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Room problem · Function

“It is enormous, and it still feels wrong.”

What it usually is: Square footage with no map. A big room fails by having one undifferentiated middle, not by being small.

Kitchen with the square footage but no working route: A kitchen where one L-shaped counter run carries the sink, the hob and the small appliances, with a marble-topped peninsula projecting into the only clear floor space.
From the worked room below: Ten by thirteen. Prep, pantry, landing, and the walk are all one strip. A library photograph, not your room — the test that follows is for yours.

Before anything is bought

Try this first

Test · reversible
Mark two places on the floor with a rug, a lamp or painter's tape, and push one piece off the middle so it makes an edge between them. Live with it for seven days.
It is working if
You can say which place you are standing in at any moment, and the middle stops collecting things.
What would change our mind
If the room still feels wrong with a clear map, size was not the trouble. Look at the light — one overhead lighting a big room evenly flattens it — or at the echo.
Open Zone Architect

Can any corner become a place? It works on the room you have open; with none open, it offers a worked room to start from.

A worked room with this problem

Kitchen with the square footage but no working route

Ten by thirteen. Prep, pantry, landing, and the walk are all one strip.

Function looks like the governing problem. Clear the primary walk — no money yet.

See how this room was worked out

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