I think a lot of what’s here is just plain and simple speculation. Housing is a lot like fashion and those kinds of things change without a lot of reason behind it.
40 years ago, shag carpeting, avacado appliances, lava rock and lucite were just awesome.
10 years from now, we’ll walk into a kitchen with stainless appliances, black granite countertops and cherry cabinets and say “How dated! I’m going to have to redo this from scratch!”
And in 30 years, when the indoor water feature is all the rage, they’ll want one of those too.
Count me among those who don’t want an open floor plan.
When I first met with my real estate agent (who was someone I already knew in a different capacity) I handed him a list of criteria for places I would look at. It included: nothing built after 1940 ; and no open floor plans!
When a friend visited us on move-in day in our newly-purchased 1925 house (with delightfully boxy little rooms, beautifully restored original woodwork, original French doors into the sun room and into the dining room, and original solid wood doors into the hall and stairs with working skeleton-key-locks) the very first thing she said while standing in our living room was (paraphrased): “Oh! You can knock out all these walls and really open this place up! It could be so nice!”
Open floor plans are ideal if you like to entertain and if you’re a very “together” family. Despite our house being old, my parents blew out some walls so that the kitchen opens into the living room. It’s extremely convenient and now that they’re (hell, we’re, for better or worse) househunting for them, they realize how much they want and need an open plan.
I’ve rarely met the person that didn’t enjoy the open plan; this thread is all news to me. Perhaps in shoddy new Ryan construction homes they’re a bunch of shit, but in nice (read: costly) new homes and in renovated old homes where walls were taken out, it’s quite nice. Sound dampening and good quality materials means you can’t necessarily hear someone at the other end, but you can see them and the flow of traffic is much better.
I think the answer is pretty simple: Open floor plans were less common in the past because family sizes were generally bigger.
When you`ve got 4-6 kids, you want your house compartmentalized somewhat. You all need to be able to find private space from time to time. And houses were generally smaller, so people were crammed in closer.
Now, a family is more likely to have one or two kids. And houses are bigger. That either means a lot of closed, unused rooms, or you open up the house and make fewer, better rooms.
We have one child, and a house with an open floor plan. But its a two-story with a developed basement, so if we want we can each have an entire floor to ourselves. So weve got three bedrooms, a big kitchen, and a lot of open space. Its great. But if I had four kids, theres no way I`d want this setup.
I do not like small kitchens which basically treat whoever is cooking like a servant: excluding them from whatever everyone else is doing. I think that feeling is shared by others in this thread. So a big kitchen with space for a table is great: people can be there while food is made, whether guests or family.
But then what? If I have guests I do not want them to sit and look at dirty dishes once they have eaten. I don’t want to clean up around them either. I want them to get up from the table and go somewhere else. Somewhere that does not smell of cooking (which smell is great while waiting to eat, and positively not great after you have), does not have pots and plates piled up on the counter, and has comfy seats. I want a separate living room, in fact
Do all of you who like open plan actually cook stuff?
Yes, though I police my cookware and kitchen as I cook, so that generally by the time it is finished only stuff that is dirty is the flatware, plates and cups used for the meal.
Yes I try to do that as far as possible too: but I am probably not as well organised as you: I always have a couple of pots or other stuff left over. But even with only the plates and cutlery and stuff that is still quite a lot of dishes to sit and stare balefully at you when you are having fun
Dishwasher … 5 minutes to load it and then a nice hang out time with friends over coffee and dessert nibbles [cookie platters are seriously good dessert plans. You can have them all arranged beforehand and they go great with coffee.]
Actually, a typical entertaining deal is fun and reasonably easy:
arranged on the table for when people start arriving: candied spiced nuts recipe with a dash of nutmeg added
hollowed out cherry tomatoes filled with gurkensalat
decoratively arranged wedges of pickled onion
assorted kalamata olives and tiny mozzarella balls
Ahead of time, preferably the day before do the meat part of the meatball recipe, it is better if it gets the chance to mellow out for an overnight.
In a pasta pot get a reasonable amount of water to the boil. This will be used to cook udon. I like these as the noodles are soft, not hard - some sort of irradiated packaging?
Get the chicken stock ready, shred the bok choy or napa cabbage, have a bowl of the meatballs ready to cook and sitting in the fridge, and the soy sauce and oil at hand. Do the fry up on the meatballs, I prefer a wok but some people like my chicken fryer for the job. Follow the directions, and about 5-7 minutes before the lions head soup is done, drop the noodles in their basket into the water, set out the bowls for the diners, and as soon as the noodles are done portion them into the bowls. Add the lions head soup over the noodles, and wash out the pasta pot [really only needs a quick rinse and a dash of soapy water sloshed and rinsed. I water rinse and bamboo scrubby the wok. The mise en place should have been washed as time permitted while working the saute. Not really much mise en place needed, really] then setting the food to table.
And a cookie platter, coffee or tea and desert is done.
I have lived in and seen many older apartments in New York and Chicago where the kitchen is a small separate room, without even enough space for a breakfast nook table. I one had a 1BR in a 1950’s building that was about 700 sq. feet, with a large common area that was huge by NYC standards, and a tiny kitchen the size of a walk-in closet. My interpretation is what Zulema said, the kitchen was a space to cook and wash dishes. You served coffee in the living room, and dinner at your dinner table. Because everyone actually had a dining room set, even if they didn’t have a separate dining room to put it in.
It’s also common in older studios to see a floorplan where the bed would be right in the living room, but the kitchen is in it’s own nook or small room. Today it’s the opposite, if there’s limited space the the bed gets it’s own room and the fridge goes right by the front door.
I like open-concept, and I think the reason it is populr is simple - space is still at a premium, and rather than making a close-sized kitchen and barely functional dining room, it is all one big space that can be subdivided as needed.
We have a ivingroom area, a kitchen-table area, and a formal dining room table. if we need to add room for 10 people, we just move one couch down and ad the large leafs; if there was a wall, the table would be longer than the dining room. Similarly, we rarely entertain so a couche and a loveseat is adequate. otherwise, we could expand te livingroom “area” by 10 feet into the kitchen table area, and have 2 sofas, 2 love seats, a few comfy chairs, and a large conversational party area.
It’s all about flexibility. As mentioned above, with family nowadays being a couple with 0 to2 kids, it’s rare that more than 1 area at a time is being used; so there is less need to compartmentalize.
Will it be outdated? No doubt. Our city has huge areas that were built in various eras, and each is identifiable. If your taste runs to victorian, or postwar suburban, or 60’s or 70’s, etc - you can find such a house. Ripping out the guts and redecorating to a new era is a common sport. It will never go out of style.
We have a flow-through kitchen - you need to go through the kitchen to get from the bedroom wing of the house or the front door to the living room. It is also an eat-in kitchen; we use our dining room as a dining room only on holidays.
Our house has pocket doors, so most of the time all the rooms are more or less open, but if my wife wants to watch TV while I’m cleaning up and playing the radio she can close the door.
