h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

I have observed over the years that the vast majority of houses in Britain are laid out pretty much the same: from the front door, stairs on one side, a corridor on the other, a front and back room off the corridor, which usually extends to a kitchen at the very back, etc.
Now, that suggests to me a single designer who put forth this layout, which was then copied by everyone else. So, who was it? Isn't an achievement that has had such a huge impact on British modern life worthy of recognition?

I've read pretty much the same thing about New England churches from 200 years ago. There was one plan, and it was copied pretty much everywhere. I've gone to many Boston-area churches -- Allin Church in Dedham, Old West Church in Boston, etc. -- and seen much the same design there.

My only explanation might be that when you don't have a lot to spend on a house plan, and there's one that's pretty standard, you use it. The originator of the plan doesn't have to be well-known or highbrow, just someone who knew how to do simple and effective.

I think it evolved. A house originally was a single room (or perhaps a corridor with a room one side and a cowshed on the other, but let's assume the animals were in a separate building even though often they weren't.)

A single room is a lot of space to keep warm, so stick in a ceiling, and then, realising the roof space is still useful, some stairs.

Even easier to keep the living space warm if the area by the front door is separated off, so up goes a partition, creating the corridor with the stairs in.

There's logic in putting smelly/wet activities in a separate area, at the back, near to where waste goes. So when the house is enlarged, a kitchen goes on at the back.

And so on. Bill Bryson wrote a book, At Home, I think it was called, about the use or arrangement of domestic space. There have been other books and studies (often focusing on large houses rather than common ones though) but it's been 25 years so I can't remember more...

Mol

Go look at Herculanium or Pompeii (there may be older examples) - it's been going longer than you might imagine. The single room bronze age/Anglo Saxon/mediaeval hall thing is not necessarily representative of all societies. Urban design is functional I suspect.

How else might you do it.

?

Thought the Romans did like to wash their feet when the arrived apparently, that's a symptom of warmer climes I guess.

If you wore shoes, would you take them off at the front door, or wear them through the rest of the house?

The traditional house in Ireland had three rooms. The main room when you went in the front door was for living, cooking and eating. On one end was the parlour which was for displaying china ornaments and entertaining important visitor. But no visitor was ever important enough to be allowed into it. At the other end of the house was the bedroom.

Roman houses (at least in Pompeii - but I think it was standard) had a paddling pool you had to go through at the entrance. I don't *know* but I know what I would do with my shoes

If you need to wear shoes, you need to wear them. That's all. Ancient Rome didn't have blacktop roads and parking lots that got painfully hot in the sun. On the other hand, Rome did have some chilly temps in December and January. I have trouble believing that people could be comfortable in bare feet at those times.

I am only coerced into wearing shoes for mail pick-up, or trash and recycling to the curb once we are around -8C (18F) or if the snow/ice is more than 2 inches or so ...

If the temps outdoors are over 80 degree Fahrenheit, I could consider going barefoot, but blacktop driveways get too hot in the sun, and pebbles and twigs in the lawn make my feet hurt. Sandals might be an option, though. I think Romans might have had those.

Sorry Paul, I oft forget that you are a soft city boy.

No, I just have feet. Plus, I remember walking on my father's lawn in the area where the locust trees were. You don't know foot pain until you've stepped on locust prickers . They are *horrible.*

I walk at least a dozen miles a week, so my feet do get a workout. It's not my feet that are soft, but the area above my neck.

My daughter takes her shoes off when she comes into the house. But then the tortoise bites her toes.

Dangers within, dangers without ...

It may be my youth as a farm kid, or quite some years of military life. But even some serious thistles don't bother these feets when bared. Nor that inch or two of snow, ice, what-evers.

Apart from cultural requirements and local conditions and building materials all houses should in theory be similar

"Apart from cultural requirements and local conditions and building materials all houses should in theory be similar" [Bob Stafford]

I think there are more variables than that. Number of floors, for instance. A mobile home, being all on one level, will need no interior stairs. A multi-story house will need some means for the heat and water and sewer pipes to do their work. If a house is tall enough [I think the limit is four stories], water won't go any higher, so some sort of holding tank and pump will be needed to help the water go further up. If a house is designed for eight people, there should be more bathrooms and bedrooms than if it's designed for only two or three.

Some the mcmansions they build nowadays have indoor theaters and pools and solaria and all sorts of other things you wouldn't find in a simple cottage with thatched roof.

the person who designed this house was an idiot - they've assigned so much space to pointless coordirs and pasages etc, the layout seems, well, basically random... like they designed the ouside size/shape, then randomly alloted the inside space and hadn't figured out teh layout at all I've cupboards in the house bigger than the bathroom/loo