Our homes don?t need formal spaces
The entertaining rooms meant to make us social actually foster isolation For a recent study, UCLA-affiliated researchers in fields ranging from anthropology to sociology used cameras to record in great detail how 32 dual-income families living in the Los Angeles area used their homes. Their findings link real data to something about which I have been yelling into the void for years: Nobody is actually using their formal living and dining rooms. Families actually spend most of their time in the kitchen and the informal living room or den.
Yet we continue to build these wastes of space because many Americans still want that extra square footage, and for a long time, that want has been miscategorized as a need.
Any big-house ethnographer can see this in episodes of shows like House Hunters, where the prospective buyers will say infuriating things like, ?I like having Thanksgiving at my house every other year, so I?m going to need a chef-level kitchen and a two-story deck.? This claim has about as much substance as another common House Hunters trope: ?I like this house, but that easily repaintable green half-bath is a deal-breaker for me.? TV hate-watching aside, it?s important for us as homebuyers, -builders, and renters to be able to discern a need versus a want (or as my mother says, an ?I cannot? versus an ?I don?t want to?) when looking for a potential home. ?Entertaining space,? as it is marketed by builders, realtors, media, and popular culture, is, more often tha...
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30-04-2024 08:15 - (
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