Floor plans spatially organise distinct activities room by room. Household practices naturally succumb to fashions adopted by commercial developers, such as the growth in rooms for leisure, and unnecessary duplication, as in the en-suite bathroom for each and every bedroom, and small kitchen spaces that encourage eating out or take-away food.
How rooms are clustered following certain styles, also limit practices within apartments.
The bathroom
Those rooms that we associate most with nudity and privacy – bedrooms and bathrooms – are relatively recent developments for what were quite public activities just a few centuries ago. Gradually, curtains were used to secrete sleepers and bathers, and enclosed toilets were erected.16 Only the spread of piped water in the twentieth century enabled a congregation of appliances related to personal washing in the bathroom.17 Even then, the toilet was always prone to separation from the bath, shower and, later, the wasteful spa bath.
Finally, bedrooms and bathrooms have become private spaces from shared use including use one at a time, to belonging to one person, and often remaining vacant. The growth of the en-suite meant bathrooms and bedrooms joined in personal luxury, and many two-bedroom flats with two bathrooms readily duplicate not only appliances, plumbing, electricity and other built components but items such as shower curtains, toothpastes and shampoos. Today a field of study of everyday practices, situating sustainability practices such as bathing and showering in a social context, has evolved from the work of researchers such as Elizabeth Shove and the UK Sustainable Practices Research Group. However, by the mid-2010s there still seemed to be few substantial studies specifically on apartment practices.18
The kitchen
Government and commercial pressures focused on the kitchen which, by the nineteenth century and at least in middle-class homes, had become a clearly demarcated room for cooking and for which specially designed furniture and fittings and manuals evolved.19 At the end of the
First World War, the Weimar Republic gave local councils the respon-sibility for creating affordable, social (public) housing. Subsequently, German cities featured standard apartments with minimum standard building regulations for size, windows and ventilation, which would prompt standard designs not only for dining and living rooms but also for kitchens – such as the innovative compact Egri-Küche and Frankfurt kitchens.20 Such innovations spread and especially influenced other apartment developments worldwide – in Europe, the UK, North America, Australia and New Zealand.
Indeed, the ‘rational’ kitchen in the city apartment typified the modernist characteristics of manufacture, standardisation, masculinity, professionalism and functionality:
The introduction of labour-saving devices made the kitchen more of a laboratory or a workshop than a social centre and its size – at least in Europe – was correspondingly reduced. In America, though, the battery of new kitchen equipment – giant iceboxes, huge dishwashers, waste-disposal units, food mixers, automatic washing machines – was considered a matter of national pride.21
If washing, toileting and sleeping spaces have grown to unnecessarily generous proportions in many contemporary apartments, as a rule of thumb minimisation of kitchen spaces and maximisation of kitchen devices work against sustainability practices. Devices such as the electric kettle and toaster are notoriously high energy users. The most holistically sustainable practices centre on preparing meals simply, from fresh and local ingredients, and composting food waste, demanding more than the short kitchen wall in many apartments which, instead, seems to assume that most food eaten in an apartment will be purchased at least semi-prepared and simply microwaved. In short, many apartment kitchens have shrunk to a simple appendage of nearby hospitality services and supermarkets.
Floor plans and apartment styles
The ‘upstairs–downstairs’ stereotype of separated public and private spaces in eighteenth and nineteenth century dwellings endures yet Flanders suggests that many British homes had diverse floor plans and variously inhabited their residential spaces. Thus classes, genders and
ages might either intensely cohabit and engage, or stand their distance as a segregated, and internally contradictory, unity.22 Today, the typical layout of contemporary double-storey dwellings places private bed and bathroom spaces upstairs and public entry, living and eating spaces on the lower floor – even when the reverse would be more functional, provide better views and privacy, and result in better sustainability practices.
Furthermore, built-in fittings and furniture mean little flexibility and adaptability in space use.
By the 1950s, ‘open plan’ became a convention that endures today.
Open plan created a sense of space, light and airiness, allowing for flexibility and personalisation, and was often complemented by higher ceilings. Double-height ceilings, made fashionable by Corbusier, became especially functional in loft or studio apartments where mezzanines with beds and studies would proliferate. Through simultaneous rather than connected developments, the centrality of the fireplace gave way to the television. While the television altered the arrangement of living areas, it could easily dominate a small apartment and showed up certain failings of open plan. At the same time, television shows exposed viewers to diverse influences of how they might live differently – especially raising expectations of affluence.23
Meanwhile, modern apartments became environmentally expensive in embodied energy; the taller the building, the greater need for multiple lifts and massive energy expended in construction. Although steel and glass overtook concrete and wood as materials of function and style, a diversity of past styles and futuristic designs can co-exist in any apartment. Furthermore, fashions and new technologies have prompted more regular renovations, gutting and complete refits. Curtains, floor coverings and furniture became plasticised in various ways along with screen printing and glues in wood products. Plastic, in particular, has become a ubiquitous environmental hazard just as inks and glues have become pollutants endangering health, with all impacts likely to be exaggerated by warmer conditions driven by climate change.
Finally, in the last few decades, the green apartment became a niche fashion, often more in form than substance – unless the floor plan was modest, the apartment oriented and insulated appropriately, and complemented by minimal adequate sustainability technology. Instead, the commercial ‘green’ apartment tended to evolve within a conventional, environmentally unfriendly, spacious style with technology as the major add-on, and was often more expensive than the norm. One view of
‘smart’ automations such as ‘intelligent blinds’ is that they not only save, but even rob, residents of consciously and conscientiously managing their homes to perform more sustainably. Being aware of the weather and having an apartment designed and amenable to screening out unwanted sun, blocking out cold, ventilating through opening windows and vents – through active rather than automated means – not only enhances an appreciation of seasons, weather and nature more generally, but also forces the resident to think about and act responsibly over sustainable practices.
Contemporary spacious layouts reflect the fact that, as apartments (and dwellings more generally) have assumed the significance of an asset, the gravity of decision-making on style, size and ‘mod-cons’ centres on market ability advice in a system that aims for capital growth and gives status to luxury. Despite purchasers’ personal preferences, they are apt to buy what is commonly considered most re-saleable, a perspective supported by often critical valuations made by mortgage providers.
Sustainability researchers have found that developers tend to assume
‘space and place’ are what ‘the market wants’ even as post-occupancy evaluations and user-driven processes point more in the directions of functionality, affordability and sustainability.24 Investors often follow developers’ leads. London residents record most dissatisfaction with lack of kitchen space, areas for children or youth to play and socialise, and to fit in all their ‘stuff’.25 Once space is restricted, only clever design and diverse, affordable market options can address such complaints. Small spaces must be beautifully designed.