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Kate Wagner: The Latest Architecture and News

Kate Wagner: "The Age of the Architecture Critic as Galvanizing Force Is Over. It’s Done"

This article was originally published on Common Edge as "Kate Wagner on McMansion Hell, Criticism, and Her Love of Cycling."

Contrary to movie myth, there is no such thing as an overnight sensation. The moment when a cultural presence bursts upon the scene, seemingly fully formed, is almost always preceded by unwitnessed years of DIY training and single-minded obsession. Such is the case for Kate Wagner, who broke the architectural internet in 2016 with the introduction of McMansion Hell, a sharp and hilarious skewering of the bloated American home, in all its garish and desperate striving. A year later, the real estate listing site Zillow served the then-23-year-old Wagner with a cease-and-desist letter, claiming that her use of photographs violated copyright (even though they didn’t own the photographs either!). It was a clumsy move, resulting in an eventual corporate about-face and scads of free publicity for McMansion Hell.

ReSITE Launches Design and the City, a Weekly Podcast Exploring the Future of Urban Areas

Design and the City is a podcast by reSITE about how we can use design to make cities more livable and lovable. Every week, a new episode will be released featuring speakers that explore the future of our cities, like Thomas Heatherwick from Heatherwick Studios, Chris Precht from Studio Precht, Leona Lynen from Haus der Statistik and Yosuke Hayano from MAD Architects among others.

Design Criticism Ignores the Places that it Could Help the Most

This article was originally published on CommonEdge as "The Design Media Needs to Examine its Own Privilege."

Kate Wagner grew up in rural North Carolina. As a kid, her mom, who never went to college, worked in a grocery store deli and later in childcare. Her dad had a steady government job with a pension, and his time in the military meant he had the resources and benefits needed to get a college degree. Wagner describes her economic background as “one foot in the working class and one foot in the middle class, and it was always a negotiation between those two classes.” They were, she says, “just normal-ass American people.”

99% Invisible Tackles McMansions and the Architecture of Evil

Architecture critic Kate Wagner has collaborated with 99% invisible on a podcast and a guest column delving into the tragedies of McMansions and the representation of evil through architecture in film, respectively.

In the podcast, Wagner, who is the author of McMansion Hell, is interviewed by Roman Mars and explains how the McMansion typology evolved, as well as how it became so despised, delving into topics of architectural history and representations of wealth.

Through her article as a guest columnist, Wagner explores the real-world buildings used in film to depict the evil corporation archetype in movies like Robocop, Blade Runner, and The Matrix.