
Floor Plan Models - colinprince
http://booktwo.org/notebook/reference-floor-plan-models/
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uptown
My wife and I did this when we were renovating a kitchen. We laid out
counters, cabinets and appliances using boxes to get a sense of how much space
we'd have walking through the modified layout, and how both sight-lines and
light-lines would work with cabinets hung on the walls.

It worked very very well, and the final layout achieved the exact "feel" we'd
decided on when iterating over our potential layouts.

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bonestamp2
Brilliant. I'm due for a kitchen renovation soon, care to share your final
layout?

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uptown
Honestly, I'm not sure it's be all that much help. Each space is unique, with
different challenges and requirements so I recommend you work with what you've
got and what you want. In our case, we had a room with multiple entryways, a
peninsula that was cutting off the space unnecessarily, and some specific
appliance wants. By identifying those problems and design requirements, it
helped us come up with the solution that was a huge improvement.

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bonestamp2
Ya, fair enough. I'm wondering if you found any isolated layout relationships
that are working really well that could be applied in most layouts? For
example, "we wanted the dishwasher behind the sink instead of beside it for
XYZ".

I'll share one relationship that I've found I like... in my last two kitchens,
I've had everything coffee/tea related in one section. All the coffee/tea
kettle/espresso machines are next to each other. All of the coffee supplies
and mugs are in the cupboards directly above them and all of this is either
next to the sink for using the faucet wand to refill the Keurig or Espresso
machine, or next to the fridge to split the water line and divert one water
line into the Keurig machine (direct water line doesn't seem to be as big a
need for the espresso machine since I'm the only person who uses that one).

One of the problems I'm struggling with though is that I'm thinking about
doing two dishwashers in my next kitchen. It sounds straightforward enough,
although I'm having trouble thinking through how to design it so it won't be
confusing during those times when you only have enough dish volume for one
dishwasher, yet still make it convenient for those times when you do need two
dishwashers. Maybe there's also a desire to cycle the two dishwashers so one
of them doesn't wear out much faster than the other.

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bonestamp2
I worked at McDonald's in high school and they've clearly revised the
restaurants a lot since then, but they still have this mindset. I forget what
they call it now, but the middle of any walkway is essentially a "fast lane"
and nobody is allowed to stand there.

It's one of those things that seems obvious once you hear it, but few people
do it elsewhere. I wish everywhere operated like this... malls, airports, etc.
If everyone who is stopped just moved to the sides then everyone in the middle
could go so much faster.

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lsiunsuex
Technically Oceans 11.

They built a to-scale model, robbed that vault, recording the whole thing,
then played it back for the security room while they broke into the real one.

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yboris
A related, lovely comedy from Norway & Sweden: Kitchen Stories
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kitchen_Stories](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kitchen_Stories)

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larrydag
This type of analysis is common in Industrial and Systems Engineering and it
has to do with time and motion study. The idea is that by analyzing the human
and work process you can find efficiencies in the system and thus improve
output. This was popularized in the industrial revolution with Winslow Taylor
and Frank and Lillian Gilbreth. In fact a famous movie was created about the
Gilbreth's called Cheaper By the Dozen which talks about how they used their
Business Management consulting with raising their large family.

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wpietri
One real-world example of this comes from the SF-based Long Now Foundation.
When they turned their (rarely-visited) museum space into a (now-popular) cafe
and bar, they invited a bunch of people by to build a cardboard prototype and
try it out:

[http://blog.longnow.org/02013/09/27/salon-prototype-
night-a-...](http://blog.longnow.org/02013/09/27/salon-prototype-night-a-
cardboard-proof-of-concept/)

I was there for that and it was a great experience.

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jrlocke
In philosophy, you sometimes hear an idea along the lines of "the least useful
(or useless) map is that which has a 1:1 scale. This is a nice counterexample.

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wlesieutre
One step up from this, courtroom construction projects sometimes have a full
scale courtroom mockup including temporary furniture out of plywood or foam.
There's a lot of important sightlines between different desks/seats at
different heights and then it's all custom built out of nice wood, so mistakes
are expensive.

That's probably done more in VR by now, I did some work in college at Penn
State's Computer Integrated Construction Research Lab with 3D mockups
(including their law school building which was why this came up). Back then it
was on a 3x rear projected stereo screen so a whole room of people could put
on glasses and see it, but with VR headsets being so affordable now (compared
to that setup at least) you could just do that design meeting over the
internet.

