I have always disliked the open floor concept. I didn’t grow up with it — and have only lived in one space that had such a silly use of space. It was my first apartment after college, and the living room/dining room/kitchen/entry put everything on full display the moment you walked in the door. I detested the need to always have every spoon and coffee cup washed and dried and stored so that it didn’t appear that I was a slovenly sloth when someone unexpected dropped in. I disliked having dessert dishes, used napkins and coffee cups and the remnants of a dinner on the table when we moved to the ‘living room’ to continue the evening - leaving me pining for a good busboy to clear away the debris. I loathed having everybody crowding around the ‘kitchen’ counter while I was trying to finish preparing a dinner and always craved a little privacy to complete last minute details. Because the apartment didn’t have an office, working on the ‘dining room’ table was often subject to the noise and distraction from either the stereo or television from the ‘living room.’
And just in a very bourgeois note — it also means that my desire for a clean, spare, modern living room design and my penchant for a traditional, formal, elegant dining room design was impossible to accommodate. It was one or the other — nothing a simple wall and door couldn’t have remedied!
