A visceral hatred of open plans here. I can’t stand having people sitting in the living room being able to see the dishes in the sink - and having the entire living area smell of whatever’s been cooking.
This articel really resonates with me. I've lived in both older apartments with proper foyers and newer open-concept places, and the difference in how you actually live day-to-day is huge. The point about ceremonial spaces is so important and something I hadn't thought about explicitly before. I completly agree that the foyer isn't wasted space at all, its that buffer zone that makes a home feel like a home rather than just an efficent box.
Of course, many YIMBYs will argue that boring apartment floor plans are not the result of greedy developers or a failure of “modern design,” but the result of unnecessary government regulation, right?
Fire safety rules that require two separate staircases for egress have been blamed for the blocky, boring shape of modern apartment buildings——and the lack of family-friendly floor plans.
But it also creates problems with sunlight and air flow.
A “modern” apartment in a blocky, boring apartment building ***needs*** to have an open floor plan, in some cases, because it only has windows along one side of the apartment.
If they were closed off, the other rooms would otherwise have no light and no openings to the outside.
In other parts of the world, there are still L-shaped and U-shaped and (my personal favorite) O-shaped apartment buildings, with air and light on multiple sides and plenty of cross-ventilation.
In other words: This isn’t a story about new buildings just being bad——and traditional buildings somehow magically being better. It‘s a story about the unintended consequences of government regulation.
None of the dreaded abundists want to ban people from preferring and/or acquiring old-timey layouts. If you don’t like new apartments don’t rent one. But it’s not appropriate to mandate homes you won’t live in confirm to your tastes.
I typically prefer renting in old buildings. But when people make the aesthetic flaws they perceive in new builds a big part of their housing politics they’re shading into and providing cover for nimbs.
How much daylight is there between those concepts?
Regardless, I was using aesthetic in the broad sense of "a question of taste", including a person's design preferences. We do not need to mandate private questions of taste, it's something markets work just fine for
Oooh man you've hit on a big bugaboo as to why my husband and I stretched for a house, and not a new apartment. We lived in a 1990s era 'new apartment' and it was an awful lesson in bad but 'cost effective' design.
One of the most eye opening books I have ever read on architecture and design is Christopher Alexander's *A Pattern Language*. Every urbanist needs to read this book. It is extremely useful in putting language and identifying nesting patterns that make design human-centred and scaled.
Checking in with one vote FOR open floor plans especially those which continue outside to a deck or patio. Nothing promotes socializing like being able to cook while talking to your friends who are hanging out on the couch before you feed them. And isn't the table around which we gather, the sacred space?
“The idea of modern apartments lacking “ceremonial” spaces is important. You can kind of see how and why some folks imagine and/or discern a line from urbanism to anti-family sentiment/low fertility/attacking America/whatever. There’s something about not having those little spaces that feels like an attack on a way of being human. There’s an abstraction to it, a lack of understanding of what makes home.”
Given that, throughout most of human history, and for millions of our planet’s current inhabitants, a one room abode constitutes a home, I find this position somewhat odd.
I think your closing sentence more accurately reflects my sentiments;
“It’s very easy to mistake your own preferences for truths about the world or for analysis of public policy.”
Well, two thoughts on that: one is that in America we do typically expect these things, and so their disappearance may be taken as a decreasing standard of living, even though it might not really be. And two, the point isn't that everyone needs more *space*, it's about design. I don't think the kind of floorplans he or I are talking about imply that we can't have small modest homes.
A visceral hatred of open plans here. I can’t stand having people sitting in the living room being able to see the dishes in the sink - and having the entire living area smell of whatever’s been cooking.
Oh yeah, hell yeah. One big room - what is this, Beowulf? We’re living in the great hall? It sucks I hate it.
Let's drink mead, tomorrow we ride to slay the monster!
This articel really resonates with me. I've lived in both older apartments with proper foyers and newer open-concept places, and the difference in how you actually live day-to-day is huge. The point about ceremonial spaces is so important and something I hadn't thought about explicitly before. I completly agree that the foyer isn't wasted space at all, its that buffer zone that makes a home feel like a home rather than just an efficent box.
Of course, many YIMBYs will argue that boring apartment floor plans are not the result of greedy developers or a failure of “modern design,” but the result of unnecessary government regulation, right?
Fire safety rules that require two separate staircases for egress have been blamed for the blocky, boring shape of modern apartment buildings——and the lack of family-friendly floor plans.
But it also creates problems with sunlight and air flow.
A “modern” apartment in a blocky, boring apartment building ***needs*** to have an open floor plan, in some cases, because it only has windows along one side of the apartment.
If they were closed off, the other rooms would otherwise have no light and no openings to the outside.
In other parts of the world, there are still L-shaped and U-shaped and (my personal favorite) O-shaped apartment buildings, with air and light on multiple sides and plenty of cross-ventilation.
In other words: This isn’t a story about new buildings just being bad——and traditional buildings somehow magically being better. It‘s a story about the unintended consequences of government regulation.
None of the dreaded abundists want to ban people from preferring and/or acquiring old-timey layouts. If you don’t like new apartments don’t rent one. But it’s not appropriate to mandate homes you won’t live in confirm to your tastes.
I typically prefer renting in old buildings. But when people make the aesthetic flaws they perceive in new builds a big part of their housing politics they’re shading into and providing cover for nimbs.
But it's as I noted not an aesthetic issue, it's a design issue
How much daylight is there between those concepts?
Regardless, I was using aesthetic in the broad sense of "a question of taste", including a person's design preferences. We do not need to mandate private questions of taste, it's something markets work just fine for
Oooh man you've hit on a big bugaboo as to why my husband and I stretched for a house, and not a new apartment. We lived in a 1990s era 'new apartment' and it was an awful lesson in bad but 'cost effective' design.
One of the most eye opening books I have ever read on architecture and design is Christopher Alexander's *A Pattern Language*. Every urbanist needs to read this book. It is extremely useful in putting language and identifying nesting patterns that make design human-centred and scaled.
Checking in with one vote FOR open floor plans especially those which continue outside to a deck or patio. Nothing promotes socializing like being able to cook while talking to your friends who are hanging out on the couch before you feed them. And isn't the table around which we gather, the sacred space?
“The idea of modern apartments lacking “ceremonial” spaces is important. You can kind of see how and why some folks imagine and/or discern a line from urbanism to anti-family sentiment/low fertility/attacking America/whatever. There’s something about not having those little spaces that feels like an attack on a way of being human. There’s an abstraction to it, a lack of understanding of what makes home.”
Given that, throughout most of human history, and for millions of our planet’s current inhabitants, a one room abode constitutes a home, I find this position somewhat odd.
I think your closing sentence more accurately reflects my sentiments;
“It’s very easy to mistake your own preferences for truths about the world or for analysis of public policy.”
Well, two thoughts on that: one is that in America we do typically expect these things, and so their disappearance may be taken as a decreasing standard of living, even though it might not really be. And two, the point isn't that everyone needs more *space*, it's about design. I don't think the kind of floorplans he or I are talking about imply that we can't have small modest homes.
We also added more rooms as we got richer. Victorian houses usually had a lot of rooms.