Build. That. Wall!
Wait, not THAT wall. The other one. The one between your kitchen and your living room. Yes, it may sound like heresy to disciples of HGTV, but it may be time to move away from open-concept homes.
That’s what Kate Wagner, author of the satirical architecture blog McMansionHell, argues in a recent essay for CityLab. Open-concept homes with massive, free-flowing spaces might look good in photo shoots, but they’re impractical and wasteful for everyday use, she writes.
“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.” Kate WagnerThe open concept — that is, homes with no separation between the kitchen, living and dining rooms — is a few decades old, but at least in the world of HGTV shows, is still seen as a must-have for any hip homeowner.
But Wagner says there are signs that Americans are finally turning a corner, citing recent preferences toward traditional, more rustic homes and the latest trend in luxury homes — a “mess kitchen,” away from the main kitchen and out of sight to visitors. “To me, the mess kitchen offers hope for a transitional period where open spaces may become closed again,” Wagner writes.
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So what’s wrong with the open concept? They’re harder to keep clean, don’t isolate cooking smells, they’re much noisier — “an acoustical nightmare,” is how Wagner describes it — and offer less privacy. Wagner notes it’s no coincidence that as open-concept homes gained popularity, so did “man caves” and “she shacks,” where folks could feel comfy in their own enclosed space.
Energy inefficiency is another big problem. “As cultures of consumption change and people become more environmentally conscious, homes must change to reflect this,” Wagner writes. “The closed floor plan, especially the closed kitchen, can help save energy by the simple principle of not heating and cooling rooms that are not currently in use, as well as by isolating rooms we want to keep warm or cool.”
And if that’s not enough, consider safety — firefighters have warned for years that fires spread faster in open-concept homes because they lack walls to contain them. According to one fire-safety survey, where residents 30 years ago had, on average, 17 minutes to safely escape a house fire, today that’s down to three minutes or less.
Something to keep in mind next time you’re binge-watching “House Hunters.”
