I made the same complaints when this blog was first posted on HN. All of their rules are entirely arbitrary and subjective opinions. They give very little argument or reasoning to support them. The best they have is side by side comparisons. Where they say "Isn't the one on the left so much better?" And on all of them I completely disagree and think the McMansion actually looks better. I just don't like the "simple, old fashioned, perfectly symmetrical" aesthetic that the author worships.

Worse is that most of their advice is actually harmful. For instance they don't like windows, especially asymmetrical ones. But lots of scientific studies have found that windows improve mental health significantly in a number of ways. Sunlight is very good. Or they demand houses be symmetrical. But if I've learned anything from games like dwarf fortress and Minecraft, that's not true. While symmetry might look nice, it generally creates designs that are less practical than if you weren't constrained by it. And every rule they have is like that. Just purely aesthetic constraints that trade off against other more practical values.