Design your life to include more money, health and happiness with less stuff, space and energy.

Design your life to include more money, health and happiness with less stuff, space and energy.

Residential Behavioral Architecture 101

The above image was taken from an article in a Wall Street Journal article about the book “Life at Home in the 21st Century.” The UCLA group responsible for the book followed 32 middle class Los Angeles families around their homes, tracking their every move to see how people actually live nowadays. This image shows ”the location of each parent and child on the first floor of the house of ‘Family 11′ every 10 minutes over two weekday afternoons and evenings.” In other words, primetime for their waking hours at home.

The activity on this floor, which measures around roughly 1000 sq ft, is concentrated almost exclusively in three rooms: The dining, kitchen and family rooms; the latter room’s activity focused around the TV and computer. We estimate that around 400 or so square feet of those 1000 are actually used with any regularity.

Family 11′s house is very typical in size, if a bit smaller than the average new home of 2480 square feet in 2011. Home size peked in 2007 at 2521 sq ft. For comparison’s sake, in 1950 that same number was 983 sq ft; there were, on average, about one extra occupants in each of those smaller homes as well.

While we don’t propose there exists a correct house size, this case study begs a couple questions: What are we doing with all of that space? And what would homes look like if designed around how most people behave? It wouldn’t be hard to imagine that this Family 11 could easily live in half the space they currently occupy.

Kellys-NY-Times

A recent article in the NY Times called “The Big Shrink” illustrates how our homes might look if based on behavior. The Kelly’s, a family with two adolescent children who were profiled in the story, traded in their 3200 for a 1200 sq ft home (Pictured above. Built in 1954 incidentally). Like Family 11′s home, the formal living and dining rooms were barely used, less one family member, as Greg Kelly explains: “We had a dining room and a formal living room—that was where the dog lay on the couch, that was his room.”

We’ve often argued that micro-apartments make complete sense based on the way the majority of single people live. Our question to readers is, “How would you design a home if based on your behavior, not architectural convention…for singles, couples, families, etc.?” Let us know what you think in our comments section.

Kelly home image credit: Ryann Ford for The New York Times

  • DianaBGKY

    I have said for a while that I pretty much live in the back half of my ranch-style house. That is about 750 square feet and is where the nice-size kitchen, family room, and master bedroom, plus two baths, are. The other half has a living room, which is where my books are. I keep thinking I will work in there, but I do not. So it is storage. There is also an entrance area with two closets and two bedrooms (more closets). One bedroom is used for a guest room. The other is a staging area for things I am selling or giving away. My goal in about 1.5 years is to be able to downsize to a space that is 2/3 the size of my current house.

  • http://www.facebook.com/rua.lupa Rua Lupa

    I’ve made this comment else where on this blog before…

    a) Redesign the ‘washroom’
    - Have all water related devices in one corner of home, making the amount of plumbing reduced and more efficient
    - Only 1 double sink or maybe 3 sinks (a basin sink and 2 shallow sinks) that is open to the kitchen where its not only used for kitchen purposes but for conventional washroom/bathroom uses i.e. brushing teeth, washing hands after using toilet etc.
    - The washing machine and dish washer would be located by the sinks
    - The shower/bath would be in a ‘wet closet’ adjacent to the sinks
    - The composting toilet(s) would be in the ‘earth closet(s)’ located nearby the sinks one toilet each in their own closet, solving the problem of someone using the shower while another needs the toilet. With more than one earth closet, the problem of waiting for the toilet to be available diminishes (especially useful in a home with large family).

    b) Make the bedroom as small as can functionally be with only enough room to sleep, dress, and store clothes (drawers under bed and hangers on wall instead of space wasting closets and dressers). Or murphy beds that can be easily closed off for privacy with pocket handle drawers under bed for efficient clothing storage.

    c) Have open concept for kitchen and social room (aka living room) that maximizes the equatorial light (facing south if in northern hemisphere), and all on one level.
    - this makes the elderly and people in wheelchairs or in crutches more able to be mobile in their home and host guests with these limitations more easily.
    - Provides ample light and passive heating for the entirety of the day
    - The private rooms (bedrooms, wet and earth closet) would fall to the polar end of the building where the least amount of activity would happen which lessens the amount of heating and lighting needed in the home.

    • http://www.facebook.com/rua.lupa Rua Lupa

      My only problem with murphy beds is with a family, you want some privacy and would like to see more murphy bed/privacy established designs.

    • Marrena

      That is unsanitary–in a desperate situation it would be okay to only have one sink, extreme poverty, for example, but you don’t want the same sink where people wash their hands after using the bathroom to be the same sink where people wash their hands before preparing food. Too risky.

      • Val

        Being sanitary? Or just obsessive? Think about it this way: using your cell phone or keyboard, or just plain public transportation, or going outside for a walk etc exposes you to much much much more bacterial and viral threats than using a single sink. Especially the first two, it is proven that a cell phone and a keyboard is way more infested than an unsanitized toiled seat, even after being cleaned off with the usual tools (dusters and cleaning wipes).

        It is not a desperate solution, carefully and honestly think about all the stuff that gets in a kitchen sink (without any biased ideas please), most of the time it is way more hazardous to health on the long term then the things in a bathroom sink.

        Then, using detergents and soaps to clean the taps after using a sink, just like we just washed our hands is a good practice and eliminates this threat. Also in public places, where possible, it avoids the situations when after washing hands you touch an infested tap to stop the water, dumb, right? :-) So, it is a good practice outside, but best practice in your home.

        Last, but for sure not least, ever thought about that our general accepted urban culture to keep ourselves extremely and obsessively clean and aseptic got most the human race members today to be the most fragile and pathetic species on Earth today? Compare the urban obsessively clean folks with the less caring people living in rural areas, which is more sickish and fragile and lives less? I would say the urban.

        Not saying here that dirt is good, but a little is never bad. Helps build up body strength and, in the end, it counts out to be healthier. Paradox? ;-)

        Cheers.

    • http://www.facebook.com/people/Alexander-López/631013694 Alexander López

      I do agree with minimal bedrooms. All health counselors agree that in this room there should be no distractions to the simple act of sleeping. No TV’s, computers, or working desks.

      For me, the biggest benefit with small bedrooms is to be able to have more family time. All parents want to spend more time with their children, and ample bedrooms tend to function as fortresses. Sometimes kids can spend the biggest part of the day inside their bedrooms (especially during their teenage years), getting out only to use the bathroom and -again- the kitchen.

      The space gained with smaller bedrooms can be reclaimed not only by a bigger family room, but it could be employed to add an (obviously small) guest room, home office, or arts/crafts space for those who need to do those activities regularly. Or my favorite: a home recording studio! ;-)

  • James Anthony

    There’s a typo in the article. It should say family room, not living room, when you talk about the three rooms they use the most.

    If I were designing my home, I’d design it in a U shape, centered around an outdoor porch. The ‘bottom’ of the U would be a room for entertaining guests, with the kitchen on one of the ‘legs’ of the U, both of which would open to a central Arizona room, or covered patio for when I had more guests over than the space would comfortably hold. The rest of the time I’d only need to cool the part of the house I actually live in

    • http://www.lifeedited.com David Friedlander

      not seeing the typo james. david

  • Marrena

    That “Big Shrink” home is really beautiful. I’m filled with envy

  • Nate

    They are not middle class. They rich.

    • http://www.lifeedited.com David Friedlander

      the kelly’s in ny times article are not from ucla study. their $300k renovation is definitely steep. that said, they didn’t do anything dramatic with the space other than aesthetically. a similar downsize could be done by anyone i think. david

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