The Case for Rooms
citylab.com
citylab.com
There is also a matter of space. A shared living/dining/cooking space can use a lot less space than three separate rooms. I couldn’t afford the separate solution without it feeling cramped. In the open configuration it’s vast. The article mentions energy use - and living smaller is better in that regard.
Personally, a combined cooking/living space is desirable for exactly the reasons you mentioned. However a separate dining room, and perhaps another room for "entertaining" (think a "den" or similar room) is also desirable to me.
But when you eliminate a wall, you eliminate a place to put bookcases and such. One of the rules in making the most of a small space is "go vertical". Walls help you do that. So that's a loss for open plans.
Open space gives you the option of dividing it up as you like. A fixed wall makes the decision for you.
Exactly my thoughts reading this. I would guess this author does not cook. Or has not done so in a closed isolating kitchen while family or friends chat happily just around a wall out of earshot.
I believe you are correct:
Nothing is more maddening than trying to read or watch television in the tall-ceilinged living room with someone banging pots and pans or using the food processor 10 feet away in the open kitchen.
I was scratching my head while reading the article because my wife and I are looking to do the opposite and tear down the wall between the kitchen and the dining room. I happen to be the cook and for the same reasons as the GP, I enjoy being able to talk and converse while I'm cooking. I'm not interested in so-called "chef kitchens" to impress people, however I've put a lot of thought into optimizing the space I have. Small is good when there's only 1 cook. But that's a separate issue from the socializing aspect while cooking.
Otherwise, they are under my feet because they want to be near me and talk to me and get my attention. I can't just close the kitchen door and ignore a toddler. This happens much more than in our previous open-kitchen apartment, because they could get my attention from the couch or living room floor while I was cooking.
Exactly the opposite. People with open floor plans don't cook every day, otherwise their home will smell like a cheap restaurant, unless they got used to it.
My parents have an open plan, i don't. My home smells fresh every day (except kitchen) despite cooking every day, their house, smells like food in every corner because the smell impregnates in every material(especially in the winter) and is very hard to get it out.
Because it's a distinct minority that I've ever encountered who proclaims: "drat, is that freshly baked bread and pastries, how disgusting! and freshly ground coffee, ewww, can't stand that, and stir fry that we love, absolute vomit! citruses, again!?"
what are people doing that food smells are listed as a negative connotation?
Because cooking has turned into something social somehow, people don’t want to be isolated in the kitchen any more.
But in the past, someone walking into the kitchen while you were cooking would probably have been akin to them walking in on you in the toilet (“What!? No, I don’t want them to see the dinner until it’s actually done!”).
Depends on how far in the past, and where.
In the USSR, kitchen has always been the place where people would end up spending a long time talking about whatever.
There is even a phrase "kitchen conversations", which would mean talking politics (without regard to what the Party says).
And, of course, the Kitchen was the social hub in the communal flats (living with roommates, Soviet-style). There usually would be no common area in a communal flat other than the kitchen.
This comment boggles the mind. I would wager that probably for thousands of years, cooking has been a communal (if perhaps gendered, good riddance) affair, and only with the advent of the unemployed housewife of the 50s suddenly the kitchen is seen as this private affair.
But i guess i'm the wrong person to be commenting, because generally i'm no fan of all this extreme individualism :)
The trouble is everyone congergrates in the kitchen! That's fine if it's nice and wide and has plenty of counter space, but awful if it's really tiny and the only means between the living room and the patio where your other friend is grilling.
I agree with other comments on how a dining room is kinda useless. If you have a big pot-luck, it feels more relaxed if people are just sitting in various rooms or outside with a paper plate on their lap .. and if it's just you and one other person, a couch works just fine.
This is one of the many reasons why open floor plans aren't going anywhere. Even without the "entertaining" aspect, people still cook for their families.
I grew up in an early 1900s Coastal Victorian house. While my parents cooked dinner after work in our small kitchen, my brother and I would usually hang out under their feet an in the way. Playing in the living room or upstairs meant we didn't see them until dinner time.
I live in a modern "open concept" now. My wife and I cook dinner after work while the kids play in the dining or living room and nobody has to be forced into isolation. The high-flow If anybody wants alone time, there's a small office downstairs and bedrooms upstairs.
I'd really like to have a separate dining room in my house - in fact I've recently hired an architect to plan an extension off the back of the house that would add one!
I'm the opposite. Nothing drives me up the wall more than people trying to talk to me when I'm trying to work, whether on a computer coding or in the kitchen cooking/baking. I can't concentrate at all when someone tries to talk to me. I can communicate, or I can cook/code, but I can't do both at the same time.
But to each their own
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[1] HN is a big crowd, so if the "ope" thing confused anyone reading this, behold: https://www.chicagomag.com/city-life/May-2018/Ope-The-All-Pu...
"Scalding your loved ones? Tired of shutting the oven door on your cat? Isn't there a better way? Closed floor plans!"
I've got kids. My number one complaint about my house is that I am shut off from everyone when I try to cook.
Not every cooking task is a nice, safe, contained-in-an-appliance chore. Sometimes you’re playing with open flames, hot oil, red-hot metal, and other delights that you wouldn’t generally imagine in the proximity of an infant.
Of course, only some cuisines have cooking tasks that look like that; this whole thread is people from different cultural culinary traditions talking past one-another because they have totally different ideas of what goes on in the kitchen.
Or do you think their regular everyday kitchen tasks are that different? I was also using frying pans to make steaks, fries, schnitzels, ... baking oven for strudels or chicken...
Also, yes, those of us living in apartments often have small kitchens.
I know I wouldn't let 12 year old me handle a sharp knife or a frying pan.
Fish smells nice on the plate and awful everywhere else.
Broccoli, etc.
When you have small kids:
- You want them away from boiling water, dropped knives, and dangerously hot ovens.
- You want them to keep sleeping even though you're vacuuming
- You might want to let them watch Baby Shark for the 1000th blasted time while leaving you out of it
- You might want to read a novel while they hold miniature My Little Pony melodramas
- You might want to start a project on a table, leave it alone for an hour (behind closed doors), then come back to it where you left it
- You might want to have adult conversations about adult subjects (death, money, parenting) without unprepared ears listening in
You probably do want to incorporate them into dining, family choices, and cooking, but only in controlled ways.
As are parents. Some of this might be introversion versus extraversion.
IMHO having a cavalier attitude because nothing bad happened to you is not productive.
This happened to a friend's kid. He pulled down a pot of spaghetti, severely burning his penis. While the family is struggling to deal with the medical issue, Massachusetts starts an intrusive and accusatory investigation. Because of the location of the injury, the state made the assumption that there was sexual abuse.
This sort of stuff is exactly why the separate kitchen doesn't work at our house. The kids want to be where they can see us, and, with the way our kitchen is set up, there's no way for them to do that without being underfoot. At the same time, we want to be able to keep at least a vague eye on them, and that's not not really possible if they're in a completely separate room.
Versus, when I was little, our house had a kitchen that was separated from the living room by a counter. Which things much easier: We could hang out in sight of Mom, Mom could keep an eyey on us, and we weren't creating a safety hazard (or hassle) just so long as we stayed on one side of the counter.
It's also a total PITA at dinner parties. These aren't the old days, where it was OK for one person (always the same person) to stay isolated in the kitchen for half the evening, and it was understood that it's a private space where guests aren't allowed. Instead we end up with more and more people congregating in the kitchen, socializing with the cook and then with each other, until eventually literally every guest is there, getting in the way of the cooking, and they all have to get kicked out so that we can open the oven safely. Then you're isolated for a little bit, until someone needs to get another beer from the fridge, and ends up staying in the kitchen to chat, and then another, and it slowly ramps up until a mildly dangerous cacophany again. Rinse and repeat until dinner is served.
Unless something absolutely amazing is happening in the living room, the smokers will be out back, a pair of introverts will be in the hallway, and everyone else will slowly gravitate towards the kitchen until everyone is in the way.
It smells amazing too being near the action. Sight + smell getting stimulated all at once.
When the available seating is exhausted in the living room, it feels a bit strange to remain standing if everyone else is sitting, so you excuse yourself to the kitchen for another drink, where you find a number of other people standing and conversing. This feels less strange, so you don't see much point in going back to the living room.
Once everyone has made the inevitable trip to the kitchen to freshen up their beverage, and gets caught up in a conversation in the kitchen, the living room gradually becomes empty, and at that point, nobody wants to go sit alone in the living room and miss all the action happening in the kitchen.
[0] https://www.ana-white.com/woodworking-projects/little-helper...
Though, some kids are easier than others to redirect.
Oh, that feeling of taking a drink of something opaque, and feeling unexpected solid items in your mouth...
For all the reasons you listed I want it open so I can keep an eye on the kids.
Some points:
- I don't want the smell in my living room
- Kids: It's good to be able to keep them distanced if needed. If they want to participate in cooking, there's https://www.puckdaddy.de/de/entdeckerturm/
- It clutters the interior design as your living room is always going to offer you a view of used dishes, open food packaging and kitchen utilities (Dare I say it's anti-zen?)
- living room is unusable noise-wise, when open kitchen is in use
- I don't want my guest to see every faux pas that happens in the kitchen.
- Energy usage
That's the practical stuff where the open design falls short. But what annoys me philosophically about them is that there's this cultural delusion: that you're going to have a house party every time you eat. Or that people want to see me cooking, because I'm really good at it.
My experience is, that most open kitchen users just don't cook that much (and dine out instead), so they don't recognize the flaws. And they don't recognize that using "a lot less space" also means that you're probably getting less space sold in the first place. Both of these points illustrate how the open kitchen was something that affluents, especially younger ones were prone to. Just the right peer group to cheer the rest of society into believing that this is something desirable.
Cooking is not a chore, true, not just. But in reality it is a lot of times – and that's perfectly fine!
PS: That's of course subjective. Hopefully my counter position to yours is not taken as offensive.
I think there's an element of class-based bravado in many modern houses. Huge windows without curtains, open floor plans, these send a message that your life doesn't have any mess that you need to hide from the world. You can live every aspect of your life in perfect comfort without giving a thought to who is watching, because all they would see is how elegant and attractive your life is.
There's also an elevation of the social and a deprecation of individual activity. The author points out that it's hell to try to read or watch a movie while someone is using a food processor twenty feet away, but that scenario is not part of the perfect showroom lifestyle. In the ideal life, people within earshot of each other are engaged in sparkling conversation. Solitude can perhaps be engaged in stylishly, but two people not speaking to each other because they're each absorbed in their own thing is a bit gross, or at the very least, less than perfect, and therefore it's not properly aspirational to ask your home to cater to it.
First, none of what follows is applicable for people who are absorbed in their own thing even though they're near each other because they can't afford separate rooms. In that case, you do what you have to do.
But if we choose to be in the same room together, shouldn't we interact with each other rather than being absorbed in our own things? Otherwise, why not go to our own rooms?
Mind you, I'm an introvert. And most of the time, I merely tolerate family gatherings, even though I choose to fly back home to spend time with my family. (I'm single and currently living in a tech hub, across the country from my family.) But I try to participate, at least a little. And I generally don't put my earbuds on until I've spent my time with the family and go back to being alone.
To the point that I would be aware of footsteps and time my exits so that I would not have to interact with other room dwellers.. It didnt feel like that in college dorms
Anyone here who lives in a modern open-concept house care to comment?
I currently live with my wife, 3 children and 2 dogs in a 1200 square foot split level and we all dream of a big open-concept house some day... but apparently some people are getting tired of theirs and adding walls back in?
https://www.philly.com/philly/news/open-floor-plan-fixer-upp...
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/12/realestate/im-over-open-c...
We ended up taking out all of the walls on the first floor to create a large kitchen/living/dining space and it feels so much larger and more pleasant than it did beforehand when there was a (small) kitchen, a (small) living room, and a (small) third room that was probably being used as a dining room. If you live somewhere where square footage is cheap--although, growing up in such a place, heating and air conditioning might not be!--I can see the appeal. But urban life puts some severe constraints on space and more open plans seems to make it more pleasant as well as more usable, at least for me. I don't know if I'd want to go back.
(Though, at the same time, I really value having an office with a door that I can close. That too is important!)
Now, I do like it if it's not the case that my dirty dishes are literally the first thing you see from literally everywhere in the non-bedroom, non-bathroom parts of the house. Modern SF remodels often have a kitchen that has no separation of any kind from the living/dining areas, and that's not ideal. I am not a domestic god, I do often have mess in my kitchen.
But going from there to a fully walled-off kitchen, even if it has doorways instead of doors, is even worse. In any social event, someone is going to be in the kitchen some significant amount of time. Some significant amount of the time I spend just hanging out with my family is me cooking or cleaning in the kitchen. I don't want enforced isolation during those times.
Plus, a little nudge to not let mess pile up in your kitchen is a good thing.
In my ideal house, the kitchen is open to the living/dining across a wall or archway, but has its own nook that it retreats back into so that you can at least not have everything in the kitchen be front-and-center all the time.
Dining rooms per se are even worse than closed-off kitchens. They're a big waste of visual space. I am not Victorian, I do not have big formal sit-down dinner parties. Most of the entertaining or hanging-out space is the kitchen and living room, the dining room should be as fungible with that as possible.
Our major complaint about every apartment we've ever lived in is that half the square footage is hidden in bedrooms no one ever spends time in. We have small children, and apartment buildings were generally quite reluctant to rent us less space than they thought we needed, but we generally chose apartments based on how big the living/kitchen area was. Given the choice between a 1,500 sq ft 2 bedroom with a 1,200 sq ft living room, and a 2,000 sq ft 4 bedroom with a 600 sq ft living room, we'll take the 2 bedroom all day, because we spend all of our time in the main space together, and we only sleep in the bedrooms. Having open space where we can all be together is massively important to our quality of life. (Naturally this will probably change as the kids get older...)
Somewhat related, when I was growing up, all of the families in our friend group tended to congregate at one family's house. They had the biggest house by far, but what I find funny in retrospect is that everyone's homes were laid out the same way, but the big house was SO much bigger, that even the compartmentalized rooms ended up feeling like an open floor plan.
People seem to subconsciously want a kitchen and a dining room and a sitting room and a living room like Downton Abbey, but they don't notice that each room in Downton Abbey is the size of a small gymnasium. At least from my perspective, it's better to have one room like that, than to try and cram all of the other rooms into a too small space.
Reading back over this, I realize I sound very opinionated, and I suppose that's because I am! Sometimes I go into a house and I just can't believe how someone could make a whole 2,000 sq ft feel so small and cramped.
A continuous kitchen/dining/living space was a hard requirement for me when searching for a new place. It has nothing to do with "entertaining", and everything to do with not having walls between people, as well as making the space feel so much larger.
I like being able to look all the way from the kitchen into the living room, and have a comfortable conversation while cooking.
(That said, I don't want that space joined with the entryway; I want to have a foyer, then walk through an archway into a huge open living space.)
There was also a constant battle between the family room and the living room, which housed the piano. The person watching TV would turn up the volume to hear over the piano, then the person playing piano would play a little louder so they could hear over the TV, and this would continue until both were shouting at each other.
Open concept homes look great in pictures but they're terrible to live in, imo.
Appliances like dishwashers are very quiet now, so running them is not an issue. And in general, when I cook I'm not banging pots and pans the whole time.
Walling off rooms would make me want to cook less since it would be imposed separation from everything else going on.
Other than that I love having a big kitchen, being able to prep food + watch TV. We barely use our dining table (we have a nice bar around our kitchen).
gah! I now feel very spoiled / wasteful american stero type. I'm single (1 dog) and would really not enjoy having less than 2000sqft, currently in 2900+. I have hobbies that need space and I enjoy having dedicated rooms (office, painting, tv/reading/palor, sleeping)
There are two factors:
- Area / Perimeter ratio. If a room is too large, it's tough to use space efficiently. In open-concept rooms, there is limited space on the walls for traditional bookcases, art, buffet tables, etc. Of course you can still use the space, but you can usually fit more furniture when you have more walls (up to a point, then the inefficiency swings the other way).
- Privacy. Depending on how many people live in your house, a single large room may not offer enough privacy and noise exclusion as a day to day living space. Therefore, even if you have an open layout, you usually also want other more private and cozy rooms (e.g. a separate family room or den).
My conclusion is that an open layout is fine, but shouldn't be the be-all and end-all public living space in your home. If you have a 2k+ square foot house with an open layout and another separate living space, I think most people will be happy with that. For a single person/couple, having the extra living space might not be needed.
Actually now I've written that, I guess it's really not that dissimilar to the open office plan arguments.
Good things:
1. It is nice for entertaining.
2. Easier to keep an eye on children.
3. Flexibility to layout.
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Issues:
1. How often do you really entertain? Not counting family visits, way less often than you think.
2. You will always be on top of other people. Examples see [2a]
3. Less flexibility than you think, tables and chairs still have to go somewhere.
4. Nowadays it is extremely popular to put a half bath in the large space. I don't like listening to people potty, I don't like being listened to while I potty, and potty smells can linger.
5. Do you like to clean? People today don't just drop by like they used to, a shame really, but any time you think people might be coming by, even just to drop off a small item, the whole area needs to be picked up. When you have separate rooms, you can quickly pile things into that area that your visitors wont see, not so with open concept.
6. Surprise parties are now harder to pull off.
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[2a] - Say you have company down, and only want to talk to some of them, like when the women want to talk separate from the men. You want to do homework and have a quiet area. You want to read, your kids want to watch the same episode of Mickey Mouse Club House Again. You want to watch the big game, she wants to watch her "stories". You have two teenagers who like to fight for attention, can't separate them far enough with an open space.
We have one wall the adds separation between a family room and the dining place, and we're in the process of adding a hole in it (though the reason is increased light.)
In general: we love it.
The article is right about the enormous energy inefficiency of it all. We have no way to separate living room/dining room/kitchen/family room from each other, so we're heating the whole thing in the winter.
It's also true that sounds travels everywhere, but in our case, with only 1 kid, that's not a problem.
More seriously though, the original open floor plan was the tipi or the igloo. Separate rooms for everything was explicitly a way to show off wealth by having portions of your living space dedicated to non-essential activities.
When people put aside the bragging aspects having multiple rooms, it is more functionally useful to have a larger open space which can be configured dynamically for different activities.
The discussion of the kitchen is fairly reasonable. The kitchen is a functional room and not something you generally use for other things (or at least the part with all the appliances). Most people don't share their garage either as its a functional storage space for their car (or excess possessions depending on how see things :)). A kitchenette (just a few preparation tools and one preparation area) certainly works well sharing the space with other things where people gather and snack, but kitchens with giant Wolf ranges, extended racks of cookware, and more stainless steel than a battleship are a bit out of place. I think those go back to showing off wealth rather than being practical :-)
Traditional-roomed homes had load-bearing walls within the interior space. This limited your flexibility to make layout changes. Open plan buildings come with load-bearing beams spanning between exterior walls, meaning that all interior walls are purely for aesthetics or function reasons, and can be almost trivially changed.
This is why modern office buildings have large open plan spaces with pillars. It is super flexible to set up walls (or not) as the space needs. Conference rooms? Private offices? Break-room? Closet? Just tell them where to put the prefab walls.
If you're worried about being in vogue with house layout trends, open plan is the most logical place to begin because rooming off is cheaper than the other way around.
Now that we have a TV and still only watch Netflix or Youtube but because it's so easy I find myself watching stuff almost like a TV and get really annoyed when there is noise coming from the kitchen.
If the article was about the history of floor plans and the origin of the open floor plan, sure that's a chance to be informed. But it nominally wasn't.
Also, this:
> A large, single, continuous space is harder to get and keep clean. Messes and smells are no longer isolated, but can be easily tracked throughout the entire first floor of a large home. Less house in general means less house to clean.
...What? Sure, more walls make it easier to ignore messes, but that's not the same thing as easier to clean.
If the small rooms have thresholds, that helps too; that's what they're for.
Also you can do one room today and the next tomorrow; that holds for vacuuming as well as sweeping.
https://thebaffler.com/kate-takes/dont-let-people-enjoy-thin...
Off topic: this article is like a fly trap for people who comment without reading the article.
This definitely depends on where you live. Here in Hawaii, an open floor plan is crucial for the natural breezes to be able to flow through the house. Fail that part, and you're stuck with totally closing up and air conditioning your house, which at $0.35/kWh really hurts. Plus why live in Hawaii if you're going to close yourself into an air tight box?
Maybe the compromise is having rooms partitioned with French doors. My in-laws house (about 100 years old) is like that, but the shorter ceilings make me feel cramped.
Now, with folding exterior doors, the open concept is moving outdoors to create indoor/outdoor spaces. So, actually, the trend is going towards even more open concept floor plans.
Furthermore designing for it is wasteful? Why must it be?
It’s an acoustic nightmare to have one big room that everyone can talk to in?
Open floor plan housing makes smaller spaces feel larger by allowing all the rooms to be the living room or dining room as need be. It allows me to afford a place that feels larger but is smaller. And that alone is a killer feature in a City.
We almost never have people over, but having an open space is wonderful even for just two of us, and there's certainly nothing wasteful about designing for edge cases if they don't make things worse the rest of the time.
We don't have a lot of guests all that often, so I agree if "a handful of times" is "between 10 and 15 per year."
There is no question that open concept doesn't allow to heat or cool this room but not the other. It's all or nothing for us. That was totally different when I grew up.
Whatever happens in the kitchen, we can hear it perfectly on the other side of the house in our bedroom if we leave our bedroom door open. That would not be the case if we had some kitchen door somewhere in between. Similarly, when our daughter has friends over in the dining area or living area, we typically move to the bedroom because the family/TV room is too noisy then.
My wife and I like open floor plans. The kitchen opens into the living room and into the dining room. When my parents visit, my mom often remarks how she would really like to close the (non-existent) door to the kitchen, so she can cook in peace and not make loud noises and smell up the whole house. And we keep trying to tell her that we like to watch and help her cook, see steaming pot of soup or the frying pan going and whatnot. It's a silly conversation we have, we even joke about it, but I found it relevant with the article at hand.
> the kitchen, no longer a place of shame and no longer reliant upon the ventilation provided by the kitchen door
Yes. I think that is to some extent how my mom views that space. It's a dirty, place that you want isolate, do your work in there, and then come out and serve everyone the food in the dining room.
Specifically, the open kitchen, which seems to be where the open floor plan started. Attitudes towards meal preparation have had significant changes over the past few decades, and given the changes to women's roles in society, I don't really see a potential to return to separate cooking and serving spaces.
I wouldn't be surprised if the pendulum swings the other way soon, so that there is at least some compartmentalization of the first floor (kitchen, dining room, living room, entry, etc). But probably the dining room and kitchen will be that last to be divided, if ever.
Sound could be mitigated at least somewhat if these rooms weren't so often hardwood floors, windows, and drywall on every surface. I'll cop to being at least somewhat above average on sensitivity to such things, but while a big space will always have a certain big space-y sound to it, it doesn't have to be a booming echo where the high-frequency sounds bounce around for seconds at a time.
Doing that well is non-standard, and thus expensive. There are so many obvious fixes that introduce other problems. Textured surfaces like carpet and popcorn ceilings get filthy disgusting. Wooden walls and ceilings are a fire hazard.
I think white silicone rubber would be an excellent surface material. It won't burn, nothing eats it, it won't rot, it can be scrubbed with bleach or detergent, and it can have the right sort of softness for absorbing sound. It could work as floor tiles or wall panels, with a smooth exposed surface and a waffle-like backing to grant it some additional squishyness. For the ceiling it could even be like stalactites, perhaps 4" diameter and 20" length, to better absorb the sound.
As for all the concerns about noise making it hard to watch TV - on the rare occasions that it's a problem, I usually just turn captions on (which I usually keep on anyhow because I just find them helpful).
The one space I do wish was standard in more homes though is a small office or library space. I would gladly replace most dining spaces (I don't even own a table to eat at) with a little corner room with doors and shelving on the walls.
All the homes I’ve lived in as an adult (mostly in the US) haven’t had the same separation and I like when my house smells of cooking (as long as I don’t burn something) but it definitely changes what I cook, knowing that the oven will heat the entire apartment definitely changes plans in the summer, whereas my mother can simply open the kitchen door
However, the author’s argument was weak. Someone else or some other perspective really deserves to have written this piece.
Though we never use the "formal" dining room or formal living room as intended. They are/were used for craft rooms, playrooms, exercise rooms, temp storage, office space, and so on over the years.
It builds up a total straw man for why open concepts are terrible, built on ways in which almost none of us actually live.
What are the justifications for why "open concept" floor plans in which the kitchen flows into the living area?
* Open floor plans are an "acoustic nightmare". Try to imagine the horror of trying to watch television in the living room while some jerk in the kitchen bangs pots and pans trying to get your Totino's Pizza Rolls ready for you.
This point is at least fair. Yes, sound bleeds from one space to another, for better or for worse. But I don't want to live in a walled-off Victorian house. I don't have servants making me food. I don't have or want a partner who toils in some distant secluded space to make me my supper. When I'm cooking, I don't want to be isolated from 'the rest of the house'. I want to see the score in the game, or be able to talk to my partner as she unwinds after a long day, if I'm putting the dishes away.
* "Designing homes around “entertaining” that happens only a handful of times a year is a wasteful, yet still mindbogglingly popular practice. When people come to visit, they are there to see you, not your open concept."
But my open space allows me to communicate with my partner. Or have our parents over and speak with them while we prepare. Or, when we have "handful of times a year" parties, where people end up congregating in the kitchen ANYWAY, we're able to mingle and move freely. Moreover, the statement "they are there to see you, not your open concept" betrays an open hostility that the author clearly feels about WHY people design their spaces the way they do, that you're trying to show off, not that you could possibly PREFER to have spaces that blend together.
* We are now apparently building "mess kitchens" so that our fancy designer kitchens don't get messy.
Okay, but very few of us are rich enough to do this, go complain about those people doing that thing.
* Things are too far apart in an open concept! We have to install 2nd "pot sinks" so that our commute between the sink and the stove is not excessive! Everything is so far apart!
Again, rich people problems. Not open concept problems. Stuff can still be close together in an open space. Is the author complaining about the open concept, or the fact that some houses have kitchens marginally larger than an NYC efficiency kitchen you can't even turn around in?
* Heating and cooling such a large space is so inefficient!
Okay, because everyone WITHOUT an open concept has spaces that are easy to heat/cool separately? AFAIK most people use forced air or radiators or something, and don't really have the ability to heat one room at a time anyway.
* We're building these absurd she-sheds and man-caves as rebellion against the open concept!
... so you're admitting that the open-concept only refers to the kitchen and dining and living room, and despite this people still have their private spaces and it basically works just fine for everyone? You also recognize, again, that the open concept does not and has not ever extended to bedrooms or offices or other living spaces?
The article almost feels like a parody, since its example of a gloriously convenient 50s kitchen includes a washing machine and dryer and 1950s housewife who, conveniently, never needs to leave her unpaid working environment, or, for that matter, be seen at all.
Her argument flows pretty naturally imo. Identify a problem. Open concepts are a fad with bad externalities for its occupants and the environment. She points a wagging finger at the normies who bought into the fad, condescending only if you choose to read it that way, but really all in all good natured. More than a fad, perhaps open floor plans are a historical mistake by ideologues who were unable to anticipate its unintended consequences. She draws attention to the richer people escaping to their man caves and sculleries, they wouldn't need to do that if their house wasn't a cacophony of noise and smell to begin with. Her solution is simple and elegant. Just close up that kitchen again instead of holding on to that collective aesthetic obsession with large spaces.
She underestimates that people actually value the aesthetics and branding of an open floor plan more than any of its drawbacks. Open floor plans make your small house look big and are ideal for the perfect family, where everybody always gets along, and the loss of privacy is secondary. And who doesn't want to live in a big house, and not have a perfect family?
No going back. The open floor plan coincides with the decline of cooking and the replacement of hosting with entertaining. Kitchens are fake anyway. Of the families who I know who actually cook meals, who host their friends and relatives as if they were honored guest to be waited upon, none of those prefer an open kitchen. Those who don't, mine included, for who a kitchen is a place with a fridge and a microwave primarily, maybe a large tabletop for all the crap their kids bring back form school, the people who's idea of cooking is making casseroles and pasta that need to last for days, who's idea of a party is a potluck, they do prefer open floor plans.
It's a value shift in what it means to prepare meals, she prefers the old fashioned values, most people no longer do.
>She draws attention to the richer people escaping to their man caves and sculleries, they wouldn't need to do that if their house wasn't a cacophony of noise and smell to begin with.
I don't buy this. All homes have private spaces. Man caves would not go away if we all just closed off our kitchens. It implies that the "man cave" only exists because of the open concept, but for that to be true, it would have to mean that it's replacing the living room, which I think you can hardly conclude from the available evidence. When was an "enclosed" living room a paragon of privacy?
It seems so utterly bizarre to go from "combine kitchen and dining and living room" to "complete and total loss of privacy". Again, we still have private bedrooms and offices, those with more space in their homes have still more separate spaces.
There are implications here that we had to build bigger houses to replace the lost 'private' space, but I hardly see the evidence. The closed-off houses of yore, with their formal dining rooms and walled-off kitchens, were hardly tiny.
>The open floor plan coincides with the decline of cooking and the replacement of hosting with entertaining. Kitchens are fake anyway. Of the families who I know who actually cook meals, who host their friends and relatives as if they were honored guest to be waited upon, none of those prefer an open kitchen.
Again, thin. Plenty of folks have chimed in here who prefer an open concept, and plenty of folks who prefer a closed-off one. Like my own household, we cook every single night, and prefer the open space.
>It's a value shift in what it means to prepare meals, she prefers the old fashioned values, most people no longer do.
This is an unsupported conclusion. Again, it's a quasi-pejorative that making your own meals means you prefer a closed off kitchen. That's just not the case. Different people have different preferences, but this condescending attitude that real people who really cook hate all this new fangled nonsense is just not based in fact.
The article is about home floor plans, not business offices.
At the end, "remote" teams with monthly get-togethers and weekly calls are best IMHO.
But if you can give your teams a group space to themselves, they get the benefit of an open collaborative space between them without polluting the dynamics of other teams.
Rather than one open space, create that hotdesking area, then your large team rooms, and then scatter your generic meeting rooms and video call booths around so you can still opt for privacy.
This takes more effort but it is worth it. Your teams will generate subcultures of their own to make it easier (and more enjoyable) to work together. Give them that space.
In the future we won't think of families as families, but as teams, all highly engaged and aligned on a single strategic goal.
This is usually called a conversation.
Enjoy your free downvotes down the thread.
You didn't even reply to said parent comment, so I don't see how "conversation" is your excuse.
Maybe next time you're proven wrong, you don't dig with renewed fervor and snark and instead only humbly admit your mistakes.
ftfy