Eliminating walls and merging small, separate rooms into one large multi-functional living space has dominated home renovations and new builds for decades now. These bright, airy, light-filled spaces are far more sociable, allowing families to cook, eat and relax together.
But months of lockdown – when those spaces also had to function as offices, classrooms, and recreation areas – highlighted some of the shortcomings of open-plan living. As a result, we’ve fallen a little out of love with the open plan concept, and a new interpretation is emerging: broken plan living.
The broken plan concept maintains the advantages of open plan designs – light, spacious, sociable spaces – while defining zones, creating distinct areas for different activities, and returning a degree of privacy.
Open plan designs can be ‘broken’ with structural elements or simply through clever use
of colour, floor treatments and furniture.
