Domestic open-plans were first a luxury for the servant-run upper class home, then they became a social aspiration for the prosperous, individualist middle class. Today neither circumstance really applies. And that loss plays out in the open-plan kitchen, for better and for worse. Unsustainable personal labor churns together with tenuous home economics, forever mixing but never reconciling, even as the joys and comforts of everyday life continue amidst it.
In this respect, the open plan might represent the most distinctly American home design possible: to labor in vain against ever-rising demands, imposed mostly by our own choices, all the while insisting that, actually, we love it. It’s a prison, but at least it’s one without walls.
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