If you want to open up a house, improve your living area, or just make your home look like it knows what decade it is, you need to knock down walls. Internal ones, mainly. For 15 years, this wisdom has been shared on TV’s Location, Location, Location, where the sight of Kirstie Allsopp stroking a partition wall with the words “First, you’d knock this through” has been synonymous with progress.
But not any more. “Broken-plan living” is the new open-plan living. Architect Mary Duggan, a judge of the RIBA House of the Year award (the winner of which is announced next week), used the phrase to describe a tendency she noted while examining the shortlist. She found herself “attracted to those schemes” that had changes of level. “Broken-plan living was a topic that came up during the tour.”
Duggan has noted lifestyle changes that have created a need for architectural changes. Greater iPad use is causing a demand for quiet spaces around the home, and “grand lounges are becoming snugs,” she says. Home workers want studies. Older children want greater independence within the family home. All that iPad use is making people want a real-life room to display their real-life artefacts.
Suzanne Imre, editor of LivingEtc magazine, has noticed more houses with libraries. Though take heart, because she says you can achieve this look with some shelves and a club chair. “We’re seeing almost a Victorian return to the pleasure of a ‘best room’.”
For obvious reasons, fashion in architecture is harder to keep up with than fashion in clothes. You have to remodel your house, which costs more and takes longer than just buying a new pair of jeans. Duggan knows this because, some years ago, she and her partner built their own RIBA-acclaimed, open-plan house. Since then, they have become parents and broken-plan is where it’s at, so now they intend to extend and adapt.
“The end of open-plan living? Where did you get that from,” says TV architect Charlie Luxton. He hasn’t heard of broken-plan living, he says, “but it’s clever. I like it a lot. If you mean a more complex open plan, I would agree.” His own ground floor has no doors but distinct areas for cooking and eating, lounging and, finally, a snug. He puts one of those into nearly every house he designs. “It’s all about interconnected space, not one big space,” he says. “Texture is the key word: steps, wide spaces, narrow spaces, different ceiling heights, different colours, different wall finishes.” Lots of people also want “a little ‘dirty’ kitchen” he says. (At last! Something I’ve got.)
.png?w=600)
