was invented by writer Douglas Coupland in his book Generation X, where he wrote about McJobs. That was published in 1991. Talk about prescient.