The Case for Rooms
This article is a train-wreck of a justification for, I assume, the author&#x27;s own personal taste in interior design.<p>It builds up a total straw man for why open concepts are terrible, built on ways in which almost none of us actually live.<p>What are the justifications for why &quot;open concept&quot; floor plans in which the kitchen flows into the living area?<p>* Open floor plans are an &quot;acoustic nightmare&quot;. 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&#x27;s Pizza Rolls ready for you.<p>This point is at least fair. Yes, sound bleeds from one space to another, for better or for worse. But I don&#x27;t want to live in a walled-off Victorian house. I don&#x27;t have servants making me food. I don&#x27;t have or want a partner who toils in some distant secluded space to make me my supper. When I&#x27;m cooking, I don&#x27;t want to be isolated from &#x27;the rest of the house&#x27;. 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&#x27;m putting the dishes away.<p>* &quot;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.&quot;<p>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 &quot;handful of times a year&quot; parties, where people end up congregating in the kitchen ANYWAY, we&#x27;re able to mingle and move freely. Moreover, the statement &quot;they are there to see you, not your open concept&quot; betrays an open hostility that the author clearly feels about WHY people design their spaces the way they do, that you&#x27;re trying to show off, not that you could possibly PREFER to have spaces that blend together.<p>* We are now apparently building &quot;mess kitchens&quot; so that our fancy designer kitchens don&#x27;t get messy.<p>Okay, but very few of us are rich enough to do this, go complain about those people doing that thing.<p>* Things are too far apart in an open concept! We have to install 2nd &quot;pot sinks&quot; so that our commute between the sink and the stove is not excessive! Everything is so far apart!<p>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&#x27;t even turn around in?<p>* Heating and cooling such a large space is so inefficient!<p>Okay, because everyone WITHOUT an open concept has spaces that are easy to heat&#x2F;cool separately? AFAIK most people use forced air or radiators or something, and don&#x27;t really have the ability to heat one room at a time anyway.<p>* We&#x27;re building these absurd she-sheds and man-caves as rebellion against the open concept!<p>... so you&#x27;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?<p>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.