Something there is that doesn’t love an open concept

Those who watch any HGTV to speak of are well aware that Americans are in love, love, love with “open concept,” which can mean anything from an entire first floor with no inside walls whatsoever to a kitchen that spills into the family room.

The shows on HGTV are plenty scripted – was there ever a man in the history of house-hunting mankind who uttered unprompted the words “I really like the tray ceilings in the bedroom” – and a frequent script trope is “we were really hoping for open concept.”

If folks are looking for a new house, lack of open concept is often a deal breaker.

If folks are looking to rehab their way into open concept, there’s often a faux dramatic scene in which the renovators discover that there’s a big chunk o’ infrastructure: pipes, wires, the beam that’s holding up the second floor getting in the way of the open concept dream. How will we survive?

There are any number of (scripted) reasons people want open concept.

They love to entertain. And when they entertain, the person doing the food prep doesn’t want to get left out.

They want to keep an eye on their kids, with 24/7, 360 degree access to their goings on.

They want to watch the game while they’re whipping up a batch of nachos. Or whatever else is on while whipping up breakfast, lunch or dinner. And they want to watch on the BIG TV that dominates their living room or family room.

They want lots of light.

They just crave the togeheriness of the whole scene.

They just happen to love wide open spaces.

Oh, every once in a while an aginner expresses a desire for a walled off kitchen. Or the script calls for some bogus husband v. wife conflict. (“He wants open concept. She likes cozy spaces.” Can this marriage be saved???)

But it seems that the open concept tide just may be turning.

An article the other day in the Boston Globe profiled a couple of local apostates.

“In our old house,” said [Brenda] Didonna, a financial analyst, “I’d come home and make dinner and my husband would be watching TV in the other room, and a good portion of the evening we’d be apart.”

She got her togetherness, all right, in a glorious new house in Millbury. Now when she cooks and her husband watches TV, he’s in full view. Relaxing. While she works. “Frankly it’s annoying,” she said. A real estate agent has been called.

“I miss walls,” she said.(Source: Boston Globe)

I’d miss walls, too. But yowza. Selling the great new open conception home-a-rama shortly after moving in. I’m sure that Ms. Didonna has done the financial analysis, but this is going to cost a bit of coin. Especially given that her comments may well wake people up to the downside of open concept, i.e., sweating over a hot stove while your spouse is lumping around (or nodding off) watching, say, House Hunters on HGTV.

“Buyers are moving away from uninterrupted views,” said Loren Larsen, a real estate agent with Compass, in Boston, who is hearing from clients who don’t want their kitchens — and the dirty dishes — on display.

Or who don’t want all that company breathing down their neck while they’re trying to stuff pigs in blankets, or whatever it is that uber-entertainers do. (Another trope on HGTV is that everyone just loves to entertain. I realize that, when it comes to entertaining, I sit on the misanthropic introvert end of the continuum, but who on earth is doing all this perpetual entertaining that calls for open concept? Even on House Hunters International, where people are moving overseas to a place where they’ve never been and don’t know a soul, the big concern is how they’re going to entertain. Mostly those going abroad are SOL when it comes to open concept, so they’ll just have to settle for entertaining all their new friends, which pretty much seems to be their realtor and some dredged up new colleague, in the mingy little living room.)

“The pendulum is swinging back,” said Bob Ernst, president of FBN Construction in Hyde Park. “The reality is that life can be loud.”

Sometimes the pendulum swinging back doesn’t mean turning around and insta-listing the open concept dream home that turns into a nightmare. Sometimes it means reno-ing your reno.

Take the case of the Partan-Tveteraas family. They had a new condo in Brookline that was calling out for an opening of the concept. So they went with “something there is that doesn’t love a wall” approach and took the walls out.

“It was going to be like a gallery,” said [Asya] Partan-Tveteraas, a writer. “We’d have art-viewing parties and it was going to feel like this cool New York loft.”

Fast forward to reality:

Unless the couple’s two school-age children are in their rooms, the couple can’t watch a (non- PBS Kids) TV show, have a neighbor over for a drink, or conduct a work call.

So now they’re putting up walls and “considering pricey sliding doors.”

There don’t seem to be any studies about the pros and cons of open concept.

But researchers have looked at what open space means in the workplace, and home buyers might want to take note.

“It’s Official: Open-Plan Offices Are Now the Dumbest Management Fad of All Time,” read the headline of a 2018 Inc.com story.

It reported on a Harvard study that found open offices kill teamwork, and the lack of privacy drove employees to wear headphones and correspond electronically rather than talking face to face.

Hey, having worked in an open concept office, I could have told them that for free.

As for open concept living, I’m pretty closed minded.

I have a pretty large living room-dining room combo (open concept-y, I suppose, but just a big old room that back in the day may have been a dining room or a library). But my galley kitchen is all on its lonesome. And I like it that way. Even if connecting it directly to the LR-DR were aesthetically and/or structurally possible – which it isn’t – I wouldn’t want it combo’d in. I actually like defined spaces, cozy rooms, walls.

Meanwhile, I’ll have to tune in to more HGTV and see whether they’ve begun promoting closed concept. They’ll still have his and her sinks and walk-in closets to focus their house-hunting energy on.