Bigger
Many Texans consider "bigness" to be a key part of their identity. This has its basis in the geographically of the state which exists at a scale that can be difficult to comprehend. Over 800 miles separate Port Isabel at the mouth of the Rio Grande to Texline on northwest corner of the Panhandle. Texas is almost as wide: so wide, in fact, that residents of El Paso are as close to the beaches of southern California as they are to the state's own beaches on the Gulf Coast.
The embrace of the big has been internalized by many of the 30+ million residents who live within the 268,600+ square miles of Texas today. It can be seen in the hats they wear and the vehicles they drive. The ubiquitous 10-gallon hat so often associated with Texans once served a legitimate utilitarian purpose. Its wide brim provided much-needed protection from the constant sun and occasional rain if you were, if fact, a cowboy who spent your waking hours herding cattle. A pickup truck with a sizable bed is similarly useful for hauling the materials and tools necessary for maintaining miles of barbed wire fencing if you were, in fact, working a large ranch.
But few Texans spend much time herding cattle in the twenty-first century, and although the open bed of a pickup may be occasionally useful, most of the time it is, much like the 10-gallon hat, little more than a stylistic affectation. While there may be little harm in cowboy cosplay, the same can not be said of commuting to an office job in an full-size pickup truck. Big vehicles have an impact on others in a way big hats do not. The laws of physics dictate that crashes involving larger - and thus heavier - vehicles are mathematically more intense. This makes the road less safe for other, smaller vehicles and can be downright deadly for pedestrians. The large amount of fuel full-size pickups consume - not to mention the large amount of carbon burning that fuel consumes - have both economic and environmental impacts that go far beyond the roads on which they travel.
There are architectural impacts to all this is well. With some production models now over 22 feet in length, the standard two-car garage is now too small to contain some crew cab / extended-cab combinations. New garages are growing larger in response and is but one of many factors contributing the the growth in the size of houses. This phenomenon is not limited to Texas: the median size of a single-family house in the United States has ballooned from just over 900 square feet in 1949 to nearly 2,500 square feet in 2021 despite the fact that the median size of an American family has actually decreased from 3.67 to 3.13 during that same time.
The reasons for this go far beyond larger garages. Kids no longer share bathrooms - and certainly not bedrooms - so more of each are now considered a necessary. Master bedrooms have swollen into master "suites" with small reach-in closets replaced by vast walk-in affairs to accommodate the hauls of fast fashion delivered overnight. Home gyms, media rooms, and other single-use spaces have been added to the private realm what once existed as shared public spaces. And yes, garages have grown to contain the size of the three-row luxury SUVs and Texas-Edition long-bed pickup trucks that families are convinced they need.
It is the job of the architect to work with their client to develop a design that meets their programmatic needs. More often than not, a client believes they need something "bigger." It very well be the case that they do need more space - children are born and aging family members move in - but often the best solution isn't just to make things bigger, but to design things better.
Bigger can be better, but it is also possible to do more with less.
