Tag Archives: open floor plan

Quarantining at home away from other residents, considering the size of the home and the layout

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For roughly a year and a half, numerous Americans have quarantined themselves not just from work or school but from the other members of their households. Having more room in the residence and having particular floor plans would seem to help.

Photo by Markus Spiske on Pexels.com

First, having more square feet would allow the residents to keep more distance and could provide the quarantined person more space to operate. Quarantining for a week or two could feel more burdensome if someone is restricted to a small room or portion of a residence. Space provides options for rearrangement.

Second, square footage might not be everything as the floor plan can matter. Large common spaces, a regular feature of many newer homes, would be off-limits. A more closed-off floor plan with separated rooms might work better. Even better could be a separate wing – imagine a bedroom and bathroom on one side of the house or on another level than the other bedrooms. For example, a split-level could be split between the quarantined and everyone else. Or, an in-law suite or numerous bedrooms with en suite bathrooms. In contrast, a ranch home with all the bedrooms near each other and a large living space might limit options.

Few people likely purchased their homes or rented particular places with a pandemic in mind. But, considering medical issues is not out of the question for many when looking for a place to live. Think of mobility concerns or aging in place. Or, if someone has a serious illness, where might a hospital bed fit or how would an alternative sleeping arrangement work out?

All I have is anecdotal evidence on this through observing the setups of people on social media. It appears most just block off a bedroom or office type of space in the home for the quarantined person. This works well if you have extra space or a room that is used occasionally. I suspect this is not so easy with less space or a layout that makes it difficult to isolate a single person.

Designing homes to be “everything all at once” for times when everyone is home all the time

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Americans generally like private single-family homes but are the homes Americans have now designed well for confinement and sheltering in place?

Homes, whatever their size or their layout, are constructed to be part of an ecosystem. They make assumptions about the way their eventual residents will interact with the affordances, and the economies, of the outside world. They assume, generally speaking, that people will commute to work (hence, in suburbs and rural areas, the abundance of driveways and garages). They assume that people will live much of their life outside the home. And they assume that the home’s residents will, as a consequence, have access to goods produced elsewhere: groceries, games, cleaning supplies. (American refrigerators are the size they are because their designers made informed bets about how often their owners would visit a grocery store.)

Apartments in cities make similar assumptions, but in reverse: They assume that the city itself is a meaningful extension of whatever square footage a dwelling might offer. They treat the home as what it often will be, for the resident: one place among many in the rhythms of a day…

Neither scenario accounts for what many Americans are experiencing right now: home as the only place. Home as the everything. The confinement can pose, for some, a direct danger. Jacoba Urist, writing about the “tiny apartment” trend in 2013, noted that large amounts of time spent in enclosed spaces, particularly if those spaces have several occupants, can be a source of stress—especially for kids. A child-protective-services worker recently sent ProPublica a list of worries she has about the people in her care: “that my families will literally run out of food, formula, diapers. That some of them may die for lack of treatment. That some children may be injured or harmed through inadequate supervision as their desperate parents try to work. That stress may lead to more child abuse.” Gwyn Kaitis, the policy coordinator for the New Mexico Coalition Against Domestic Violence, noted in the same piece that “violence increases when you have circumstances such as unemployment and isolation.”…

“In general, it’s wonderful,” Susanka said of the open-concept approach to living spaces. “But when it’s done to an extreme, it makes it very difficult to live in the house, because your noise, whatever you’re doing, goes everywhere.” When the home involves kids, that borderlessness becomes even more acute. A child might need to be entertained or fed while her mom is on a conference call. An older sibling might be playing video games or watching a movie while her dad is trying to cook dinner. Another sibling might need a retreat from his co-quarantiners, and have no place to go. In an open space, one person’s activity becomes every person’s activity. Alone together, all the time: For many, that is the current state of things. The “See Also” section of Wikipedia’s “open plan” article cites only one related page: “panopticon.”

There is a lot to think through here. A few thoughts on what this might mean for homes in the future:

  1. I have seen the suggestion from a few places that more Americans will seek out homes in the future that have dedicated office spaces at home. Without a room that can be closed off and relatively quiet, it can be hard to work from home when everyone else is also home.
  2. Will this push more Americans to seek out more square footage in their dwellings? The argument can go like this: you never know when you might need that extra space (such as during a pandemic). An extra room or two could be converted to office space or classroom space or food/toilet paper storage when residents need to stock up. Additionally, does this experience limit how many people will be willing to bet on a tiny house?
  3. A push toward further integration of technology into houses. If people are working from home and spending all of their time there, imagine dwellings with screens and speakers in every space, effective wi-fi everywhere, and both ample space for sitting and standing (with the need to stand and work to vary it up and move around). Carrying a laptop, a tablet, or a phone around to every interior space may not cut it.
  4. Earlier evidence suggested people congregate around the kitchen while other parts of the house go relatively unused. The kitchen might still be a gathering space but perhaps more attention and innovation will come to other spaces that in earlier times would be relatively ignored. When a bedroom has to serve more purposes, perhaps this means there will be different furniture or amenities there.