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The Case for Rooms

citylab.com

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Re: The Case for Rooms

#31

Post by ljm »

ljm wrote: post #3

It has to be a mix. Fully open isn’t great because you can’t make your space your own. You have to consider the entire rest of the floor or building. Give everyone private rooms and everyone works in isolation. This might look productive but I would argue it’s not: everyone has a physical barrier around themselves, they don’t even need to set boundaries any more. But if you can give your teams a group space to themse…

My mistake... I made the classic mistake of reading the headline, the parent comment, and not the content.

This is usually called a conversation.

Enjoy your free downvotes down the thread.

Re: The Case for Rooms

#32

Post by swagtricker »

Depending on your lifestyle, some areas are just a waste of space. It's just my wife, me, and two cats (children weren't in the cards) in a ~1000 sq/ft 2br/2ba condo. It's open concept built in the late 90's and when we look around on housing/remodel shows on TV or look at floor plans for our dream home (a whole 200 sq/ft larger with a pool) the #1 thing we kill off is the damn dining room. We eat in front of the TV or at the dining counter in the kitchen like normal 'Mericans. We don't need a whole separate room wasted w/ no door and a low hanging light fixture that we might make use of a few days a year.

Re: The Case for Rooms

#33

Post by privong »

matz1 wrote: post #16

why not have both and also allow remote ? let the employee decide which one they prefer.

> why not have both and also allow remote ? let the employee decide which one they prefer.

The article is about home floor plans, not business offices.

Re: The Case for Rooms

#34

Post by opmac »

ljm wrote: post #3

It has to be a mix. Fully open isn’t great because you can’t make your space your own. You have to consider the entire rest of the floor or building. Give everyone private rooms and everyone works in isolation. This might look productive but I would argue it’s not: everyone has a physical barrier around themselves, they don’t even need to set boundaries any more. But if you can give your teams a group space to themse…

Found the guy who didn't read the article, not even the first paragraph.

Re: The Case for Rooms

#35

Post by eropple »

adrianmonk wrote: post #21
alkonaut wrote: post #7

The open (Kitchen) floor plan to me represents the idea that cooking isn’t a chore separate from eating and socializing. I want to cook for an hour without being alone. Privacy in the kitchen would never be desireable. “Entertaining” doesn’t require guests. 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…

Open floor plans make better and worse use of space. One space can serve many functions, so that's a gain. 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.

I kinda like half-height bookshelves and the like to create partitions without losing that sense of openness. In our new place I'm putting a set of half-height cabinets behind the couch to partition off the "living area" from the kitchen/dining area.

Re: The Case for Rooms

#36

Post by eropple »

zwieback wrote: post #27
alkonaut wrote: post #7

The open (Kitchen) floor plan to me represents the idea that cooking isn’t a chore separate from eating and socializing. I want to cook for an hour without being alone. Privacy in the kitchen would never be desireable. “Entertaining” doesn’t require guests. 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…

Hmm, I never thought about that - I love being in the kitchen by myself, I usually close the door to the family room, but I can see that at other times it would be nice to not be alone. Big sliding doors might be a good compromise.

Incidentally, that compromise is one of the reasons why triple-deckers in the Northeast often have double doors between the large rooms in the house. (It's really nice when they're pocket doors, too, and they just slide into the wall.)

Re: The Case for Rooms

#37

Post by aetherson »

jpm_sd wrote: post #14

The historical context portion of the article is interesting and well written, but the critique of the open-concept layout at the end seemed rushed and unconvincing. 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 t…

I live in a house with an open plan and the author of that article couldn't be more wrong about my preferences. An open concept is key to making a house usable to me.

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.

Re: The Case for Rooms

#38

Post by mynameisvlad »

ljm wrote: post #31
ljm wrote: post #3

It has to be a mix. Fully open isn’t great because you can’t make your space your own. You have to consider the entire rest of the floor or building. Give everyone private rooms and everyone works in isolation. This might look productive but I would argue it’s not: everyone has a physical barrier around themselves, they don’t even need to set boundaries any more. But if you can give your teams a group space to themse…

My mistake... I made the classic mistake of reading the headline, the parent comment, and not the content. This is usually called a conversation. Enjoy your free downvotes down the thread.

> This is usually called a conversation.

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.

Re: The Case for Rooms

#39

Post by djsumdog »

joker3 wrote: post #9

It'll be fun to watch this one and see all the discussion about open plan offices from people who didn't read the article.

Yea I was disappointed when I saw it was talking about houses. I've seen a lot of cookie-cutter houses have very open plans just to give the illusion of having more space. I actually like them (if they're setup like a tri-level). Open plan offices are garbage. You have totally different goals/requirements for each.
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