Design from A to Z: O is for Open-Concept
Open floor plans or open-concept homes are common place today. Open-concept is what it sounds like: A child can be doing homework at the dining room table while one parent is in the kitchen and the other is in the living room while they are all within earshot and eyesight. It’s a large layout free […]
Open floor plans or open-concept homes are common place today. Open-concept is what it sounds like: A child can be doing homework at the dining room table while one parent is in the kitchen and the other is in the living room while they are all within earshot and eyesight. It’s a large layout free from the obstruction of interior walls in the main living space. While it seems like a fairly obvious and desirable spatial plan for modern living, it’s a fairly new one in the history of homes. Up until the late 1800s, most main rooms in homes were closed off and entirely separate from each other. Each room had a singular function and helped staff and servants who were responsible for carrying that function out. Entertaining, for instance, was done with the illusion that every course of a meal simply “appeared” as if by magic. Sequestered in the parlor or dining room, work in the kitchen was done out of view, out of mind. The initial designs for open-concept floor plans came from Greene and Greene out of Pasadena, CA in the 1890s and early 1900s. Post-war modern life changed the family dynamic in America–the use of home staff became less p...
Open floor plans or open-concept homes are common place today. Open-concept is what it sounds like: A child can be doing homework at the dining room table while one parent is in the kitchen and the other is in the living room while they are all within earshot and eyesight. It’s a large layout free from the obstruction of interior walls in the main living space. While it seems like a fairly obvious and desirable spatial plan for modern living, it’s a fairly new one in the history of homes. Up until the late 1800s, most main rooms in homes were closed off and entirely separate from each other. Each room had a singular function and helped staff and servants who were responsible for carrying that function out. Entertaining, for instance, was done with the illusion that every course of a meal simply “appeared” as if by magic. Sequestered in the parlor or dining room, work in the kitchen was done out of view, out of mind. The initial designs for open-concept floor plans came from Greene and Greene out of Pasadena, CA in the 1890s and early 1900s. Post-war modern life changed the family dynamic in America–the use of home staff became less p...
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