Tag: construction techniques

AI is NOT Your Mid-Century Design Friend

35 min readYou may already use AI to get input on many areas of your life. And you may feel like the convenience outweigh its many negatives. Maybe. But here where we talk about making right choices for your home, let me assure you, you will not get good advice or even peace of mind about your design options by asking AI.

To paraphrase a meme I saw recently, Hey, y’all don’t ask ChatGPT. Make friends with a nerd. 

And I am so, so happy to be your mid-century design and remodeling nerd. 

I’ve been irked by AI for a while. It seems like it is over promising and under delivering. And I’m always kind of on the lookout for more information to corroborate my opinion.

The Washington Post recently ran a top of the page headline piece titled something like, “Can AI Do Your Job?” The very first example they gave was, can it do the job of an architect or a designer. And the short answer is, “nope.”

On their very first example they asked it to create a digital floor plan based on a hand drawn floor plan. And it was literally just supposed to recreate a hand drawn sketch as a digital floor plan. The human version was very tidy and annotated with dimensions. The chat version? Just a bunch of rooms labeled. AND with a bizarre relocation of spaces, including a bathroom surrounded on three sides by corridors. Certainly not a useful replica and in no way an improvement. 

Why is AI so bad at being a designer? And even worse at helping you plan a remodel for your mid-century home? I have thoughts.

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Can an open floor plan be too open?

36 min readThe open plan is a hallmark of modern living. Flow between spaces is a cornerstone of mid-century design. But do open plans always work in mid-century homes?

Right here at the top, I’m writing you a permission slip: If you like an open plan space, you can have it. Let’s open up your layout!! We’ll figure out structure and flow and make it happen.

And if you DO NOT LIKE open plan areas … you are not required to have any big open floor plan areas in your home. We can find pockets of rest, create visual and sound separation between spaces, and introduce elements to separate a too-open layout.

The right answer for you is the right answer for you!

Is an open plan good?

There’s been a lot of debate over the “right” or “wrong” nature of an open floor plan over the last couple of years. The pandemic years, in particular, created a big push back against a long standing real estate trend for big flowing spaces.

Continue reading “Can an open floor plan be too open?”