One of the key goals for the modernist project has been an ongoing search for efficiency in all areas of life, but particularly in the home.  Layered into the contemporary home are a few hundred years of effort on the part of builders, designers, and corporations trying to smooth out the daily lives of its inhabitants into one, frictionless existence.

Social structures have traditionally informed the locus of this spatial research; a few examples are the intensive studies on kitchen layouts in the early 20th C; or the placement of groom’s quarters adjacent to the stables in earlier centuries.  In recent years the search for efficiency in spatial layout has been based on the need to streamline the family experience in order to maximize individual production/leisure/consumption time, the triad of the ideal late capitalist existence.

Kitchens, while interesting, remain over-analyzed.  Let us examine the corridor with this context in mind.  How can a corridor effect the spatial efficiency and community of a home or workplace?

The corridor has a relatively recent existence, being invented around 1600 at Beaufort House, in England, in order to separate servants’ movement from the wealthier inhabitants.  At this point, rooms could still have several doors, leading from one to an other.  This separation slowly developed into complete hierarchy of space, with individual rooms adjacent to corridors, with a single door leading into each space.  Robert Kerr’s “The Gentleman’s House” (1864) talks about the ‘wretched inconveience of thoroughfare rooms’.   This slow spatial retreat of rooms from each other has been related to evolving relationships of our society to privacy, household structures of power and the prevailing social view of the body.

What happens when we think about the evolution of “the passage” and its relationship to community building?  Maybe a little friction is required…

(referencing the image below) On the left is the passage-less space (the matrix system in archispeak, hilariously).  On the right is the usual passage/room combination we are so used to experiencing (a series of servant/served spaces in archispeak).  From top to bottom, the comparisons are:

movement in these spaces:      

the matrix layout: unintended meetings happen merely through movement; social space is created and a social community must be negotiated.        The body is stimulated as it is forced to negotiate multiple spatial conditions
the passage creates transitory moments of connection, easily avoided by the maintenance of a direct gaze.  Vision and the eye is bored by a single perspective

activity + movement:

the matrix: private activity is difficult, creating social norms around the sharing of tasks and ideas
the passage effectively segregates activities from the movement of the passerby.  isolation, solitude and secrecy are encouraged

activity only:

solitary activity is possible in the matrix system, yet there is always a connection to others in the space.
private activity is the default in a corridor system, unless two individuals choose to inhabit the same space (who works in the corridor beside those who clean it?)

Perhaps it is time for a little community friction, caused by the implementation of more matrix-style spaces, complete with glowing numerical wallpaper.

What do you think?  How does the spatial layout of your home or workplace impact your community?
note — this article was inspired by Robin Evans’ excellent essay “Figures, Doors + Passages” (1978).  read it if you are curious about these sort of things.