They're scattered throughout Canberra's suburbs, both established and new - these slightly dated stylistic mashups that dominate the street.
We call them McMansions, but this is derogatory; we could just as easily applaud the assertiveness of the builders who conceived of them.
In a diffident little town filled with self-effacing public servants living, at least until the 1970s, in government-allocated three-bedroom homes no matter how big their families, you can't help applauding the Canberrans who decided to shout their house pride over the rooftops, from their even higher rooftops.
The 1990s were all about Canberrans getting assertive about the size of their houses. No more mean little govies or cramped duplexes - it was all about big, bigger, massive.
The town centre of Gungahlin is most often associated today with apartments, which line the thoroughfares and liven up the tram route. But the earliest suburbs of Nicholls, Palmerston and Ngunnwal emerged with elite streets dotted with rendered brick, often Tuscan-inspired McMansions with large front lawns. There are also many fine examples in the older Belconnen suburbs like McKellar and Weetangera, and even in the Inner South suburbs of Red Hill and Griffith.
In keeping with the inherent confidence and individualism that comes with the prospect of possibly pissing off your neighbours and really not caring, these homes come in a range of genres, from Swiss-style chalets and ornate Spanish haciendas to ultra-modern white boxes and glass cubes. Many have an angular, sloping roof.
A subset of this genre of house in the 1990s was the post-modern reno,which involved extending, rendering and adding flourishes to otherwise modest homes, the most visible and time-specific being perhaps the stone portico, superimposed on an otherwise ordinary front door.
O'Malley is, of course, ground zero for mansions, of any kind, although it's somewhat exempt from Canberra tradition because of its status as a largely diplomatic precinct. Sotiria Liangis, with her gargantuan granite-columned Greek castle overlooking Hindmarsh Drive, reigns supreme, but the precinct's international community has given us a cornucopia of architectural delights of mostly grand aspirations.
But back in the standard suburbs, real estate agent Theo Koutsikamanis, of Bastion Property Group, says he's seeing a shift in attitudes to these 1990s relics. One might even call it a newfound respect.
"I'm noticing that people aren't paying for size anymore unless it has a self-contained area for that intergenerational thing," he says.
"I just think people are paying more for quality now, especially in that higher end of that market.
"I'm finding now that builders of 20, 30 years don't want to do knock-down-rebuilds anymore. They'd rather go and buy a big wog McMansion - I can say that because I'm Greek - because with the size and the suspended slab and all that sort of thing, it's cheaper to go and buy and renovate."
He recently sold two Belconnen McMansions, in Cook and Weetangera, and said the biggest response was from people in the construction industry.
"With both of those homes there, we had a very big response from tradies, carpenters, people that are already in the building industry, that are like, why would I go and buy a knockdown and build something this big when I can just buy this and reface it?" he says.
"Everyone's building out of bloody foam now, everything's built like papier mache, but these are full brick homes, they're well-insulated, they're solid, they've got concrete suspended slabs on the second floor. You're not getting that anymore, and if you are, you're paying out your ears."
So, if size is what matters, all hail the 1990s-era Italianate mansions in the Canberra suburbs.
