Who designs a house these days and purposefully creates a room meant for doing nothing?
A drawing room is a room in a house where visitors may be entertained. The name is derived from the sixteenth-century terms "withdrawing room" and "withdrawing chamber", which remained in use through the seventeenth century, and made its first written appearance in 1642 (OED). In a large sixteenth- to early eighteenth-century English house, a withdrawing room was a room to which the owner of the house, his wife, or a distinguished guest who was occupying one of the main apartments in the house could "withdraw" for more privacy. It was often off the great chamber (or the great chamber's descendant, the state room or salon) and usually led to a formal, or "state" bedroom.[1]
Thank you Wikipedia for proving my point.
We live in a multi-tasking, high-efficiency world. Some are better at it than others. I can probably eek out 3 things at the same time without dropping the ball on any given task, but the husband can do about 5. Which is pretty rare in a dude since I know many that can only do 1 thing at a time and even then, the task is usually done half ass. And mind you, none of those 5 tasks includes breathing and scratching his *****, for naturally, those are like second nature. I've seen the guy have a full on conversation with a sub while typing an e-mail, listening and occasionally commenting on a sports podcast, throw a stack of papers into my in-box "to file" and write a to-do list all at the same time. Just wanted to give a quick kudos to my hubby. Now if I can only get him to change more than one diaper a day, clean the toilet, call his mother and remember our anniversary...
I believe that rooms within our homes should multi-task as well. Kitchen/dining/living spaces. Sleeping/playing/storage spaces. Bathing/laundry/flex spaces. There is a multitude of multi-functional design options that can be created with a little ingenuity.
We place so many expectations on ourselves to get more done within the alloted time we have in a day. Why can't our living spaces help us to do more on a daily basis?
Here, I found examples of some flex-spaces and multi-function rooms that are lovely. This is how it should be done! Screw the non-distinct 'drawing room.' Let's reach for higher functionality and multi-task our rooms! You will get more bang for your buck that way.
NOTE: This is especially true for those like us who live in small spaces. Not all of us have the real estate to even consider having a useless space such as a drawing room!
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| Lake|Flato Architects - Livestrong Foundation, in Austin, Texas |
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| Lake|Flato Architects - Livestrong Foundation, in Austin, Texas |
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