There was a time—not so long ago—when a hallway wasn’t considered a luxury. It was just there, doing its job quietly: giving you space to transition from one part of your life to another. Living happened in one room, sleeping in another, and they didn’t have to share air. But somewhere between “open-concept living” and “shoebox chic,” we killed the hallway.
What Happened to the Hallway?
Developers call it “maximizing usable space.” Real estate agents call it “open and airy.” Architects call it “efficient design.” But let’s call it what it is: the commodification of privacy and boundaries.
Hallways became an easy cut in the pursuit of profit. They don’t generate square footage that can be sold as rooms. They don’t photograph well on MLS listings. They’re viewed as transitional dead zones. So, they died.
In today’s average urban apartment, there is no buffer. The front door opens directly into the kitchen. The kitchen shares open air with the living room. The bathroom is behind one door, and the bedroom is behind the other—and neither one is more than a few paces from where you just burnt your grilled cheese.
Spatial Collapse and Emotional Creep
This isn’t just about aesthetics or architecture. It’s about how we live—and how we feel while doing it.
When your bedroom door opens into your kitchen, there is no mental shift. You’re not “done with the day.” You’re just in a different part of the same space. We’ve removed the natural rituals of transition. There’s no pause. No procession. Just immediacy.
And it’s exhausting.
The hallway was never just a passage—it was a decompression chamber. A moment of stillness. A place for art, for shoes, for little glimpses of personality. Now, your home is one continuous broadcast, where every part of your life is visible from every other part.
Working From Home: The Final Invasion
If the death of the hallway was the first assault, working from home finished the job. Now your workspace is jammed between your coffee pot and your laundry pile. The lines between rest, productivity, intimacy, and routine have fully collapsed.
There’s no sacred space left—just multi-use zones that demand all versions of you, all the time. Your home isn’t a refuge anymore. It’s a battleground of context switching and broken boundaries.
Your Home Is Watching You
There’s a darker thread here, too: surveillance architecture.
Open-concept design didn’t just make homes look bigger—it made everything visible. It reinforces a performative mode of living. The living room must be spotless, the kitchen curated, the bedroom styled—even if no one is watching but you.
This isn’t just about the gaze of guests. It’s about internalizing that gaze. When you can see everything, all the time, you start living performatively for yourself. You clean instead of rest. You tidy instead of recover. There’s no hiding place.
The Myth of Minimalism
Minimalism walked in with good intentions—clear the clutter, simplify your life—but it’s been hijacked by developers and influencers. Now, it’s not about owning less. It’s about being content with less space.
Less privacy. Less separation. Less humanity.
We’ve traded away comfort for sleek. We’ve been sold the lie that an all-in-one studio apartment with a Murphy bed and galley kitchen is aspirational. It’s not. It’s the Airbnb-ification of daily life: designed for temporary use, made permanent by necessity.
“Somewhere between open-concept and micro-loft, we lost the hallway—and along with it, the ability to close a door on the world.”
What It’s Done to Us
We’re more stressed. More tired. More irritable. Because your brain never gets to relax when it’s always in the middle of the action.
Think about it:
- Where do you cry without being watched by the fridge?
- Where do you read a book without hearing the dishwasher?
- Where do you exist without multitasking?
When everything is visible, everything feels urgent. And when everything is urgent, nothing feels safe.
Slums of the Future: Canada’s Coming Construction Boom
Canada is on the brink of a housing construction blitz. On paper, that’s a good thing—we need more homes. But here’s the looming danger: will this wave of new builds serve the psychology of living, or just the economics of shelter?
If all we’re building are units without spatial logic, empathy, or longevity—just roofs, not homes—we’re not solving a crisis. We’re just deferring it. Bad design ages into bad neighbourhoods. Shoeboxes become tomorrow’s slums.
We’ve seen this play out. From the projects to the estates to the coined CHAV class (Council Housed and Violent), we’ve witnessed how careless, mass-produced housing becomes a trap, not a launchpad. We keep pretending we’ve learned from history, while capitalism and fascism vomit up the same mistakes—this time with brushed nickel finishes. And we stand there, mouths agape, too stunned or too polite to call it what it is.
A society that builds without care for comfort or mental health will pay for it in instability, burnout, and a generation that’s never known what “home” really means.
So What Now?
We’re standing at a pivotal moment in Canada’s housing story—and we don’t get a second draft. This isn’t just about architecture; it’s about how we choose to live. The time for passive adaptation is over. We must get involved on every level—policy, planning, protest, purchase.
This is our shot to evolve—not revolve back here in 25 years, wondering why no one fought harder for livable spaces. Let this be the line in the drywall. Let this be where we say: never again to design that dehumanizes.
Design for people—not just profit margins. We don’t need more units. We need more homes.
And to the planners, developers, and quick-flip contractors: stop building spaces that require us to come up with stupid solutions just to cram our vacuum cleaner and Q-tips into the same fucking drawer. Enough is enough.
Our bedrooms should be sanctuaries, not side dishes. They shouldn’t smell like dinner—or dread.
If a full hallway isn’t possible, then we adapt—but on our terms. Create buffer zones: curtains, bookshelves, lighting cues.
Set mental boundaries: change clothes, move rooms, light a damn candle.
Refuse to live like a showroom.
Bring back the pause. Bring back the space between. Bring back a life that isn’t always on display
Design for people—not just profit margins. We don’t need more units. We need more homes.
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