Open-plan living is dead - bring back the serving hatch!

My new practice Grounded is working on a new plan for Mainway, a 1950s housing estate in Lancaster that includes a deep retrofit of around 250 existing homes. We’ve just had the first of a number of conversations with the residents, and once we start looking at the layouts, everyone resoundingly says: “It’s not going to be open plan is it?” It’s almost the only thing that anyone agrees on.

So why as a profession are we still designing open-plan living and dining rooms, particularly in social housing? This isn’t new news. Estate agents and online forums have been decreeing the death of open plan for a number of years.

就连写字楼现在也在寻求更家居化的风格。很少有人愿意在大工厂里工作。人们希望拥有自己的空间，无论是在家里还是在工作中都能感到舒适。

I think the open-plan layout in multiple home developments has become a lazy default. It is the easiest solution to getting the most homes onto a plot, while still meeting the Nationally Described Space Standards (NDSS) for housing. My colleague, Sarah Hutchison, pointed out that a single kitchen-dining space enables people to create deep plans within single aspect housing developments. Being even more sceptical, the developer saves by having to build one less wall and door, too.

These open-plan layouts are dull and lifeless. Nothing is left to the imagination – you open your front door, and you see everything. We need to be giving these spaces more important consideration, and it should be a really key area that architects co-design with the residents.

这就是我们准备在主干道上做的事情。我们在一些公寓里增加了新的冬季花园，让它们变得更大，而在另一些公寓里，我们把它们变成了宽敞灵活的单人床(帮助那些被卧室税折磨的人)。这意味着我们可以为单身住户设计，或者为单亲父母设计，因为他们的孩子可能无法和他们一起生活一周。

By creating a living room that can be shut off completely, you create a space that can be used as a temporary bedroom for guests or friends and family who need somewhere to stay. The kitchen can then be accessed independently and, if we are creative with our flat planning, we might be able to squeeze a space for a table into the kitchen.

但我们如何避免黑暗的细胞房间的狭窄本质?嗯，我们可能真的需要做一些设计工作!

I am a big champion of the kitsch 1950s serving hatch as an example of how to address this challenge. Actually, it doesn’t need to be kitsch. A hatch creates an opening between two rooms that people can easily talk through and that can also easily be closed off to conceal the mess and smell of the kitchen.

Things like this will create sight lines through the flat and, if both rooms have windows, they will allow more light into the deeper parts of the plan.

正如我的同事凯蒂·费希尔所观察到的，“封闭舱门也有一种玩耍的感觉——我记得我奶奶曾经有一个舱门，我们总是打开它，关上它，偷看进去。这是一个如此简单的想法，但它抓住了人们的想象力。”

The UK has some of the smallest homes in Europe and as such they need to work hard to support our increasingly complex lives. Let’s get out there and listen to what people really want and need from their homes. And, if that means revisiting ideas we thought were outdated, so be it.