How Domestic Work Shaped the Modern Home's Floor Plan, from Palladian Villas to Corridor House

Key facts

• Robin Evans' 1978 essay Figures, Doors and Passages identified John Thorpe's plan for Beaufort House in Chelsea, drawn around 1597, as an early English example of a central passage giving rooms independent access.
• The word corridor comes from Italian corridore, linked to correre, meaning 'to run.'
• By the nineteenth century, wealthy houses used back stairs and service passages to move domestic workers around family spaces, creating privacy through plan.
• MOS Architects' House No. 11, or Corridor House, was built for the inaugural Chicago Architecture Biennial in 2015 and turns the corridor into the destination itself.
• Taku Sakaushi and OFDA's Three Corridors House in Japan (2011) features a long central hallway and side passages that double as verandas.
• Fala Atelier's House Within Three Gestures in Gondomar, Portugal (2023) elevates the laundry room into a small tower.
• Mesura's Vasto Gallery in Barcelona (2023) is organized around a freestanding wooden service core and an eight-meter stainless-steel kitchen counter.
• A-01's No Footprint House in Costa Rica (2019) compresses domestic systems into a central service core, extending domestic labor to energy and climate control.